Critical Care Nursing: Diagnosis and Management

First owned the 1993 ed. I will soon be updating my reference shelf with a new ed. Very useful, well organized, to the point and relevant for staff ICU RNs.

Ably covers spectrum of critical care, and is especially useful for it's case histories. No text will be perfect or forever current but this one is an explicable text.

After attending several classes taught by one of the authors, Mary Lough, I purchased this book and have found it to be an excellent resource. I am new to critical care nursing, and I consult this textbook an average of twice a week. Some consider the language overly technical, but I find it to be crisp and concise.As to Ms. Wisniewski's criticism in her 10/4/00 review, I believe that the text she sites is referring to the African-American patient, and that it is the patient who might avoid pain medication for fear of addiction. She has instead interpreted it as instructions to the nurse. If she were to interpret the passage she quotes in the context of chapter 8, Pain and Sedation, she would also read that, "pain is what the patient states it is," and that "addiction rates for patients in acute pain who receive opiod analgesics are less than 1%." It is clear to me that Ms. Winskiewski has misinterpreted the intent of the writer. I have observed that many of my patients fear addiction and if we as nurses forget this possiblilty, we run the risk of undermedicating. It is our job to educate our patients so that they get adequate pain treatment. In conclusion, I have found Critical Care Nursing Diagnosis and Management to be the best text on the subject that I have seen yet, and I recommend it frequently to my collegues.

Being a critical care nurse, I found this book to encompass the many different aspects of competency needed in my nursing practice. The book is laid out in systems approach which makes it easy to use and understand. It is a very good reference and source of information.