Nursing Care Of The General Pediatric Surgical Patient. - Review - book review

AORN Journal, Dec, 2000 by Vicki Dreger

NURSING CARE OF THE GENERAL PEDIATRIC SURGICAL PATIENT Barbara V. Wise et al 2000, 544 pp $79 hardback

This book is a comprehensive, extensively referenced text covering a variety of conditions and procedures encountered in pediatric general surgery. It serves as a reference and learning tool for perioperative nurses, from novice to expert, and includes illustrations with detailed labels and explanations, as well as charts, forms, and radiographic films to augment the written material. This book describes all phases of pediatric perioperative care, including preoperative preparations and considerations, steps of actual procedures, and postoperative management issues, such as discharge teaching.

The first section of this book addresses special considerations for the care of all pediatric surgical patients. Other sections address surgical procedures by category (eg, innovative technology; head, neck, and thoracic cavity procedures; congenital abdominal conditions; acute abdominal conditions). Later sections delineate nursing care of children with complex surgical conditions (eg, children undergoing cardiothoracic transplantation, surgical neonates). Final sections describe nursing care of injured children, trauma, and bum care. The book ends with a discussion of clinical nursing research. The book contains 36 chapters and includes additional appendices of resources and a glossary.

The chapter regarding esophageal defects demonstrates the extensive presentation of information. Subsections report common congenital defects, their incidence and etiology, embryology, classification, associated anomalies, pathophysiology, clinical presentation, and diagnosis. The editors follow the same format for acquired defects and list 70 separate reference articles and books for this chapter alone.

Overall, this book is an impressive compendium with few drawbacks. Due to the extended coverage for each section, there obviously are space limitations. Some conditions or syndromes requisitely are excluded. In comparison to the number of topics, the index is limited, and some acronyms used in the text are omitted in the index. To find such acronyms in this book, one also may need to reference the table of contents. The value of the content far outweighs these minor inconveniences.

This book is available from Aspen Publishers, 200 Orchard Ridge Dr, Gaithersburg, MD, 20878; www.aspenpublishers.com.

VICKI DREGER RN, BSN STAFF NURSE ADVOCATE/CHRIST HOSPITAL AND MEDICAL CENTER OAK LAWN, ILL