Critical Care Nursing Practice Guide. a Road Map for Students and New Graduates

Overview

Critical Care Nursing Practice Guide: A Road Map for Students and New Graduates is an essential, step-by-step, practical guide that helps new nursing graduates, new critical care and nursing students assigned to intensive care units (ICU) gain the confidence they need to provide optimal care to their patients. This comprehensive text teaches inexperienced nurses how to systematically assess their patients, plan individualized care, implement therapeutic modalities with competence, collaborate effectively and evaluate the effectiveness of nursing actions. Covering areas such as how to begin, organize, prioritize, analyze, reason, and decide in daily routines and emergencies in the critical care setting, this book enables the novice to become an expert in the ICU. Valuable features such as chapter objectives, summaries, and key terms are included.

Table of Contents

Introduction
Chapter 1 Eyeballing Your Patient
Chapter 2 Taking and Giving Shift Report
Chapter 3 Assessing Your Patient
Chapter 4 Machines, Monitors and Meters
Chapter 5 Labs, Levels and Labels
Chapter 6 Graphs and Waves
Chapter 7 Drugs, Drips and Drops
Chapter 8 Emergencies in ICU
Chapter 9 Procedures in the ICU
Chapter 10 Planning Your Day
Chapter 11 Special ICUs
Chapter 12 Transporting the Critically Ill Patient
Chapter 13 Documentation and Reporting
Chapter 14 Excellence in Practice
Chapter 15 Practice Pearls

About the Author(s)

Elizabeth Simon, RN, PhD, CCRN, CEN-Assistant Professor of Nursing and Coordinator of Nursing Education Advanced Certification Program, City University of New York, Hunter College, New York, New York