Main description:

Are you a starting work in critical care? Are you an experienced nurse but need to check guidelines and best practices?

This is the indispensable guide to daily procedures and problems faced by nurses working in this specialty.

This book will help you to

Organise your job and yourself
Assess patients and communicate with them
Get clinical information on a wide range of conditions
What to do in emergency

This UPDATED edition:

Completely updated and revised content written by authors with extensive nursing experience in the field
Physiological, psychological and social areas, as well as legal issues, ethical and moral dilemmas that critical care nurses and health care practitioners may face on a daily basis
Boxes, tips and diagrams to help bridge the theory-practice gap while embarking on your critical care career.

Part of the A Nurse's Survival Guide series

Completely updated and revised content written by authors with extensive nursing experience in the field

Physiological, psychological and social areas, as well as legal issues, ethical and moral dilemmas that critical care nurses and health care practitioners may face on a daily basis

Boxes, tips and diagrams to help bridge the theory-practice gap while embarking on your critical care career.

Contents:

Section 1 - General principles of critical care

1.1: Introduction to critical care nursing

1.2: Health and Safety

1.3: Emergencies and life-threatening conditions

1.4: Life threatening complications/ outcomes

Section 2 - Patient assessment and investigations

2.1: Identification of patient needs/problems

2.2: Assessment

2.3: Haemodynamic monitoring

2.4: Diagnostic procedures

Section 3 - Critical care interventions

3.1: Medium-technology life-support interventions

3.2: High-technology life-support interventions

3.3: Caring for a critical care patient

3.4: Intubation and ventilation

3.5: Transfer of critical care patients

Section 4 - Common conditions/reasons for admission

4.1: Physiological processes common to all medical and surgical conditions

4.2: Neurological

4.3: Endocrine disorders

4.4: Respiratory

4.5: Cardiovascular

4.6: Renal

4.7: Gastrointestinal (GIT)

4.8: Immunological

4.9: Burns

4.10: Poisoning/overdose

Section 5 - Psychological and ethical care

5.1: Mental effects of critical care

5.2: Death and dying in critical care

5.3: Professional practice issues

Section 6 - Pharmacology

6.1: Medication management

6.2: Pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics

6.3: Classification of drugs used in critical care

6.4: Drug calculations

6.5: Nurse prescribing

References

Further Reading

Appendix 1 Units of measurement

Appendix 2 Normal values

Appendix 3 Drug measurement and calculations

Glossary

Index