Clinical Nursing Skills: Basic to Advanced Skills [Paperback]

The sixth edition of Clinical Nursing Skills continues its high standards for skill presentation. This new edition is expanded to include new chapters as well as new sections of material relevant for the twenty-first-century nurse.

The authors have strived to make this edition current, complete, and relevant for all nursing students, from those who are learning basic skills to senior students who are mastering critical care skills. The majority of skills in this text are also appropriate for the working clinical nurse. Because this text is so comprehensive, it has been adopted by many hospitals as their procedure manual.

Clinical Nursing Skills is a performance-based text written for all levels of nursing education: baccalaureate, associate degree, and diploma. New skills, new photos and illustrations, and new introductory material have been added throughout the text. Also, the text has expanded its very popular Critical Thinking Application at the end of each unit and added Critical Thinking Strategies, with scenarios based on chapter material to stimulate critical thinking ability.

Faculty feedback from prior editions confirms that the most effective way to utilize this text is to teach from the most basic to the more complex skills. The student will learn and perform each specific skill, while also learning how to assess the client, formulate nursing diagnoses, perform the procedure, evaluate the results, and document the pertinent data.

The Nursing Process continues to provide the organizing framework for this textbook. Within each of the 34 chapters, skills are grouped by unit. Nursing process data is then provided for each skill group or unit. Each procedure includes a list of equipment necessary to perform the skill, preparation, and step-by-step nursing interventions. Many steps include rationale for the nursing action. In order not to be redundant or repeat rationale time after time, we have limited these inserts to those most relevant.

The clear and concise format enables the student to easily access key material for immediate reference in the clinical area. Extensive color photographs and drawings within each unit illustrate the concepts presented and enable the student to visualize each step that must be performed.

• More than 650 skills, new and updated, are included in this new edition, including basic, intermediate, and advanced skills. Presented in the Nursing Process framework, this text has more than 1,100 pieces of art to illustrate the skills.
• A new, extensive chapter entitled "Bioterrorism—Disaster Nursing" has been added to this edition. The impetus for including this material was a report by the American Hospital Association (AHA) entitled Hospital Preparedness for Mass Casualties. This report emphasized that a major barrier to developing and implementing a weapon of mass destruction (WMD) response training program is that most schools of nursing do not include this content in their basic curricula and do not prepare the graduating nurse to become a high-level participant in a WMD response team. The authors have included this chapter to assist schools of nursing to quickly add this important content to their curricula, with the hope that in the future, nurses will be prepared (with knowledge and skills) to participate on a professional level with a response team.
• Two new sections, maternity and pediatrics, have been added to the physical assessment chapter, which makes this chapter an all-inclusive reference. Selected pediatric and maternity skills have also been added.
• Critical thinking is found in two places throughout this edition. Critical Thinking Strategies in the form of case studies have been added at the end of each chapter to assist students to practice application of critical thinking principles to clinical situations. Critical Thinking Application sections, which include unexpected outcomes and critical thinking options are placed at the end of each unit. This section assists the student to apply the process of critical thinking when unexpected outcomes occur.
• Cultural Competence and Evidence Based Nursing Practice are adjunct data that have been added to this edition: cultural competence reminds students that cultural diversity principles play a major role in providing client care; and evidence based nursing practice demonstrates how to build a research base for specific interventions in client care.
• Photos of newly introduced equipment are included to denote advances in medical technology.
• Management Guidelines complete each chapter. This component includes Delegation of Responsibilities to teach the student nurse to make critical judgments when delegating tasks within the framework of legal, safe, and appropriate boundaries. It also includes a section on Information Flow, which assists the student to assume a management role by learning to prioritize and communicate relevant client data to members of the health care team.

Because each chapter "stands alone" and is consistently and independently structured, Clinical Nursing Skills can be adapted to all fundamental texts or any program curriculum. This feature allows faculty to use any conceptual model (Newman, Roy, Orem, Rogers, etc.) in the curriculum and to teach the material in any sequence. Clinical Nursing Skills remains the most complete and adaptable nursing skills text available.

• More than 1,100 full-color photographs, line drawings, charts, and tables depict step-by-step nursing procedures. These clear, specific, and up-to-date illustrations display new equipment and new procedures, as well as nurses performing basic to advanced skills.
• Each chapter's introductory material provides the basic theoretical foundation for the procedures that follow. Pedagogic features include Learning Objectives and Terminology pertinent to that chapter. Nursing Diagnoses (phrased in the latest terminology) are relevant to the chapter content and precede step-by-step procedures.
• Additional learning aids in each chapter will help the student assimilate the immense amount of nursing content. For example, Rationale for specific nursing actions assists the student to understand why certain actions are performed. Rationale is selective and pertinent to prevent overloading the student with too much data, which may occur if rationale is presented for every major step in each skill.
• Clinical Alerts throughout the skills call attention to safety issues, essential information, and actions that require critical decision making. Focus material in boxes and shaded areas emphasizes aspects of client care relevant to the skills.
• Frequent Charts and Tables supplement the procedures with useful information.
• For those schools using NIC and NOC, please note that Expected Outcomes continue to be found (and have been included in this book since the first, 1982, edition) in the Evaluation section of Nursing Process Data for each Unit. Unexpected Outcomes are presented in the Critical Thinking Application for each Unit.
• Two valuable sections are at the end of each chapter: Gerontologic Considerations present specific concepts that influence or affect care of the elderly; and Management Guidelines, as described above.

This text will effectively assist students to pass NCLEX. The national licensure examination for nurses (NCLEX) primarily focuses on decision-making and judgment in the clinical area. The Practice Analysis of Newly Licensed Registered Nurses, published by the National Council of State Boards of Nursing, lists 189 nursing activities performed by newly licensed nurses throughout the United States. These activities, many of which are nursing skills, comprise the framework for developing the NCLEX question pool. Clinical Nursing Skills includes all of these skills and 75% of the overall activities listed in the Job Analysis.

For faculty who adopt Clinical Nursing Skills, a valuable Instructor's Manual is available. Each chapter of the manual includes:

• Teaching/learning strategies
• Listings of reference and resource materials
• Critical thinking scenarios (originating in the text) and exercises with resolution suggestions
• Content exam questions with answers for a content review
• Checklists for all skills in printed form
• A CD-ROM, packaged with every textbook, contains checklists for all skills

Its all-inclusive, clear, and concise format that teaches the student to:

• Learn each skill from basic to advanced in a contextual framework.
• Understand the theoretical concepts that serve as a foundation for skills.
• Apply this knowledge to a clinical situation with a "client need" focus.
• Use critical thinking to evaluate the outcome of the skill and consider unexpected outcomes.
• Appreciate cultural diversity principles as they apply to client situations.
• Validate clinical skills by applying evidence based nursing practice data and studies.
• Function in, and adapt to, the professional role by understanding management responsibilities.

Our primary goal in writing Clinical Nursing Skills, 6th edition, is to produce a relevant, useful, and comprehensive text that is adaptable to various programs and learning needs of students. Further, the authors hope that faculty will find this textbook a valuable teaching tool and reference for clinical practice.