Edited by: Alison Smith, Maria Kisiel, and Mark Radford

Published by Oxford University Press

ISBN: 9780199642663

Price: £26.99

https://global.oup.com/academic/product/oxford-handbook-of-surgical-nursing-9780199642663

This sturdy 766-page handbook fills the niche between diminutive pocket books and elaborate text books. It would be at home in the nurses’ room of any surgical ward, clinic, operating theatre, or ancillary department. Suitable for students and qualified nurses it can also be used at the bedside as a clinical or teaching aid.

In describing the care of patients in the ward, pre-, intra-, peri- and post-operative situations it is authoritative. With the majority of topics being covered in one or two pages, it an easily assimilated guide complete with illustrations.

The sections are an intuitive and inclusive matrix for efficacious surgical nursing, where the nurse can place local therapeutic directives within a definitive perspective.

It is intense yet accessible, and will provide reassurance that care frameworks are sound, that nothing has been omitted, be they general principles or the minutiae of total care.

From admission to discharge the book is panoramic, and it is a signal achievement of the authors to have packed it all into one solid handbook.

Jim Young

June 2016