Drug Information Handbook for Nursing: Including Assessment, Administration, Monitoring Guidelines and Patient Education

This book serves as a general resource of drug information for all nurses administering or prescribing drugs. It includes several charts and drug comparisons in the index, and addresses some basic nursing issues in the introduction. The purpose is to provide pertinent information related to pharmacotherapeutic agents used for an adult population. This book targets all advanced practice and professional nurses who administer or prescribe medication for adult patients, including geriatric patients. It lists adult drugs and drug information. Additional reference charts and drug comparisons are located in the appendix, although most of this information is also located under each drug listing. Two examples are the "Over-the Counter" and "Herbal Medicine" appendixes. There is no general drug index. The content of the book is good, but the book is difficult to use. It has no general drug index, making it difficult to locate drug listings. Other appendixes are too redundant, with information already listed for each drug within the text. The necessity of some of the appendixes is questionable, such as the "Over the Counter" appendix (this offers little information, with drugs listed only by generic names) and the "Herbal Medicine" appendix (no claims can be proven, and no information on side effects is available). The drug listings are difficult to read, as information seems to run together (the use of boldface type is not utilized well, and dividing lines between drugs are nonexistent). There are too many listings under each drug that send the reader somewhere else for information. Compared to layouts of other popular nursing reference books, such as that used in Nursing98, this book's format is considerably lacking.