Maternal-Newborn Nursing Care

Nurses working with childbearing families today face a variety of new challenges, including shortened lengths of stay, the trend toward greater use of community-based and home care, and downsizing and mergers of health care systems. Now more than ever, nurses must be flexible, and be able to think critically. Maternal-Newborn Nursing Care: The Nurse, the Family, and the Community (formerly Essentials of Maternal-Newborn Nursing) continues to emphasize the central role played by nurses working with todays childbearing families. *NEW- Chapter 29, "Home Care of the Postpartal Family," discusses assessment, teaching, and physical care of the postpartal woman, newborn, and family in the home. *NEW- Community-in-Focus boxes describe innovative community-based nursing programs in operation around the country. *NEW- Community-based nursing care and home care are described in key sections of the text to help students understand how therapeutic care of maternal-newborn conditions is given in the community. *NEW- Fifteen Critical Pathways have been added to address nursing care for women with complications and high risk newborns.
The total number of Critical Pathways in this edition is eighteen. *NEW- Full-color format enhances visual learning of anatomic and physiologic processes and highlights key information. Dramatic photographs and personal reflections of childbearing women bring students closer to the childbearing experience. *NEW- A free student tutorial disk, packaged with each new textbook, includes 250 NCLEX-style questions with complete rationales for all possible answers. *Assessment Guides summarize assessment findings, alterations and possible causes, and nursing responses to assessment data to help students make distinctions between normal and abnormal clinical findings. *Teaching Guides help students assess common teaching needs in maternity care situations, create a particular teaching session, and evaluate the sessions success. *Discussion of client/family teaching is highlighted throughout the text by an apple logo in the margin. *Critical Thinking in Action boxes teach problem-solving and decision-making skills by asking students to determine appropriate responses to real-life clinical situations.
*Essential Precautions in Practice boxes, integrated throughout the text, show students how to apply appropriate infection control practices in a variety of situations. *Key Facts to Remember provides a quick review of content crucial to effective nursing practice. *Procedures describe actions specific to maternal-newborn nursing care in step-by-step fashion. *Drug Guides describe the action, use, administration, and nursing considerations for the most important medications used in maternal-newborn nursing.