Monitoring the Critically Ill Patient is an invaluable, accessible guide to caring for critically ill patients on the general ward. Now fully updated and improved throughout, this well-established and handy reference guide text assumes no prior knowledge and equips students and newly-qualified staff with the clinical skills and knowledge they need to confidently monitor patients at risk, identify key priorities, and provide prompt and effective care.
This new edition includes the following five new chapters:
- Monitoring the critically ill child
- Monitoring the critically ill pregnant patient
- Monitoring the patient with infection and related systemic inflammatory response
- Monitoring a patient receiving a blood transfusion
- Monitoring pain
Monitoring the critically ill patient is a practical guide to monitoring acutely ill patients on the general ward. Critically ill patients are increasingly cared for outside intensive care units and all nurses need to be able to accurately monitor critically ill patients in their care. Monitoring the critically ill patient assumes no prior knowledge and equips students and newly qualified staff with the clinical skills and knowledge they need in order to confidently monitor patients at risk, identify key priorities, and provide prompt and effective care. It was developed in response to NHS policies relating to critical care and adopts a system-by-system approach, exploring respiratory function, cardiovascular function, neurological function, renal function, gastrointestinal function, hepatic function, endocrine function, nutritional status, and temperature in turn. This revised and updated second edition includes an additional chapter on outreach, medical emergency teams and early warning scoring systems. A final chapter explores monitoring during transport.