Professional Nursing: Concepts & Challenges

Now in full-color, this best-selling, easy-to-read text introduces you to the issues and trends you're likely to encounter in any nursing practice setting. Each stand-alone chapter explores a specific topic and gives insightful discussions of issues such as the health care delivery system, professionalization in nursing, standards and scope of practice, socialization and nursing theories surrounding the profession, and political action facing nurses.

• Case studies help you empathize with real patients.
• Critical thinking questions and challenges enable you to apply chapter-relevant information to scenarios and envision a personal philosophy of nursing.
• Evidence-based Practice boxes offer insight and highlight research that affects patient care.
• News Notes tie information from the text to real-life nursing situations.
• Cultural Consideration Challenges help you develop cultural sensitivity and familiarize you with cultural influences.
• Interview boxes explore the issues of culture and faith from the perspectives of practicing nurses.

• Updated content on topics such as the socialization of nursing, nursing activism, evidence-based practice, and nursing education degree programs, ensures that you have the most up-to-date and relevant information for your career.
• A variety of student activities for each chapter on the Evolve companion website help you apply topics presented in the text.

Beth Perry Black, PhD, RN, is an associate professor of nursing at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She teaches a graduate course, Death, Dying, and Care of the Bereaved, for nursing and social work students, an undergraduate course on nursing inquiry and evidence-based practice, and two graduate writing courses. She has published numerous articles on perinatal loss, several monographs, and book chapters; and authored a book on professional nursing practice. Dr. Black has had National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding twice to study perinatal loss and palliative care and recently completed a study on reproductive loss in lesbian couples.