Overview
Delmar's Growth and Development Handbook: Newborn through Adolescence is a text for undergraduate nursing students and nurses that approaches human development from a holistic and family-centered perspective. It provides a learner oriented approach to understanding and retaining growth and developmental information required to become a safe and caring practitioner while interacting with families and pediatric patients from the newborn period to adolescence. The handbook presents a succinct summary of human development for the student and practitioner that is easy to use and/or refer to on clinical units. The text can also be used as a supplemental item complementing the students' textbook or as a clinical reference for growth and development content. Practicing nurses may find the text useful as a clinical reference for key information about the development and assessment of their pediatric clients since normal developmental milestones, health, health promotion, and anticipatory guidance are stressed throughout.
Synopsis
Delmar's Growth and Development Handbook: Newborn through Adolescence is a text for undergraduate nursing students and nurses that approaches human development from a holistic and family-centered perspective. It provides a learner oriented approach to understanding and retaining growth and developmental information required to become a safe and caring practitioner while interacting with families and pediatric patients from the newborn period to adolescence. The handbook presents a succinct summary of human development for the student and practitioner that is easy to use and/or refer to on clinical units. The text can also be used as a supplemental item complementing the students' textbook or as a clinical reference for growth and development content. Practicing nurses may find the text useful as a clinical reference for key information about the development and assessment of their pediatric clients since normal developmental milestones, health, health promotion, and anticipatory guidance are stressed throughout.
Doody Review Services
Reviewer:Joan M Bradley, BSN, MSN(University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center)
Description:This handbook of child development for nursing students and nurses offers an overview of development that is most pertinent for clinicians.
Purpose:The stated purpose is to provide a summary of human development for nurses that is easy to use in clinical settings. It offers practical information that is necessary when providing care for pediatric clients and their families. These worthy objectives are met by the authors.
Audience:This book is written for students or for practicing nurses.
Features:The author skillfully chooses from the vast field of child development to find the content that is most uniquely pertinent for nurses. The book discusses physiologic, cognitive, spiritual, psychosocial, psychosexual, and moral development in children from newborn through adolescence. Each chapter contains special features that highlight family teaching issues, nursing tips, and critical thinking topics. Although it is understandable that a handbook would not be as complete as a textbook, there are a few areas that could have been developed further, including: a discussion of Body Mass Index in the section on growth monitoring; a link between a discussion of theories and the need for nurses to be involved with research related to children and their health and development; the discussion of homosexuality; and, finally, Lev Vygotsky, a theorist whose work is potentially quite applicable to nurses, is not mentioned, but Harry Sullivan is.
Assessment:I would recommend this book to students reviewing for boards and to new practitioners in pediatric or community health. It could augment a book such as The Developing Person Through the Lifespan, 3rd edition, by Berger (Worth Publishers, 2003), as a part of a growth and development course that targets nursing students. It is not sufficiently thorough to stand alone as the sole book for such a course.
Editorials
From The Critics
Reviewer: Joan M Bradley, BSN, MSN(University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center)Description: This handbook of child development for nursing students and nurses offers an overview of development that is most pertinent for clinicians.
Purpose: The stated purpose is to provide a summary of human development for nurses that is easy to use in clinical settings. It offers practical information that is necessary when providing care for pediatric clients and their families. These worthy objectives are met by the authors.
Audience: This book is written for students or for practicing nurses.
Features: The author skillfully chooses from the vast field of child development to find the content that is most uniquely pertinent for nurses. The book discusses physiologic, cognitive, spiritual, psychosocial, psychosexual, and moral development in children from newborn through adolescence. Each chapter contains special features that highlight family teaching issues, nursing tips, and critical thinking topics. Although it is understandable that a handbook would not be as complete as a textbook, there are a few areas that could have been developed further, including: a discussion of Body Mass Index in the section on growth monitoring; a link between a discussion of theories and the need for nurses to be involved with research related to children and their health and development; the discussion of homosexuality; and, finally, Lev Vygotsky, a theorist whose work is potentially quite applicable to nurses, is not mentioned, but Harry Sullivan is.
Assessment: I would recommend this book to students reviewing for boards and to new practitioners in pediatric or community health. It could augment a book such as The Developing Person Through the Lifespan, 3rd edition, by Berger (Worth Publishers, 2003), as a part of a growth and development course that targets nursing students. It is not sufficiently thorough to stand alone as the sole book for such a course.
3 Stars from Doody