Textbook of Veterinary Medical Nursing: Carole Bowden and Jo Masters (Eds.)

To my knowledge this book is the first book of its kind to be dedicated to medical nursing and from a Veterinary Nursing perspective. The cover is glossy and professional looking and the size of the book makes it easy to handle and not too big to carry around but thick enough to give the feeling of value for money.

There are five chapters: fluid management, infectious diseases, common medical diseases, medical diagnostics, and laboratory diagnostics. These cover the entire medical diploma elective syllabus. The split into five large groups helps you to get to the section you are looking for. Then at the front of each section is a chapter contents detailing what is in each chapter and on what page it can be found. This is the first book I have seen that does this and I like it. There is also a very comprehensive eight-page index at the back.

In each section there are bold subheadings and the use of colour (uniform throughout the book) helps draw your attention to the headings. The use of tables is common throughout the book. These are easy to read and informative and again the use of colour draws your attention to them and facilitates the ease of reading. Diagrams are again plentiful and are coloured (differing shades of red) and these are professional, detailed and clear. At the end of each section is a reference section. This details journals and papers used to gather information and allows the individuals to look up the articles if desired. In some chapters there is a further reading section at the end of the chapter to again point you in the right direction if you feel you need more information.

The last chapter is a multiple choice question and answer section. There are varying numbers of questions on each of the chapters—74 questions in total. It's handy having all the questions at the end and not at the end of the chapters.

I used the book repeatedly as a reference source during my working days to seek out information as and when a question occurred. This gave me a good feel for its breadth and depth of coverage. The content of the book is suitable to give you an understanding of a subject but in some areas doesn't go into great depth. For example, the oncology section is five sides long and is good to give a nurse with no knowledge in this area an insight. I would say this area was a bit brief and at the end of the chapter there is no further reading section if someone desired to know more about types of tumour, treatment, prognosis etc. Also briefly mentioned is the radioiodine treatment for hyperthyroid cats. This is a one line mention as a possible treatment apart from surgery. There is no mention about how the injection treats the problem and the nursing considerations e.g. isolation.

I would recommend this book to all studentVeterinary Nurses, Qualified nurses and diploma nurses as a useful tool to gain further knowledge. But I would say although it gives a good base, you would need to build on that and seek more information. This is a well presented, professional, easy to read, informative book and well worth the money.