Acute and Critical Care in Adult Nursing
Part of the transforming nursing practice series, which I am a big fan of! This book contains everything you would need to know before and during a placement in a critical care area. Includes information on ABGs and is separated into sections such as pain, respiratory distress etc making it easy to read in sections.
Oxford Handbook of Critical Care Nursing
This book is small enough to carry around in your bag and explains most procedures you are likely to encounter on a critical care placement. Includes sections on common medications used and sections on disorders affecting different systems within the body.
Critical Care Nursing Made Incredibly Easy!
This is another series of books that I am a fan of, they explain things in a way that is easy for everyone to understand – perfect for students who may not have had an acute placement before. This book includes explanations of over 100 disorders you may come across in a critical care environment. The cartoon pictures included provide a little bit of light-hearted humour as well!
Intensive Care Nursing: A Framework for Practice
This book is described as the ‘bible of intensive care nursing’. It may be useful to read this book when you have read one of the others or if you decide to progress into a career in critical care, however it is a fantastic book and one which I read bits of during my time on ICU.
Websites
ABGs – you will not be expected to fully understand these but if you can go into the placement with a basic understanding it will help you understand some of the results
- ABG Interpretation – Geeky Medics
- Making sense of arterial blood gases – Nursing Times
- Four step method of interpreting arterial blood gas analysis – Nursing Times
- My own blog post – A guide to ABGs
ECGs – you will not be expected to fully understand these but here are a few sources if you would like to do some reading on them
You can read my critical care blog series here
Love,
T x
