Gerontological Nursing: Competencies for Care

by Kristen L. Mauk (Editor)

Gerontological Competencies for Care, Second Edition is a comprehensive and student-accessible text that offers a holistic and inter-disciplinary approach to caring for the elderly. The framework for the text is built around the Core Competencies set forth by the American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN) and the John A. Hartford Foundation Institute for Geriatric Nursing. Building upon their knowledge in prior medical surgical courses, this text gives students the skills and theory needed to provide outstanding care for the growing elderly population. This innovative text is the first of its kind to have over 40 contributing authors from many different disciplines. Some of the key features of the text include chapter outlines, learning objectives, discussion questions, personal reflection boxes, case studies and more!

Genres: Nursing

869 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2006

Reviews

[Rhea]

I never thought I’d review a textbook.

There is plenty of information in this book, complete with citations, case studies, and a lot of other interesting viewpoints. But there were some parts that I found a bit… odd.

Some sentences were so wordy, it took me a bit to understand its meaning. Other times, they were riddled with errors or worded in the strangest of ways.

For example, an older individual who has played golf for many years can still play at the same level as at a younger age, but it may take more time.

The complications could be a cataract from the gas used. Yes, Mark had a cataract in less than 6 months.

“OK, now I should be good to go” Mark thought.

I had my noise blocking headphones from my flight to her care center and I had music that I knew she liked on my smart phone.

Part of a people’s cognitive ability is related how they functioned throughout their life.

I don’t claim to be an expert on grammar or punctuation, but even so, shouldn’t some of these sentences have been corrected? I understand missing some of the smaller errors, such as forgotten commas or the wrong verb choice (There was one sentence that read “there is” instead of “there are”), but that last quoted sentence?

“Part of a person’s cognitive ability is related to how they functioned throughout their life,” is how I believe it should be read.

In between text about the effects of aging and different issues and concerns, there were links to various websites. These ranged from YouTube videos to even a link to a Twitter profile concerning emojis.

The following link is a place where these updates can be seen and then integrated: https://twitter.com/emojipedia?ref_sr... (Emojipedia, n.d.).

Personally, I couldn’t care less about YouTube videos or Twitter links, and just the presence of the links was distracting. I can’t imagine being curious enough to want to manually type in URLs into my web browser, but perhaps someone out there is.

There were enough errors that I started questioning the credibility of the book, not to mention the strange writing style that seems a mixture between colloquial and formal. However, everything is cited in the text, complete with a list of references at the end of chapters, so I know plenty of research had to have gone into this book.

As it stands, I’ve only read one chapter so far, so who knows, maybe I was just unlucky and happened to find the one chapter that was unedited. Either way, I’ve certainly never found a textbook quite like this before.

On that note, I wouldn't recommend buying this. $100 or so dollars for the amount of errors is a bit staggering, so if you were planning on picking this up for a leisurely read or just to learn more about gerontological nursing, I recommend finding a different book.

(Review of the fourth edition of this textbook, published in 2017.)

[Blaine Wajdowicz]

This book is the first book I read to handle cultural competency and dimensions of the entire person, especially sexuality, in an in-depth, non generalized, "one approach fits all" manner. Great geri nursing book, but great general nursing book too

[W]

A helpful book if you know what to look for. Don't treat it like your Med-surg / PathoPhys textbooks. Lots of statistics and sociologial-ish information in this one.