Fundamentals of Bedside Nursing

This textbook seeks to present one synthesis of the concepts of problem solving and total patient care by focusing upon the primary or core problem of assisting the patient in his over-all efforts to achieve and maintain health. Emphasis has been placed upon understanding the patient as a person, identifying his total health care problems, and developing solutions to those problems; nursing procedures, technical data, and the physical and organizational environments, for example, are all seen as supplementary tools, to be employed only as the need arises. - Preface.

This textbook is intended to help you develop a way of thinking about the practice of bedside nursing, a way that can serve you well, both as a student and as a graduate nurse. Success in using it, however, will depend largely upon how much initiative you display in securing and utilizing information as the need arises. Establishing the habit of self-directed study in nursing cannot begin too soon for any student, and so you will find additional activities recommended at the end of several chapters. Following the suggestions should lead you to broader understandings of the subject areas concerned. The broader and deeper such understandings are, the better the possibility that your bedside nursing practice will achieve optimum effectiveness. - To the student.