Care of the Acutely Ill Adult

This key textbook equips all nurses with the knowledge and skills required to care for the deteriorating patient in the clinical environment. The book emphasises the importance of systematic assessment, interpretation of clinical signs of deterioration, and the need to escalate the patient in a timely manner. Using a unique system-based approach, each chapter contains structured learning outcomes and concludes with a competence-based skills assessment to perfect the reader's practice skills. These skills are recommended as essential for every nurse in an acute area and key to successful practice.

Restructured for ease of use, this new edition has been fully updated to match current guidelines, with new chapters on pain management and the ethics and ceilings of treatment.

Written by senior nurses, this key textbook uses real life case studies to link knowledge to practice and is essential reading for all nurses working in acute care settings and undertaking study in the field.

About the Author

Fiona is an experience Nurse Educator. She qualified in 1988 at Guy's Hospital, London and has worked clinically in cardiology and critical care in London and Sussex. Fiona has 12 years' experience as a Senior Lecturer at the University of Brighton, where she led the Acute Care Nursing BSC pathway. Fiona relocated to Oxford in 2016 and is currently working as an academic programme lead for the Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, where she leads development on in-house academic programmes. Fiona's areas of nursing expertise is recognising and responding to the deteriorating patient and she continues to lead on this in-house for the Masters level programme at Oxford University Hospitals. Chrissie is a qualified nurse, lecturer, and Cardiac specialist nurse who has worked in the field of Acute and Cardiac Care for 40 years.

For the last 15 years Chrissie has been a Principal Lecturer at the School of Health Sciences at the University of Brighton, specialising in the teaching of Cardiology to health care professionals. She has published over 30 peer-reviewed journal articles, has co-edited three books, and has contributed chapters to over 10 textbooks in the field of Acute and Cardiac Care . She is an active member of the British Association for Nursing in Cardiac Care, where she holds the role of Junior Secretary.