Favorite books to help you understand material?

[estormpowers]

I start Maternal Child and MedSurg in a little over a month (yay!) and would like to know what books, if any, were a big help in understanding the material outside of the textbooks?

[sjalv]

I have heard great things about the "..Made Incredibly Easy!" series, particularly "Fluids & Electrolytes Made Incredibly Easy!" but it appears "Medical-Surgical Nursing Made Incredibly Easy!" has very favorable reviews on Amazon.

[RunBabyRN]

I didn't have enough time to ADD books! There's usually so much reading that overwhelming yourself with additional books is counterproductive.

[ArrowRN, BSN, RN]

Don't get the Med-Surge Incredibly Easy...I don't know why amazon has so many good reviews on that junk and even a friend recommended it to me. It was really a waste of time for me and really lacked lots of important content. I'm a big fan of rationale and review series they have one for med surg. Med-surg Success book is a Q and A book with NO NOTES but lots of questions with rationales to each answer. I did not use any alternate books for maternity.

RunbabyRun does have a point, if you use too many books you could be counterproductive, it really depends on which suites your learning style. I like to read main points and do questions.

[peacelover]

Hey! All books will put the same content in front of you. It depends on how you learn. Visual, Auditory, Kinesthetic? Only you have that answer and I imagine you have a good feel for it by this point.

I was not a huge fan of my OB/GYN rotation. I got through it by immersing myself in the material as I did the other theory topics and using the ADPIE process to study every disease state. There are some things you just have to memorize however; the more you tie disease process to assessment data, your nursing dx and most importantly your interventions the more deeply you will retain what you read; regardless of what book you get it from.

Best of luch to you-I am sure you will be awesome!