Nursing Textbooks

One tip. Look at how long there's been between editions. If it's just a few years, they're probably almost the same and the publisher is just playing games. If there's been a substantial time, the new edition may be quite different, particularly in a fast-changing field. And if you can get a look at copies of both to see what's changed, that's even better.

It'd be great if, when new editions come out, professors offered both the old and new as options when that's doable. Just because student loans are available, doesn't mean that nothing should be done to keep students from graduating deep in debt.

Perhaps there's a student nursing website that could do reviews of changes and whether buying new makes sense. There's no need for everyone to do what one person could do with an online book review.

Good idea, thanks. What I've seen with science, English, psychology, etc -- excluding math which changes examples and questions every edition so you're forced to buy the new one -- is that they repackage the same book with a new design and sell it at markup. The textbook industry is one big fat con.

Your fundamental and assessment books will be used for more than one class, as will med surg and possibly pharmacology. The other books are going to be used for one semester only. Those that you need for one semester can be rented at a huge discount. Pharmacology needs to be the edition they ask for because things change so quickily. Otherwise older editions if they are fairly recently published should be ok...but be careful to find out if there are assignments right from the book. My school never did that, but I know someone that went to school where they would have assignments like "answer questions 1-20 on page 200. You would need the right edition if you have classes that do that.