Potter and Perry 7th and 8th Editions

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Hello,

Our nursing program is switching over to the 8th edition books and went ahead and gave us material to read at orientation. I have the 7th edition and can't purchase the 8th til financial aide comes in. Does anyone know if there is much of a difference? I want to get a head start but I don't want to be reviewing the wrong material!

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Specializes in Med/Surg/ICU/Stepdown.

I have the 7th edition of the text, and I can only imagine that the 8th edition of the text potentially contains some minor updates with either protocol treatments, laws, or medications. I think it would be helpful for you to read your 7th edition text book while you wait for the 8th edition text to arrive, then cross-reference with the 8th edition. You may be reviewing the material twice, but that never hurts! :) Best of luck!

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Many girls in my class have a different edition than the one that they say is "required" for the course. Honestly, other than page number changes the books are almost word for word. Plus, if I already had the book...I sure wouldn't waste my money on a "newer" version. Nursing school is expensive! Plus, we only used Potter and Perry one semester!!! Now, they just recommend we reference basic skills from it from time to time! ;)

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Look at the publishing date. In nursing, anything over 5 years old is no longer suitable. I think the 7th ed is 2008 or 2009 and will get you to the end of the year or next year, respectively.

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Try to talk to people ahead of you in the program before you buy the 8th edition. People in the cohorts ahead of me keep telling me that they SELDOM looked at their textbooks, except for occasional clarification of something that they didn't understand in lecture. (I check in with them ever semester to see if they still feel that way.) I know several people who have successfully completed nursing courses (and even entire programs) using almost entirely one-edition-older than the current edition.

But to answer your question more directly, I don't think there will be changes significant enough that you would feel you wasted your time reading the 7th edition. If other textbooks are any indication in the content change from one edition to the next, only 10-20% of the material will be significantly different. Would you feel badly having read 80-90% of the required/correct info (and 10-20% different or even wrong info) when the fall terms gets here? If yes, then hold off on reading. If not, go for it!

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I am in a a similar situation.. what I did was go to Amazon and look for the new version of the book and went to the part where you can preview text and looked at the table of contents. This way I was able to compare the chapters and read the correct chapters before the class starts. There seems to be a few places where the text is different but very similar.

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They are different. The first half seems identical to the 7th but after that, they changed Units up, chapters are in different spots, etc. I went ahead and got the required 8th Ed.

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