Should I buy a pathophysiology text?

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I was at Barnes and Noble today and I opened up one of their Pathophysiology texts, It was pretty thick, just like your standard nursing textbook. It's layout was nice, the left page was a disease, and the right page was an associated diagram.

It wasn't overly detailed, but just enough to understand what was going on.

I'm in my second semester of my ADN program. We're basically doing patho this semester and next semester. So far we've covered F&E, Hemorrhage, wounds. We're going to be getting into shock.

We are given a general disease to look up and create a care plan on every week, for example, hysterectomy, diverticulitis, cholecystitis.

In general i'm a Anatomy and Physiology nerd, so I don't have a hard time understanding these things, but I figured it might be a good reference.

This book was $70.00 though. They had a reference guide (no pictures), but that was $40.00.

Do you think that this book will help me, or do you think it will just be something that will sit around, unopened?

Thanks!

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Specializes in Neonatal Nurse Practitioner.

I love my patho book! It reviews A&P then goes into the deviations. My class uses Pathophysiology for Health Professions. But look on amazon.com for a used copy cheaper.

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Check out dealsoz.com. It searches all the used sites like alibris, amazon, B&N and more all at once.

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Specializes in ER, progressive care.

I'm a visual learner, so even though the more "visual" book is more expensive, I would go with that because I would get more out of that one than just a simple reference book with no pictures or diagrams.

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You mean they don't assign you a patho book? Weird. Of course buy it.

You do understand that you will keep buying books for nursing as long as you're working, right? I just spent $300 on some and I've been out of school for mumblemumble years.

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Specializes in Critical Care, Education.

If you're looking for the 'gold standard' in physiology reference, I'd go with Guyton. (Amazon.com: Guyton and Hall Textbook of Medical Physiology: with STUDENT CONSULT Online Access, 12e (Guyton Physiology) (9781416045748): John E. Hall PhD: Books) I know that it's advertised as being for Med students, but their brains are not any different than ours - LOL. When you purchase the book, you also get the online access. Illustrations are wonderful! You can just skim or read through to get all the detail you want (and then some).

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I have the same book as Miiki and love it. Very easy to understand with plenty of diagrams and pictures. If I wasn't assigned a book, I would definitely get something.

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Well it certainly can't hurt to buy one! I'd look around for the "best" one, and find it online for cheaper.

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Specializes in L&D.

YES!!! Any good references you understand, like, and are easy to navigate for you personally are invaluable.

You know what I do when I find a really good (but super expensive) book at B&N? I go to Amazon. Free shipping AND better prices for a brand new book.

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