Now part of the popular LPN Threads series, this popular textbook helps students develop the practical knowledge and problem-solving skills they need for a successful career as an LPN/LVN. It uses an engaging "1-2-3 approach" that describes what needs to be done in a situation as well as how to do it. Questions, quizzes, and self-assessments encourage active participation and critical thinking, while serving as practical and efficient aids to learning. Coverage of leadership and management has been substantially increased in this edition.

Key Features

• Plentiful Critical Thinking Exercises encourage problem-solving for both academic and interpersonal situations.
• Learning Exercises related to chapter content challenge students to imagine, visualize, and think outside the box.
• A separate chapter on learning strategies for the adult student includes research on right-brain/left-brain learning and suggestions for time management.
• Leadership Activities and Management Tools provide practical instructions, resources, and opportunities to practice and apply leadership and management skills using a variety of methods.
• Leadership Hints and Management Hints offer helpful tips to follow and remember when in a leadership or management situation.
• Communication content explains three-way communication – verbal, nonverbal, and affective – and how all three ways of communicating can affect patient-nurse interactions.
• Up-to-date information on distance learning and the Internet as a component of returning education covers online resources, study groups, and computer-aided instruction and simulations.
• A chapter on the NCLEX-PN® Exam (Chapter 22) offers tips for taking the exam.
• Provides basic information on Nursing Interventions Classifications (NIC) and Nursing Outcomes Classifications (NOC), promoting awareness and recognition of how these nursing languages are used.
• Health care settings and costs of managed care are addressed, including current trends in employment opportunities for LPN/LVNs and career alternatives beyond the hospital setting.

New to this Edition

• Full-color LPN Threads design – with objectives, key terms, key points, review questions, references and suggested readings, and more – makes this accessible, reader-friendly book even easier to use.
• A new chapter on Critical Thinking for Clinical Competence (chapter 6) addresses critical thinking as it applies to the LPN/LVN.
• A new chapter on Personal Health Promotion (chapter 10) discusses stress management and burnout, nutrition and exercise, the impaired nurse, and codependency.
• Material on ethics and legal issues has been separated into two chapters: Ethics Applied to Nursing (chapter 19) and Nursing and the Law (chapter 20).
• More cultural content discusses culturally diverse patients and the appropriate nursing responses, including added content on Islam.
• New information on the newly passed Medicare bill describes the many changes that affect health care and the older adult population.