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Saunders Drug Guide

Practical Aspects of Nutritional Support: An Advanced Practice Guide

Patricia H. Worthington. Philadelphia, Pa: Saunders; 2004. Softcover; 608 pages.

ISBN: 0-7216-6964-6.

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Practical Aspects of Nutritional Support is a unique book because it provides advanced practice nurses with an exceptional overview of nutrition for both inpatients and outpatients.

This book is an invaluable reference to nurse practitioners, clinical nurse specialists, and their students. Many concise charts and tables are included in the 20 chapters, and a variety of topics are reviewed. The chapter on nutrition for healthy individuals presents daily requirements for vegetarians, pregnant and lactating women, as well as for children in all stages of development. The section on oral nutrition focuses on swallowing disorders, helping clients eat more independently, and oral supplements. This section also includes advice on managing symptoms that affect dietary intake during illness. The chapter on therapeutic diets discusses the risks and benefits of these diets, how to organize meal patterns to optimize nutrition, and how to adjust caloric and nutrient requirements to meet individual needs.

In addition to covering oral nutrition, the author does an excellent job discussing both enteral and parenteral nutrition. Nutritional Support includes sections on selecting candidates for enteral nutrition, aspects of patient assessment, and choosing enteral formulas and enteral delivery systems. Management of gastrointestinal side effects and patient discomfort is discussed in this section, and conditions that mandate initiation of parenteral formulas, along with how to prescribe and monitor this type of nutritional intervention in the inpatient and outpatient settings, are detailed as well. The book provides a thorough overview of selecting central catheters and preventing and treating infectious and noninfectious venous access complications.

In addition to delineating various types of nutritional interventions, the book gives detailed explanations of drug-nutrient interactions and ways to minimize them. How various medications alter nutritional status is illustrated as well.

In addition, Nutritional Support discusses the pathophysiology and compensatory mechanisms for a plethora of disorders such as celiac disease, short bowel syndrome, and pancreatitis, as well the nutritional support used to ameliorate these conditions. Lastly, the book depicts the role nutrition plays in chronic diseases.

Overall, Practical Aspects of Nutritional Support is a comprehensive, easy-to-read nutrition text, which does a remarkable job combining nutritional theory with practical clinical applications. It is a must read for all nurse practitioner students and acute care nurse practitioners.

Reviewed by Kelly A. Thompson-Brazill, RN, MSN, ACNP

Kelly A. Thompson-Brazill is a nurse practitioner at the Trauma and Surgical Critical Care, University Health Systems of Eastern Carolina, in Greenville, NC.

COPYRIGHT 2004 American Association of Critical-Care Nurses
COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group