348 NURSE EDUCATION TODAY

There is a series of checks and balances which the manufacturer has to negotiate before a medicine becomes available on the market. This has to be seen as a good thing as one of the questions in Part 5, which I would like to ask is ‘could there ever be another “thalidomide” type disaster?‘. Whilst a categorical no cannot be given, the measures taken as outlined in the book make the chances of this happening again very remote.

For my purposes I found the book itself adequate. I found Part 5, ‘Some Questions Answered’ particularly helpful. On the negative side my copy of the book had very narrow margins down the centre of the pages mak- ing the text difftcult to read, I had to almost break the back of the book to be able to see it. The cover is not very robust since my copy has become rather creased and dogeared.

Thus is definitely a book for the library shelves. At 27.00 it is not expensive by today’s standards but I wouldn’t imagine many nurses needing to buy it.

SANDRA BAULCOMB BA(Hons) RGN RM DNcert PWCert DN Tutor Cert Ed

Management in Health Care E La Monica material for and adaptation P I MacMillan 1994 illus ISBN f22.50

I be keeping book on shelf and be adding to the postgraduate course lists for main reasons. the demand stu- dents books on management is to grow Universities respond the stimulus the NHS Executive Women Bursaty Schemes. Philip Morgan done a job Anglicising adapting an text written

for North nurses. The and extended is even relevant to health and care professionals in management

leadership. Third, book’s five-hundred comprehensively cover management education riculum, are written and illustrated, and logically structured. several novel intrigu- ing are strategically in the to rein-

learning.

KEITH RGN PhzD

Interviewing Skills for Nurses and Other Health Care Professionals Robert Newell Rootledge 1994 188pp ISBN 0-415-07794-X g12.99 (pb)

This is not quite what is seems. At first glance, I thought is a topic which I feel should be dealt with through the

If the book has a weakness it is in its comprehensive- ness as it attempts to offer something for everyone. As a psychiatric nurse there are other texts which are mental health specific and which I would turn to first. The only part of the book with which I was uncomfortable was the part entitled dealing with violence and aggression. This

that this was going to be a book about ‘doing interviews’ and ‘being interviewed’. From the title, I assumed that it was a book to help nurses and other health care pro- fessionals get through the interview process -job inter- views, appraisals and so on. Instead, it is a thorough and excellent book about interviewing and helping patients and clients.

A huge amount has been put into a fairly slim vol- ume. There are chapters on psychological approaches to interviewing, planning and structuring the interview, coping with emotional release and how to record and evaluate interviews. There are plenty of examples of good and bad interview technique and all of this adds to the ‘hands on’ approach that the author advocates. The annotated interview transcripts are particularly useful as they bring the text to life and illustrate, very graphically,

the issues under discussion. In my experience, there are remarkably few books on

this area of nursing. Although there are many on coun- selling and talking to patients, few concentrate on the interview process itself. This book is going to be extremely useful to a wide range of practitioners and the author is to be congratulated on combining rigour with a very readable style. Very highly recommended.

PHILIP BURNARD PhLl MSc RMN RGN DipN Cert Ed RNT

Social Skills for Nursing Practice (2nd ed) Peter French Chapman & Hall 1994 ISBN 0412478404 f13.99

This book provides a clear and systematic view of the practical and theoretical underpinnings of the nurse patient relationship. The book moves comprehensively through ten chapters including such areas as assess- ment, communication, counselling and the skills neces- sary to motivate and lead other staff.

The text is accessible and there is a thorough review of theory and literature which has contributed to our understanding of nurse-patient and human relation- ships in general over the years. Each chapter ends with a list of ‘reflective activities’ and ‘self evaluation tasks’. These in turn ask the reader to examine relevant areas of their own practice and checks their grasp of the material covered. These sections would prove equally useful to the educator looking for assistance in structur- ing reflective or experiential work within the classroom or as a form of guided study.