June Fabre. New York: Springer Publishing Company, 2009. $40.00. ISMB#978-0-8261-0464-9. 215 pp.
Nurse retention and patient safety are of the utmost importance in today's world and in the future of healthcare. There are many books, published journal articles, and Web sites that address these very concerns of today and the future in nursing and healthcare. Smart Nursing takes the approach to look at ways to improve patient safety, retain nurses, and generate revenue. Smart Nursing Model and its 7 basic elements (caring, respect, simplicity, flexibility, integrity, communication, and professional culture) are used to create a healthy work environment and provide holistic care to patients. The book takes the Smart Nursing Model and the general systems theory to help readers understand the interdependence of parts to make a system "whole." The second edition expands the Smart Nursing Model with the addition of a chapter on caring, Magnet and Joint Commission, and healthcare and business best practices.
The book's intended audience is nurses, managers, and educators and not toward CNSs. Smart Nursing is written in a format that is user-friendly and complements those who are new to nursing and new to nursing management.
The book is well organized into 4 sections: Why to Use Smart Nursing, The Seven Core Values of Smart Nursing, Applications of Smart Nursing, and Looking to the Future. At the end of each chapter, the main concepts are highlighted as Tips for Clinical Nurses, Tips for Managers, and Tips for Educators. The book's content does include some discussion of The Joint Commission standards, and a few Forces of Magnetism are mentioned. This discussion is very brief, but if you look at the entirety of the book, the concepts within the book support a Magnet environment where shared governance is embraced.
Smart Nursing can be confusing by the use of "clinical nurse" within the text. The intent is that this is the frontline nurse, not clinical nurse specialist. There is very little discussion on the benefits of advance practice nurses and their role and impact within the organization as well. Finally, within the chapter "Safety: Preventing Medical Errors," a major resource in regard to medication safety-Institute of Safe Medication Practices (http://ismp.org)-is not mentioned in the text or the references.