MEASUREMENT OF NURSING OUTCOMES, SECOND EDITION-VOLUME 1: MEASURING NURSING PERFORMANCE IN PRACTICE, EDUCATION, AND RESEARCH Carolyn Feher Waltz and Louise Sherman Jenkins, eds. Springer Publishing Company, Inc. 536 Broadway, New York, NY 10012-3955 Telephone: 212-431-4370 Fax: 212-941-7842 Web: http://www.springerpub.com 404 pp. Price: $68.95

There are few books that offer a dynamic, overarching view of measuring nursing outcomes, but this book is the exception. The tools and methodologies employed in this book offer an excellent compilation of measurement elements for clinical and educational outcomes. With evidence-based research/practice becoming the byword of nursing, this book gives nurses an edge in achieving their research potential by affording nurses, educators, and researchers an opportunity to refine their skills.

This compendium of multiple authors is divided into 4 parts and 35 chapters. It brings many authors' expertise into focus, then shifts the focus into practical application with the methodological tools included within each chapter. The chapters within the 4 parts address a particular arena for measurement, and present a logical flow with a quick and concise foundational paradigm of reasoning.

Part I focuses on measuring clinical decision making and performance in education and practice. The first chapter sets the tone and foundation for the following chapters, each of which gives a succinct yet comprehensive application to its topic, touching on various areas for measuring clinical decisions, educational performance, and practice.

Part II presents the measuring of educational outcomes with the first chapter offering the guidelines for the remaining chapters in this particular area. Various research strategies to facilitate student success are incorporated clearly and concisely to give the educators and students a glimpse of the research literature and tools. Each subsequent chapter in this part addresses a variety of areas in relation to successful educational outcomes.

Part III offers the measurement of professionalism and that is indeed a difficult task! The first chapter in this part speaks of the Nursing Activity Scale (NAS) which measures the professional autonomy of nurses and the fact that it was a revision of the Schutzenhofer Professional Nursing Autonomy Scale (SPNAS). It also includes the reliability and validity assessment regarding the instrument test and includes the instrument scale. This sets the tenor for the remaining chapters which include excellent tools and methods of analysis in measuring professionalism.

Part IV presents research and evaluation. The first chapter begins with a research appraisal checklist (RAC) and presents the checklist at the end of the chapter. Each subsequent chapter offers an eclectic variety of areas in research and evaluation with the last chapter appropriately speaking to the trends and implications for measurement.

Major strengths of this book are its quick and concise presentation in each chapter, along with tools and methods that can be employed by nurse educators and upper division students. It presents with a logical flow plus an excellent mix of theory, methodologies, and pragmatic applications. All of these strengths are consistent with adult learning theory and certainly make this book useful for faculty, graduate students, and other adult learners. Other assets are the variety of authors and their expertise, which lends credibility to each chapter, and a strong conceptual base for the tools presented with attendant in-depth reviews of the literature.

There are truly very few limitations other than the inclusion of other areas of research. The concepts accentuated in this book form an intuitive framework for informatics and current issues being addressed in research, practice, and literature, but a clearer explanation of how each topic was chosen would be helpful.

Overall, this book contains an excellent collection of tools for measuring clinical and educational outcomes and offers myriad substantive topic areas with prototypical methods that go beyond the topic area. The holistic focus of this book gives a dynamic and pragmatic reference for informatics in academic and private sectors. A succinct compendium of experts, this book is a must-have edition for faculty and students alike.

CONTRIBUTORS TO THIS ISSUE...

Todd Dorman, MD, is an associate professor in the Department of Anesthesiology/Critical Care Medicine at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.

Shirley Garick, PhD, MSN, RN, is a professor of nursing at Texas A&M University.

Barbara J. McNeil, PhD, RN, is a professor of nursing from the Division of Nursing and Health Sciences, Lewis-Clark State College, Lewiston, Idaho, and is a board-certified informatics nurse. She has developed computer-assisted video instructional modules for nurses and completed doctoral work in instructional design. She has taught across levels of nursing education for the past 20 years.

Leslie H. Nicoll, PhD, MBA, RN, is Editor-in-Chief of CIN: Computers, Informatics, Nursing and the Journal of Hospice and Palliative Nursing. She considers herself a power-user of EndNote and is working hard to achieve the same status with ProCite and Reference Manager.

Anne Wendt, PhD, RN, is NCLEX Content Manager, National Council of State Boards of Nursing, Inc., Chicago, IL.