Group Leadership Skills (4th edition), Carolyn Chambers Clark. New York, NY, Springer Publishing Co. (2003). 344 pages, hardcover, $39.95

This book shows the growth in knowledge, understanding, and implementation of group efforts that accumulate over four editions. The reader soon grasps the need to become very well acquainted with the basic knowledge contained in anthropology, sociology, social psychology, and clinical psychology to greater enhance the total skill ability to deal with all the variations in group structures that are encountered in a career spent in many types of social constructs encountered in the many variations of clinical and organizational groupings.

The subtleties of these understandings have direct outcomes for the successful management of each social grouping and the desired outcomes hinge on this knowledge. In the very heterogeneous array of patients and staff found in most of our nation, it is a very important variable in the therapeutic and organizational effectiveness of the structure of care.

The vast differences in preparation of nurses, unlike all the other clinical professions, make it much more difficult to be a cohesive group under many circumstances and to function efficiently in all areas. No one can use knowledge she or he does not have, so effectiveness tends to be one to one with preparation. When one is writing for nurses, this has to be a major concern-enhanced by the fact that most nurses do not have a college degree. Thus plans around patients can more easily fall short of achievement than in those clinical professions tied closely to college degrees. Nevertheless, this type of textbook could stimulate a desire for richer preparation.