This completely updated and revised new edition is specially written for qualified nurses working in intensive care nursing units. Fully comprehensive and developed to be as accessible as possible it contains four new chapters with valuable new and updated clinical scenarios to aid learning. Intensive Care Nursing is structured in user-friendly sections. Each chapter contains 'fundamental knowledge' needed to understand the chapter, an introduction, 'implications for practice', a chapter summary, completely updated further reading, 'time out' sections for revision and a clinical scenario with questions included. This second edition has been fully developed and reviewed by practitioners and teachers, as well as a senior pharmacist and covers: patient-focused issues of bedside nursing the technical knowledge necessary to care safely for ICU patients the more common and specialized disease processes and treatments encountered how nurses can use their knowledge and skills to develop their own and others' practice. A support website at www.routledge.com/textbooks/0415373239 links to other important sites, gives answers to the clinical scenario questions and provides a forum for discussion of important clinical issues. Written by a practice development nurse with a strong clinical background in intensive care nursing and experience of teaching nursing, Intensive Care Nursing is essential reading for nurses and health professionals working with high dependency patients.