Practitioners Books

...this comprehensive book is amazing! It has provided me with an excellent source for review as well as information/concepts that I did not pick up along the way during nursing school. One must be committed to get through this very detailed book, but the end result is well worth it (as if you didn't already know that).

The questions at the end of each chapter and in the CD-ROM, in my experience, are similar to that of those found in nursing school exams. They strive to be in an NCLEX style, but are more geared toward testing your understanding of the content found within the chapter. This is helpful for content review purposes, but they are not as solid of examples of NCLEX questions as compared to the Kaplan book (another book I recommend). However, the rationales Saunders provide make up for that issue nicely.

If you are dedicated and really want to pass the first time, you won't regret this purchase!

If you studied and graduated from a non US nursing program you must prepare for the NCLEX thoroughly, I graduated 9 years ago in the UK and thought I had a good general knowledge base, however once I started using this book I realized how much my UK education had not prepared me for the US system and the NCLEX.

Allow yourself a few months studying hard from this book (it is 'no-frills', almost written in note form, but it is the closest thing to experiencing a proper review course you can get outside the states)

At first I found the rationales in the included chapter exams very difficult to agree with in terms of prioritization, coming from the real world critical care environment, but the more questions and rationales you do the more prepared you will be. I would also recommend a question and answer book - I used the incredibly easy NCLEX RN question and answer book and the Mosby one.

As much as I recommend this book I also found it very useful to answer questions from several different publishers as I found they would all be somewhat different but it is a very accessible way of learning and getting questions wrong really helps for the right answer to 'stick'.

Overall a 5 star recommendation, there are no other publications I am aware of that offer this sort of package. Buy it and work hard!

I found out this morning that I passed! in 75 questions!

Good luck, good luck, good luck!

This book is wonderful. I study it for my tests, including my online exit exams for my specialty classes. This book covers everything and eliminates all the "fluff". I bought this and the Question and Answer book and they are GREAT learning tools. I would recommend this book to any nursing student to use throughout school and for boards!

The review is excellent! There are a lot of graphics and test questions that help you really understand the material. The rationales for the review questions are also a plus. The outlines are very helpful, concise, and comprehensive. I recommend this book for every nursing student!

This book is easy to read and the CD is so helpful. This book is reccomended by all of the instructors in our NCLEX review courses. I feel better prepared for the NCLEX.

Great book! I went to a training by the author on polypharmacy in the treatment of individuals with mental illnesses. I then bought his general "Essential Psychopharmacology" book that was fairly complex, but the cartoons made the information fairly understandable for a non medical person like myself. The "Prescriber's Guide" is much more understandable and very useful in it's discussion of augmentation medications and ways to combat side-effects. It's presentations of how various medications work is very clear and gives one a good understanding about why one would use one medication verses another given how the illness presents in a person. If I were a general practitioner and certainly a psychiatrist, I would want to own this book.

This is the most practical, well organized and visually well designed handbook of its type I've ever seen

This text is detailed, easy to use, and provides valuable information for the practicing psychiatrist. It provides information for both FDA approved uses of medications as well as for common "off label " uses. I have found the text to be helpful in my day to day clinical practice in both adult and child/adolescent psychiatry.

I love this work. A great working companion to Dr Stahl's Essentials of Psychopharmacology. I love the index listing meds according to their uses. Simple and easy to use with great dosing tips and clinical pearls. Every prescribing Psychiatric Nurse Practitioner should have one and use it frequently. Especially considering the limited and out-moded formularies many of us have to make the best of.

this book we can define an essential guide to prescribe neuropsycomedicine in which you can find out a lot of advices how to use, not only a certain medicine in monoterapy, but in multitherapy as well. Further more, the best aspect of this book is the possibility to look up what you are searching for very fast. I am a psychiatrist, and what I look for is to get a guide rich in complete informations quick to find.

Book received in a timely manner and in good condition. I am impressed with my Amazon.com purchases.

This book is awesome!!!!!!! If you want to pass the NCLEX-PN, you have to purchased this book. This book was a blessing for me to prepare for the NCLEX-PN. Hey, I'VE PASSED TOO!

The book itself is broken down to help you learn the key elements. The cd worked fine with my computer; and I had no problems with it crashing. The cd questions can be repetitive in some sections and all of the questions in the text are on the cd.

This is a well organized book with all the information you will ever need. Also came with a disk that is very helpful, if the disk crashes like another customer mentioned its your computer not the disk. Diffently a great buy.

I purchased this book to review for the NCLEX-PN. It is well put together and easy to find the topic I am currently studying. The CD has been extremely helpful, as well.

The manual is very user-friendly. It takes a while to really sift through all the ideas, but the first two parts are designed so that you don't have to re-read the important ideas several times. The main themes are recapitulated in different wordings and contexts to make you understand. The treatment section is extremely clear, with both step-by-step guidance and explanations for the activities. Though the design is quite explicit, the authors urge you to design the treatment specifically for each patient, and even give suggestions of how to do so.

This is a fantastic tool, giving the therapist useful theory as well as specific outlines for sessions. Great for the beginner ACT therapist. The CD contains lots of useful worksheets for clients, and step-by-step outlines for therapists including lots of wonderful metaphors and stories.

This book is an important contribution to therapists who want to increase effectiveness in their work with suffering beings while also learning to incorporate Eastern psychological teachings in their practice. I found it easy to read, practical, enjoyable.

Having been trained in the 70's as a behavior therapist, I moved away from BT in the 80's as I became disillusioned with the mechanistic quality of the approach. Eifert and Forsyth's book beautifully brings the best of behavior therapy together with a more humanistic and interpersonal focus to provide in ACT a truly new paradigm. The so-called "third wave" of behavior therapy incorporates much of the best of other schools while remaining grounded in solid science.
I have found ACT to be a potent weapon in dealing with the anxiety disorders that our clients bring to us. I highly recommend this book for any practitioner of any orientation to wants to broaden their perspective and become more effective in treating these most debilitating disorders.

Startling new way to treat anxiety disorders from a humanistic view aimed at creating a meaningful life despite high anxiety. The book is written very clearly and contains techniques such as metaphors and stories that are excellent and can be used with more traditional therapy.

To use ACT alone in therapy to treat anxiety disorders by just reading the clear instructions of the book and using the CD that comes with it may be dangerous. It is a counter intuitive approach that must be consistantly maintained; the therapist must be 100% present at all times. It is not just a technique that can be applied; the therapist must model this approach in real life or he/she could cause more harm than good. I would love to attend in person some training in this approach and have some live supervision (as is required for EMDR therapy). Definitly worth reading and staying in touch with any new research in this approach.

I'm a solo developer, and without this book i would be refactoring my code every few days still.

Thank you RUP for putting my head on straight to understand iterations of the SDLC and apply them to even small projects with few assets.

RUP gives you the tools to understand your system before you write it by iteratively working with the people who will be using the system! Your customers/Users!

Excellent guide to get up to speed with RUP. Having never worked with RUP this guide proved extremely beneficial to get the project started and will be used through all iterations.

I read 'Rational Unified Process - An Introduction' some years ago and found it excellent. I got 'Rational Unified Process Made Easy' in the hope that it would provide some more substance to the ideas from the introductory book. However it didn't seem to really add that much value.

The sections covering each of the major disciplines are useful, as is the guidance on implementing RUP in projects or organisations. In contrast 'Rational Unified Process Made Easy' misses a good summary of the key artefacts.

All up I felt the book was hampered by the desire not to undermine the RUP product that IBM sells.

This book does a great job of showing steps of practical application of the RUP. The book may seem repetitive on a few points, but I feel the points bear repeating. This book has been invaluable in helping cut through the misinformation thrown around by some who have gotten the executive summary of RUP and know just enough to be dangerous. I recently completed a seven-part online course on the RUP that was based on this book. The book did a far better job of making the RUP understandable.

There is plenty of theory written about RUP, but how it should be applied to your role or your project is often misunderstood.
This book not only provides the overview, but the contextual guidance to make RUP work for you.
As a long-term RUP mentor and user, I highly recommend it.

I have recently come out of the broom closet with my family. This is the book I chose to use to explain my spiritual practice to them. They had been reading some very bad things and were very upset. The format of the book with questions and answers was just the thing to settle their fears. I highly recommend this book. Bryan Lankford explains very clearly some of the most pressing questions non-wiccans have concerning our beliefs. It is also very good for a beginning wiccan to learn more about the faith.

While it is nice to see someone attempting to write a book that is not a hand book or not a "Wicca 101" book, you have to ask... is this really an advanced study book on Wicca.

In this book you will not find spells and incantations. You will not find rituals, altar tools, calling of the quarters or anything else that most associate with handbooks and "Wicca 101" books. Yet the book calls itself a Guide.

What you will find is one man and his Traditions thoughts on what it is to truly be "Wiccan". The Tradition is the McFarland Dianic Tradition, founded in the early 70s. And I enter the caveat at this point - Your Mileage May Vary - depending on the Tradition of Wicca you practice.

The opening paragraph of chapter one "The Beginning" entitled "What is all this about anyway?" gives us this line: "The best place to start with any explanation is at the beginning, and the beginning of Wicca dates far back into antiquity."

There are those who will "hmmmm" at this point. Again, the caveat. There is more that will give you moments to pause and consider.

If you can get past all this, the book is an interesting read. But I was confused by its purpose. On the one hand, I saw an attempt to explain what Wicca is. But if I am already walking the Wiccan path then I already understand what Wicca is. I return to the subtitle: "Guide for Practitioners, Family and Friends" - and it becomes clear. While trying to work with those who are knowledgeable and appear as more than a 101 book, it still has to revert back to 101 basics to be a guide for those who do not practice.

As a guide in that respect it works. We have basic discussions on the Wheel of the Year, Rites of Passage, Can Children and Teens be Wiccan and more. There is lots of discussion on this Traditions ethics in spellwork, what the Rede means and then we move on to "pointy hats, black cats and brooms... "

It is nice that the book sidesteps the usual cookbook/crafters handbook/basic ritual 101 material. The discussion, in my opinion, has to and does fit into a 101 category. When trying to explain what Wicca is to anyone not familiar with Wicca, you still can't venture too far past the basics.

I came away with the idea that this book would be best suited to give to someone who knows a Wiccan and is interested in learning more. While we don't proselytize (see the chapter "If Wiccans think their beliefs are correct, why don't they try to convert others to their beliefs?") this book might be good to give to someone who is not sure what some of us might be all about.

I think if you find the material agreeable and in line with what you believe, then this book could be an aid to helping you explain Wicca to others. However, as this has been done before and this tradition may not be in line with your own personal beliefs, you may want to review the material before passing it along. boudica

Mr. Lankford does a wonderful job explaining what Wicca is and what Wicca is not. He understand the ins and outs of this religion and is able to clearly explain it for anyone to understand. If you are Wiccan and have family who want to know more about what you do, this is the book to get them! This author comes across as a person who knows how scary it can be for someone to hear that a loved one is Wiccan or a Witch. He does a fantastic job of helping them through that fear by providing them with the information for a better understanding of something they've only heard scary stories about. Ignorance breeds fear and this book will definitely put an end to anyone's ignorance about Wicca/Witchcraft!

I found this book very helpful for explaining an often misunderstood religion. If you prefer to get the real story rather than succumbing to commercial imagery when forming your opinions, this is a great source. Similarly, if you seek a clear and articulate way to express your own similar views, this book will empower you with a roadmap for doing so. If you fear for someone who seems to have gone astray and want to get the facts from a credible source, this is a must read. Well written and free of drama sometimes included to sell more books! Very refreshing.

This book eschews commercialized versions of Wicca to deliver frank and truthful information to the audiences needing it the most. It is useful for individuals who are investigating Wicca as a religion, but it is especially helpful for the potentially confused (and scared) friends and family.

An avalanche of stereotypes and misinformation in this society about what Wicca is and who Wiccans are subsequently leaves the friends and families of the practitioners in a bind. They might want to be supportive, but those family members and friends do not necessarily know where to turn for affirming information. Despite Wicca being recognized as a religion (by institutions such as the United States military!) accurate information about Wicca remains to find.

The tone of this book is open-minded, Lankford is able to empathize with his readers own path. He is an advanced witch but does not forget that potential readers and readers are entering with a dearth of information about this religion. Pulling rank on them would have been easy but he is instead empathetic to their own journey towards acceptance of friends, family, and themselves.

This is a wonderful buy for anyone who has dealt with a death or is counseling anyone going threw the grieving process.

I like the way the authors look at grief and don't try to pathologize it. The ideas here make more sense to me than the phases of grief that we typically hear about. This was a quick and easy book to read with a very common sense way of looking at grief, death and dying.

My mother passed away suddenly this past january. I was going through so many emotions I thought I was going crazy, so someone suggested I get grief counseling, but Im not the group counseling type. Then someone suggested I get a book and I came across this one and it helped me to understand that everything I was going through was normal. It is amazing how everything in that book pertained to me and exactly how I was feeling. I still have a ways to go but the craziness of it all has subsided and I can better deal with things.

I personally loved this text. It is clear, easy to read and gives you a wonderful plan of action for grief counseling.
Dr. Suzanne L. Lewis R.N., Ph.D., L.P.C.

This book addresses the professionals of psychology, especially the specialists in the therapy of loss and grief.

I am still withholding judgement on this seller. It has been a month since I order a book that I am yet to recieve.

Excellent for the nurse practitoner. Extremely comprehensive and presented in a systems format. Definitely recommend.

This book is a wonderful reference for any medical student or professional. I keep one in my medical jacket (that is always with me) and one in my office (in case I misplace my other book). I have shown this book to several colleagues and their consensus is this book IS A MUST FOR ANY MEDICAL PROFESSIONAL OR STUDENT!

There is so much info in this little book, you will not be disappointed! This looks like it will be a great reference for any medical rotation. I was very pleased to see that it had a section on how to systematically review & interpret chest x-rays. Very helpful!

Mr Hancock, time and time again I have spread word as to how efficient your text is for PA's across the country. I have used this book, and given copies of it out to others. Everyone has given it high praise. Thanks for the hard work!

I read this short book within a space of an hour. It is straight to the point, and is written in the style of a story. The author is a Physical Therapist and tells the story of when he was a student and he visited a senior Physical Therapist in a hospital as part of his training. He learned how to motivate someone within 60 seconds to undertake therapy by increasing importance + confidence in the patient. Although this book was essentially about how someone was able to increase his patients' motivation, this can also be applied to other areas of your life - for any goal. It is an easily understandable read and if you are looking for a way to increase motivation quick then look no further than this book.

This is a great book for anyone to learn about how to motivate yourself or others. It's in a very simple story format without a lot of exercises like other self-help books. Very good book - I highly recommend it to anyone that needs to know more about motivation.

This is a great little book. It is written in a light style that makes it easy to read and digest the principles that Jim spells out. If you have ever tried to make a change and been unsuccessful in accomplishing your goal this little book will help you to understand why you failed and how you can increase your chance of success. I found it to be helpful both with my own personal goals and in better understanding what may help to motivate my clients to achieve their stated goals.

Like any book in this genre this book will not actually help you unless your "motivated" to change your own behavior. It's simple, easy to read, and practical. It shows you the keys to changing your perspective on on how motivation actually works in yourself and others. I enjoyed it.

Being a cardiac rehab nurse and spending a lot of time each day trying to get people to change their lifestyles to create better health, this book caught my eye. After reading it, I found the principles instantly useful for me to use at work. They can help anyone get motivated to get past the barriers that keep them from making changes to improve their health. Additionally, the book is short and to the point which is good for a busy Mom like myself.

If you're really into organizational learning, defined as the growth of an individual to the benefit of the organization, you'll love this book. It's chock-full of discussions of a wide variety of aspects of the field. If Beitler missed anything in his broad survey of the field, I don't know what it might be. The reader is taken on a virtual encyclopedic tour of the topic.

The book reads like an academic treatise. The pages are filled with annotations and references so the reader can find additional references for further learning...or at least know the author's sources. For the specialist in the field who wants all that, it's there. I found the heavy use of references and abbreviations to be distracting, taking away from the flow of my reading. That's why I use the word "confusing" in my title for this review.

Perhaps the best use of this publication is as a text and reference book. The student entering the field-through a university setting or coming from a specialty area in the corporate environment-will gain a thorough understanding of the what and the how of organizational learning. The doors to further learning will be opened, with abundant connection to opportunities to gain depth in any of the topic areas.

General readers of business books seeking to expand their knowledge and acquire new ideas probably won't be happy with this book. It's designed more for people who are already in the field and want to become more conversant, as well as for those who seek to be practitioners but need to enrich their understanding of how organizational learning supports corporate strategy.

The reviewer is a Certified Management Consultant.

Mike Beitler did it again!! If you have not already read his first book, Strategic Organizational Change, you need to order it immediately. It is one of the best, most practical books on the subject that I have ever seen. It is one of the few books that divulge the secrets of how to actually make a change process happen.

His new one will also will not disappoint. Again Mike treats what could be a boring, stuffy subject with a down-to-earth, entertaining style. I have used both books as part of my PhD program in Organizational Development and have learned more from them then I did from a dozen others. Both books will stand on their own, but I suggest that you buy both now!

This is the second of two related books by the same author, the first being Strategic Organizational Change (This review applies to both books). Strategic Organizational Change seeks to cover all aspects of change management, of which organizational learning is one aspect. Strategic Organizational Learning was written essentially as an expansion of the learning aspects of the first, but was designed to stand alone. In consequence, there is substantial overlap, and some repetition between the two. As the titles indicate, the first book treats organizational learning as one aspect of the wider process of organizational change, while the second focuses on learning, training, and knowledge transfer and also covers issues of cross-cultural operation and learning.

Both are exactly what they claim to be: clear and comprehensive guides for practitioners, whether these are consultants (the primary audience) or managers. They are written in simple and direct terms and bring together summaries of the theories and practice of well-known authorities in the field (Lewin, Schein, Maslow and others) with a distillation of the experience of the author. The emphasis is on the universal basics and there is merciful freedom from hype and faddism. The structure of each book makes for ease of reference and the content will be useful as a memory jogger for experienced consultants as well as being a valuable guide for the less experienced.

In summary, both books are good `foundation texts' and sources of reference in their respective fields.

Anyone with experience in the field will have their quibbles about what is not included or only touched on. My list of useful additional sources include:

* while Beitler mentions systems thinking and its importance, he does not either expand on this or provide guidance to further detail (On organizational change the best sources are Senge et al: The Dance of Change and a range of articles from the Pegasus Communications magazine The Systems Thinker). The Dance of Change gives an extremely detailed analysis of the various forces that reinforce and inhibit effective change. (It is unfortunate that citations to Senge are nearly always to his original The Fifth Discipline and not to the much more directly managerially useful successors The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook and The Dance of Change);

* a related gap is the failure to identify the issues of complexity and the associated importance in change management of so-called `wicked' problems - problems to which there is no final solution so that the choice is between several partial solutions, each of which has a substantial downside. This sort of problem is common in organizational change and a frequent mistake of consultants and managers is to treat such problems as if they were `tame'. Lewin, R. and Regine, B. The Soul at Work provides particularly useful practical examples of managing with complexity;

* I would have liked to see some reference to the use of narrative techniques as a data gathering tool. There is rapidly increasing recognition of the value of these techniques in diagnosis - as well as of story-telling as a fruitful tool for promoting desired culture change;

* while many of the best authors are referenced, other important sources are not referenced. Among my favourites are Howard Gardner (Leading Minds and the later Changing Minds), Peter Vaill (Learning as a Way of Being) and, for an approach more directly based on psychology, Hultman (Making Change Irresistible).


As indicated, these points do not detract from the value of the books as a practical guide. They are very useful, with comprehensive coverage of the basics and a lot of valuable practical experience encapsulated in the text.

This is one of two of Michael Beitler's books I recently read, the other being Strategic Organizational Change. In the most successful organizations, both learning and change must always be "strategic" to ensure that they support initiatives which achieve and then sustain continuous improvement in all areas and at all levels. In fact, as Michael Marquardt among others correctly insist, learning and change must not only be interdependent; they must occur simultaneously. That is essentially what "action learning" is all about and is most valuable when in alignment with an organization's strategy. In this volume, Beitler explains how to do that.

He has carefully organized his material within two parts: Foundations of Organizational Learning (Chapters 1 and 2) and Organizational Learning in the 21st Century (Chapters 3-10). In 2004, the estimated direct costs of training in North American companies (alone) exceeded $60-million and continue to increase substantially each year. When factoring in all costs (including waste), the adjusted total is probably incalculable. Re waste, I am again reminded of what Peter Drucker said in an article which appeared in the Harvard Business Review in 1963: "There is surely nothing quite so useless as doing with great efficiency what should not be done at all." One of Beitler's most important points is that before formulating and then implementing a strategic organizational learning program, it is first necessary to decide (a) what needs to be learned, (b) why it needs to be learned, and (c) which specific objectives such learning will achieve. Otherwise, worth repeating, "There is surely nothing quite so useless as doing with great efficiency what should not be done at all."

As Beitler clearly indicates, learning without then taking appropriate action demonstrates what Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert Sutton characterize as the "Knowing-Doing Gap"; similarly, action without learning demonstrates what they characterize as the "Doing-Knowing Gap." Many senior-level executives make bad decisions because they do not know what they need to know, or because they are convinced that they know what they need to know...but don't.

Some of the most valuable material in this book is provided in Chapter 6, "Management & Professional Development," as Beitler explains how to use a variety of valuable tools for assessment, development, and performance management. They include the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI); FIRO Element B which reveals an individual's preferences for inclusion, control, and openness in human interaction; the Kirton Adapter/Innovator Instrument (KAI) which reveals potential problems between extreme adapters and extreme innovators; the Self-Directed Learning readiness Scale (SLDRS) which helps in designing a customized learning and development plan for an individual; and the Cross-Cultural Adaptability Index (CCAI) which helps to prepare and support expatriate managers and professionals for foreign assignments.

It remains for each reader to determine which of these and other "tools" are most appropriate to her or his own organization's needs in terms of strategic organizational learning. Most organizations probably need more than one of various tools now available. Beitler can help decision-makers to determine which to select, how to use each, and how to coordinate use of them. In this context, I presume to offer two caveats: For those whose only tool is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail; conversely, if every available tool is used indiscriminately, the results are certain to be unsatisfactory.

Those who share my high regard for this volume are urged to check out Beitler's Strategic Organizational Change as well as Pfeiffer and Sutton's The Knowing-Doing Gap and their more recently published Hard Facts, Dangerous Half-Truths and Total Nonsense, Carla O'Dell and C. Jackson Grayson's If Only We Knew What We Know, Thomas Davenport's What's the Big Idea? and his more recently published Thinking for a Living, and other sources provided by Beitler in his Annotated Bibliography, especially Peter Senge's The Fifth Discipline which I think should be read in combination with his later work, The Dance of Change.

After working in the field of organizational learning for many years, I can predict that Beitler's book will soon be the new standard in the field.

"Strategic Organizational Learning" has been researched as well as any of the academic books I have ever read, but it is very easy to read. I really enjoy Beitler's writing style. And I appreciate the years of research that made the book possible.

Chapter 4 on Self-Directed Learning is the best summary on the subject available anywhere. Beitler cites the work of every leader in the field (Lucy & Paul Guglielmino, Long, Hiemstra, Brockett, Confessore, Durr, Knowles, and Piskurich). Beitler also cites his own work at Forune 100 companies.

Chapter 5 on Knowledge Capture & Transfer is worth the price of the book alone. Beitler gives you everything you need to know about knowledge management in one well-written chapter.

There are also valuable chapters on leadership development, succession planning, expatriate training, and corporate universities.