Using a nursing-oriented, holistic approach, this straightforward text provides you with a visual presentation to conducting physical examinations. This textbook clearly delineates the routine exam techniques from those exams for special circumstances or advanced practice.

• UNIQUE! Routine exams and exams for advanced practice are identified with a special icon to help you quickly and easily determine essential assessment content.
• Body system chapters are subdivided into clearly delineated sections to allow easy navigation among these consistent sections within the chapters.
• UNIQUE! End-of-chapter Documentation Samples demonstrate how to document client data and provide a practice context for client charting.
• UNIQUE! Special feature boxes outline common, Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) about health assessment and provide corresponding answers.
• Ethnic and Cultural Variations boxes present differences to anticipate among today’s multicultural client population and show how to vary the exam for varied populations.
• Separate sections for special circumstances or special needs show how to vary the exam for clients with special needs.
• Feature boxes outline Healthy People 2010 objectives to provide you thorough discussions of recommendations for health promotion and reducing risk.
• Interactive Activity Lists at the end of each chapter outline corresponding exercises, checklists, and lab forms that can be found on the companion CD-ROM.
• Case Studies with Clinical Reasoning Questions are provided at the end of each chapter to test your application of textbook material.
• NCLEX® exam-style review questions are included at the end of each chapter.
• PDA-Downloadable Exam Techniques are included on the Evolve companion website to allow you to easily access important summary exam information.

• UNIQUE! The 30 Core Assessment Skills identified by research as most commonly performed by nurses are now highlighted with a unique icon.
• UNIQUE! The companion CD-ROM now provides the Core Assessment Skills Checklists as quick step-by-step summaries for each of the 30 Core Assessment Skills.
• Two new chapters pull all of the essential exam and assessment content together into cohesive chapters for the infant and child and the older adult.
• UNIQUE! Clinical Reasoning Exemplars walk you through the thinking process of how an experienced nurse makes decisions.
• UNIQUE! Concept boxes feature eight concepts in the context of health assessment including pain, sleep, oxygenation, perfusion, tissue integrity, motion, sensory, and intracranial regulation.