Reviewer: Noel Amparo, DPT (MHRS)
Description: This book provides evidence-based case studies to help clinicians more effectively understand the medical aspects and physical therapy management of patient care in the acute care setting.
Purpose: The purpose is to provide an alternative teaching method, using clinical case studies with an organized clinical approach to treatment and diagnosis. The objectives support the need to have a book with different case scenarios and the unique approaches to each case. The book meets the objectives by listing instructions and clinical considerations necessary to understand the pathology, hospital course, and treatment approaches for each case.
Audience: The book is written for students, residents, practitioners, and clinicians in an acute hospital setting. The author combines her academic knowledge with her personal patient care experiences and calls on the clinical expertise of her colleagues.
Features: The book covers physical therapy clinical management, disease process and hospital care, complications, risk factors, and evidence-based practice in each of the patient case scenarios. The major asset of the book is the combination of the structured learning approach, clinical guidelines, physical therapy clinical considerations and management, and validation of the evidence-based clinical recommendations. The unique features of the book are the carefully selected common patient case studies and the use of tables to summarize the important information unique to each case study. These features help readers identify the most common medical diagnoses and their appropriate medical and physical therapy management. The shortcomings of the book are grammatical errors, incorrect use of abbreviations, and the illustrations of the positioning of the patient with the diagnosis of cerebrovascular accident.
Assessment: This book provides clinicians with important information and tools to be able to work effectively in an acute care setting. A systematic approach has been applied to each case. This approach uses the whole patient care scenario, objectives of care, and considerations in physical therapy. This approach also includes discussion of risk factors, medications, examinations, evaluations, and diagnoses that include plans of care and interventions and clinical recommendations using strength of recommendation taxonomy (SORT).