Introduction to Management and Leadership for Nurse Managers (third edition), by Russel E. Swansburg, RN, PhD, and Richard J. Swansburg, RN, BSN, MSCIS. Sudbury, MA, Jones and Bartlett Publishers, 2002. 638 pages, soft cover.

This book has been written to be of assistance to nurses to enable them to meet the demands of the constantly changing patient care services by having the needed knowledge for the adaptive change that is required. The book is organized around four major management functions: (1) planning, (2) organization, (3) direction or leading, and (4) controlling or evaluating. There are 29 lengthy chapters, each focused on a very essential element of management. In addition to the authors there are six other contributing nurses.

Each chapter, starting with critical thinking and ending with a chapter on pay-for-performance, delves deeply but clearly to evoke the proper response from nursing staff to the steady rush of expanding science that results in rapid obsolescence of patterns of care. The moral obligations to patient care can be kept in a reasonable fashion. Just the increasing flood of new technology is forcing change, as is the expanding preparation of all the other members of the health care team. It probably is true that everyone is approaching a state of obsolescence when contrasting the knowledge each person with the exponential increase of all the sciences-physical and behavioral-with what of each clinician possesses. Just having a few courses in management will not suffice because these also can be obsolete. Having insight into how to make rapid changes remain useful and viable is the basis for career thinking and doing at all management levels. The management problems are enhanced in the nursing division because all the other clinical professions are steadily enhancing their respective preparations at a much higher level than are registered nurses. Thus the management of nursing is made more difficult by this knowledge gap.

Reading and studying texts on management should not be limited to those in management positions. All those who aspire to a career also need this knowledge to begin to formulate their respective careers and to accelerate their progress to career status. Management is an applied science in the same mode as clinical sciences is an applied science. Both require a constant grasp of new knowledge in or order to function successfully. All the clinical professions must force this as an ethical as well as professional obligation.