Nurses today are client advocates and educators who play a central role in a family s experience of

birth. As women s choices about childbirth continue to

expand, so do the responsibilities and commitment of

the nurse.

Focus on Client Teaching and

the Nursing Process

We continue to feel strongly that one of the primary roles

of the nurse is that of client teacher--helping people ac-

quire the information and skills they need to meet their

own needs. This is why we ve again chosen to place

strong emphasis on teaching throughout this text. We

also firmly believe that it is essential for nurses to use

the nursing process to provide high-level, effective nurs-

ing care. These two loci--client teaching and the nurs-

ing process--form the basis of the book s organization

and result in what we believe to be a text that is as rele-

vant and useful to practicing nurses as it is to nursing

students.

Why an "Essentials" Book?

In today s varied nursing curricula, the course in mater-

nal-newborn nursing can range in length from 4 to

13 weeks--depending on the type of program and the

availability of clinical facilities, among other factors, fu

response to requests from those nurse educators who do

not have a full 12 to 15 weeks to cover this content, we

developed Essentials of Maternal-Newborn Nursing as an

alternative to our best-selling, more detailed and com-

prehensive Maternal-Newborn Nursing. This Essentials

text was first published in 1986 with the intention of

meeting the demand for a shorter, more condensed ver-

sion focused on the essence of safe, thoughtful nursing

care. With our revision in 1990, we updated and ex-

panded content based on extensive student and instruc-

tor review. In this, the third edition of our Essentials text,

not only have we updated content to make the book as

current and accurate as possible, but we ve further re-

fined our definition of the "essentials" through contin