Healthcare Documentation: Fundamentals and Practice

by Health Professions Institute

Ideal for learners with no prior experience and those seeking refresher training, Healthcare Fundamentals and Practice, 4/e is the most comprehensive healthcare documentation learning system available. It begins with a thorough overview of the medicolegal and technology aspects of healthcare documentation, including key trends such as electronic health records, security, privacy, and speech recognition. Next, it provides integrated content linked to 10 hours of authentic medical dictation practice. Extensive exercises in the text combine with online audio exercises to systematically reinforce core knowledge and build critical thinking, editing, and research skills. The final chapter focuses on finding employment and preparing students for the workplace, professional development, and continuing education. This edition has been extensively revised for the latest industry trends and techniques, contains many new learning features, and offers a compelling new full-color design with many new illustrations.

784 pages, Paperback

First published July 1, 2012

Reviews

[K.A. Krisko · Rating 3 out of 5]

It must be hard to write a book like this, but wow, this was dry. It's basically, with a few exceptions, a book of lists: what questions will be asked at each type of review of systems; diagnostic tests; laboratory procedures; pharmacology; vocabulary; terms to learn/spell. It was a lot like reading a reference book cover-to-cover, for 700+ pages. Where details are filled in, they often seem too detailed. I'm sure it's important to know as much about the medical field as possible, but is it necessary for a transcriptionist to learn the decision points a doctor will use to determine what type of procedure to schedule? Perhaps a case can be made for that.

This book will probably serve as an okay reference book as it's divided by body system, but the index is useless and the glossary doesn't have half of the terms used in the book. There's no way to locate example reports, which are tacked on to the end of each chapter but enumerated nowhere in the table of contents or index or even a plate index. I found that locating terms I knew I'd read somewhere in the text was extremely difficult and I usually turned elsewhere.

All-in-all, it's okay, but I wouldn't read it unless it's assigned to you, and be prepared to cover only a few pages at a time before your brain refuses to accept any more lists.