Media Reviews

Handbook of Action Research± Participative Inquiry and Practiceedited by Peter Reason andHilary BradburySage, London, 2001, 509 pages, £69á00,ISBN 0 761 96645 5.

Being a pedant, I always think of ahandbook as a volume of modest sizewhich contains a range of useful andpithy tips for the bene®t of the inexperi-enced. In truth, this is more a work ofreference than a handbook, weighing asit does 1á1 kg on my kitchen scales. Forall this, Reason and Bradbury's tome islikely to establish itself in no time at allas the de®nitive volume of reference andguidance for practitioners of participa-tive inquiry and practice.

The structure of the book is helpful andsensible. Part one is entitled Groundings,and addresses the theoretical underpin-nings of this approach to research. Parttwo, Practices, contains a series of chap-ters which `represent the diverse approa-ches to action research' (p. xxv) suchas ethnodrama, clinical enquiry andcommunity action research. Part threepresents a series of Exemplars, and Ifound it to be the most interesting partbecause it gave full accounts of projects insettings as diverse as the clinical practiceof nursing students, creative arts andphotography in Guatemala, and workingamongst women in southern Tanzania.The book's ®nal part addresses Skills.

In summary, this is an important andwell constructed book which covers therange from theory to practice and backagain. I recommend it as a libraryvolume, but I suspect it will be beyondthe price range of most individualresearchers.

Peter DraperUniversity of Hull, UK

QSR N5 (previously known asNUD*IST)Sage, London, 2000, £420.00

I came to this package full of expecta-tions and hope and left it with

something of a sense of disappointment.As we all know, qualitative dataanalysis is a tedious (though fascinating)process which involves careful readingof texts, coding, thematic developmentand so on. Although I have long beenaware of the existence of software pack-ages which remove the need for scissors,marker pens and big envelopes, I hadnever previously used one. As a regularcomputer user, I expected this packageto be intuitive and easy to understand.In order to simulate the conditions inwhich many potential users of this soft-ware will ®nd themselves (I am thinkingof part-time mature learners), I decidedto review it during the half-term holidaywith children running up and down anda pile of work on the desk, and gavemy self one hour to learn as much as Icould.

The ®rst problem came when, havingloaded the software, I was asked toenter the serial number. It took me15 min to ®nd it on a label stuck tothe inside back cover of the instructionbook. Why could it not be on the frontof the CD case? I then opened thetutorial demo. It was awful. The screenswere jammed full of information whichI had no chance of remembering. Iswitched it off. My ®nal strategy wasto look through the instruction book.To be honest, this is well laid out andseems quite clear.

Perhaps I am being too hard on QSRN5. Any serious researcher who wantsto use a sophisticated software packagemust be prepared to put the effort in, asI remember all too well from my ®rstdays with SPSS, and I am sure that thenext time I have some data to analyse Ishall turn to QSR N5 ± but it won't bebecause of the software's ease of usageor the clarity of the demo. It is almostenough to turn me into a positivist!

Peter DraperUniversity of Hull, UK

Practical Nursing Philosophy: theUniversal Ethical Codeby David SeedhouseWiley, Chichester, 2000, £16á99,222 pages, ISBN 0 471 49012 1.

David Seedhouse is already well knownfor his commentary on nursing. In thepresent volume he has consolidatedmuch of his thinking and, in theprocess, has done nursing a greatservice. The book is easily read butmay not be such an easy read for manynurse theorists and researchers: manyclosely held nursing axioms are chal-lenged and the outcome is not alto-gether comfortable. The axioms are:advocacy, care, dignity and holism andthese are presented against a back-ground of the failure of nursing philos-ophy to date. Seedhouse continues bydissecting research, ethics, mentalhealth and nursing itself beforepresenting his universal ethical code.

Advocacy, care and holism as appliedwithin nursing receive particular criti-cism and, on the whole, it is hard todisagree with the author. Advocacy isall very well provided that the patienthas suf®cient knowledge to be advo-cated; the nurse cannot advocate forwrong decisions especially where thenurse's knowledge may be de®cient.Thankfully, Seedhouse has the courageto point out that good nursing caremay be delivered whether or not thenurse feels appropriately disposedtowards the patient. The universalethical code is quite complex involving,as it does, elements of all the conceptswhich are examined in the previouschapters. Only the passage of time willtestify to its utility. The only pointwhich this reviewer found truly conten-tious was the suggestion that researchin nursing should only be for the directbene®t of patients. This limits thecontribution of nursing research toknowledge generally. However, thismay stem from the fact that nursingresearch has to date made a limited

Ó 2001 Blackwell Science Ltd 563

contribution to the knowledge base ofnursing.

Roger WatsonMedia Reviews Editor

Infection Control ± Science,Management and Practiceedited by Janet McCullochWhurr Publications, London, 2000,240 pages, £24á50, ISBN 1 861 56053 2.

This text makes a novel and valuableaddition to the growing number ofbooks written about infection control.It is not another text aimed at introdu-cing students of nursing to the subjectarea, rather it is a text for people whoneed to know how to address infectioncontrol issues at management and prac-tice levels. The authors are hoping toattract a broad readership in hospitaland community settings, where it couldbecome a user-friendly reference textthat adds `know how' to the task ofimplementing regulations and legislativematerial. Nine infection control special-ists have written the 20 chapters thatcover the three areas of the text title.Two potential barriers to readersmaking best use of the text at ®rst couldbe that the chapters are not groupedinto the usual science, management andpractice format, and that the text beginswith two chapters that aim to introducereaders to the immune system andmicrobiology. I found these two chap-ters to be a bit of a decoy to the mainpurpose of the text.

However, the text contains some realgems, e.g. Managing outbreaks of infec-tion, Designing new and refurbished

buildings, Decontamination, Standardsetting and audit and Mother and childinfections. Users of the text are unlikelyto need the information contained inevery chapter but each chapter standsalone, and those addressing manage-ment and practice issues are well writtenand referenced.

Linda PearsonThe University of Hull, UK

Public Health: Policy and Politicsby Rob BaggottMacmillan Press Ltd, Basingstoke,2000, 320 pages, £14á99,ISBN 0 333 67649 1.

Baggott decided to write this bookbecause of his long-standing interest inpublic health and because of his dissatis-faction with existing books on publichealth. He felt that these books had anarrow technical focus on either publichealth services, epidemiology or preven-tative medicine and neglected thebroader economic, social and politicalcontext of health. Thus his aim was toprovide an overview of current debatesin public health set within the context ofthe policy press.

His book does provide a broadcoverage of public health. It starts witha chapter examining the conceptualunderpinning of public heath from itsclassic period in the 19th century to itscurrent in¯uence in health policy andthe management of health care. Thecore part of the book is ®ve case studiesof public health issues and policyresponses: screening, the environment,food and diet, licit and illicit drugs, and

inequalities. It ends with a conclusionthat summarizes the main issues andconsiders the way forward in terms ofexperts, trust and risk.

Baggott's book falls within a well-developed British tradition of socialpolicy. It has a strong sense of historyand is based on wide-ranging andup-to-date scholarship with over 1000references. However, the level of detailcan be overwhelming and sometimes thewood is lost for the trees. Thus whileBaggott makes reference to analyses ofmodernity by writers such as Foucoult,Beck, Giddens and Adams and notestheir contribution to debates on areassuch as risk, trust and globalization, theradical implication of their critiques forpublic health is not made explicit. Forexample, the difference between expertanalyses of risk and public perceptionsof risk that underpin phenomena suchas `food panics' cannot be wished awayas problems of communication (p. 194)and to call for drug policies to be basedon better evidence of risk and harm(p. 220) fails to consider the very policyprocesses that Baggott believes are soimportant and through which de®ni-tions of risk and harm are constructed.

Baggott's book provides an excellentintroduction and overview of the devel-opment of and current practice of publichealth. While it does provide a broaderapproach than most other texts, it failsto recognize and accept the challenge toprovide a radical challenge orthodoxy.

Andy AlaszewskiUniversity of Kent at Canterbury, UK

564 Ó 2001 Blackwell Science Ltd, Journal of Advanced Nursing, 34(4), 563±564

Media Reviews