Nursing Textbooks Oh My
If a nursing textbook hasn’t made you cry, are you really a nurse? The sheer bulk of information and overload can not only take you by surprise but knock the wind out of you. Then you have decisions such as should I rent or buy, new or used, digital or hardback/paperback version, old or new edition, and what to do with your textbooks when you are done? Then you have the jaw-dropping price point. Not to mention carrying a pathophysiology book that has the potential to throw your shoulder out of its socket. New editions of textbooks are required because evidence changes nursing practice.
Often evidence changes the course of medical interventions rather quickly and before an author and publisher can get the new edition of a book out with the now “old” new information. As evidence-based practice takes center stage in nursing, there appears to be a more humane alternative to handling so many large nursing textbooks, and that is through the increased use of open educational resources (OER) (Sparks, 2017). OER are resources (articles, videos, ebooks, etc.) that can be used in a public digital platform (where authors have permitted their use in education) to obtain up-to-date information in an ever-evolving healthcare arena. OER are preferred over conventional textbooks as they offer many advantages. The advantages of OER include easy accessibility, little to no cost (if associated with a university, students may have access to paid subscriptions), and keeping up to date with evidence-based practice changes. Yet many instructors avoid OER like the plague (Roberts, 2018).
Instructors look away from the asset of OER for many reasons, a big one of them being the amount of time necessary to obtain the OER for students (Roberts, 2018). Another reason is that instructors may not want to commit to using OER entirely but do not want to pick a side between fully using OER or only textbooks. Some instructors require the newest edition textbook and supplement it with OER. In the aftermath, nursing students are left with many nursing books.
Nursing students tend not to know what to do with their textbooks, do they keep them (after all, they hold your tears), try and sell them back, or throw them away because, within a year or two, the data in that book will be outdated. There are options for students, such as websites, to sell textbooks back, but keep in mind some of those companies do not repurchase older editions. You can also donate the books to a local library. If you bought them digitally, you would keep them in your ever-expanding digital book cloud—those loads of textbooks that you don’t know what to do with cost a pretty penny.
OER has a more specific price point to swallow. Nursing textbooks can cost anywhere from $300-700 per term (Page, n.d.). The cost of OER is free (Sparks, 2017). Universities also offer their students access to journal subscriptions in their online libraries. OER is abundant and can be overwhelming itself to sift through.
Nursing information comes in many different forms, and instructors need to embrace all these forms. Instead of sticking to textbooks that tend to be bulky and outdated, the use of OER can be helpful and provide up-to-date information. My question is, which do you prefer books (hardback/paperback or digital, buy or rent, new edition or old edition, new or used) or OER for your nursing courses?
Page, S. L. (n.d.). How much does nursing school cost? https://www.registerednursern.com/how-much-does-nursing-school-cost/
Roberts, J. (2018). Where are all the faculty in the open education movement? Digital Learning in Higher Ed. https://www.edsurge.com/news/2018-05-16-where-are-all-the-faculty-in-the-open-education-movement
Sparks, S. D. (2017). Open educational resources (OER): Overview and definition. Education Week. https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/open-educational-resources-oer-overview-and-definition/2017/04
