Sample Text "The Elements of Nursing: A model for nursing based on a model for living"¹

A lot of information can be gathered about this writer's message by scanning the overall book before you begin to read in depth. Some of the things to take note of are the book's title, its chapter headings, its section headings and its table of contents.

Title
The title of the book itself is the first item that can tell you about the writer's message.

Chapter Headings
The book's table of contents details the chapters/topics covered in the book . Note how they elaborate on the message conveyed by the title. Look at the chapter and section headings.

These chapter headings tell us that the book will first detail the concepts of nursing, health and illness and the concept of a model for living before it shows how these concepts interact to suggest a new model of nursing.

The chapter titles in section 2 suggest that this model's applicability to the 'activities of living' will be detailed and argued throughout the rest of the book.

Looking at the book in this way, ie. simply looking at the structure of the book, provides a good overview of the book's message and a message framework which can be validated by a closer reading of the sections within each chapter.

Section Headings
Look at the outline of the sections and sub-sections for chapter 1.

why are health systems under reform?
and how is nursing managing the changes and challenges?

Indeed, these later sections provide the rationale for the model of nursing which is put forward later in the book. The chapter moves towards a final section which reiterates the need for a theory of nursing to underpin practice and a final paragraph which suggests that a model of nursing based on a model for living is to be presented in this book.

Within its sections, it presents subtopics that detail further these major topics; for example, in the section What is health, the question is discussed from a variety of perspectives:

World Health Organisation definitions of health
health continuum
lay perceptions of health
health as coping
personal responsibilities for health
and current health targets.

Skimming over this information means that you'll have a 'big picture' of the overall topic or issue before you begin to read in-depth. That 'big picture' can make the job of reading and understanding the whole text much easier than when you begin without the big picture. You'll find that when you have an academic text such as this to read, making use of the structure of the text to 'key' into the message allows you a much greater level of reading efficiency.

Remember that you are not usually required to read a textbook from cover to cover, although this may depend on the subject you are studying. Usually, you will have to read relevant sections of the textbook in preparation for a tutorial discussion or as a general reading of specific sections in preparation of an essay.

Table of Contents
The following table of contents has been taken from a textbook called The Elements of Nursing: A model for nursing based on a model for living. Look over the table of contents and read the annotation to get a reminder about just how much information about content is conveyed by a table of contents.

1 Roper, N., Logan, W.W. & Tierney, A. J. (1996) The Elements of Nursing: A model for nursing based on a model for living. Churchill Livingstone, Edinburgh.