Respiratory Failure, Shock, and Critical Care
One alveolus drawn in a single continuous fineliner line whose capillary loop leaves the alveolus and widens into a schematic circulatory ring across the lower third of the page.
VITALS · NCLEX-RN VISUAL REVIEW
BOOK 09
Respiratory Failure, Shock, and Critical Care
OXYGENATION · VENTILATION · PERFUSION · THE FIRST FIVE MINUTES
The promise
Fifteen pages from now you will look at a patient who is getting worse and name the failure before you name the disease.
15 PAGES · RN-REVIEWED · MAPPED TO THE NCLEX-RN TEST PLAN
What is inside
Two failures of gas. Five failures of circulation. One decision tree for the machine that is breathing for your patient, and one card you can photograph the morning of the exam.
This is the volume about deterioration. Not the stable patient with a chronic diagnosis and a teaching plan, but the patient whose respiratory rate has crept up over two shifts, whose neck veins are flat when they should be full, whose saturation looks reassuring while the chest barely moves. Every other book in this series teaches you a system. This one teaches you the first five minutes.
The exam tests this content harder than almost anything else, because the exam is built to decide whether a new graduate is safe alone with a deteriorating adult. It asks you to recognize a cue in a chart, sort it into a pattern, choose one action, and then judge whether the action worked. That is the whole book.
How the book is built
Pages 3 through 6 give you the four decisions. Pages 7 through 9 give you the bedside findings, the tubes, and the ventilator. Pages 10 and 11 put you inside a chart and inside a case. Pages 12 through 14 test you. Page 15 compresses all of it onto one card.
TakeawayAsk which gas or which part of the circuit is failing, and the disease name becomes the easy part.
EDITION 1 · 2026