Understanding Pathophysiology provides nursing students with the optimal balance between science, clinical case material and pharmacology. With entrenched bio-medical terminology that can be difficult to relate to nursing practice, pathophysiology is a complex, though essential, component of all undergraduate nursing courses. This book prioritises diseases relevant to nursing students and presents them according to prevalence and rate of incidence in Australia and New Zealand. This focused approach prepares students for the presentations they will experience in a clinical setting. It explores each body system first by structure and function, then by alteration. This establishes the physiology prior to addressing the diseases relative to the system and allows students to analyse and compare the normal versus altered state. It incorporates a lifespan approach and explores contemporary health with specific chapters on stress, genes and the environment, obesity and diabetes, cancer, mental illness and Indigenous health issues. Clinical case studies are included in each chapter, with each patient case study highlighting the relevant medical symptoms of a given disease within a clinical setting. This is then analysed with respect to the relevancy of each symptom, their respective effect on body systems and the best course of pharmacological treatment.