BOOK REVIEW |
Occupational Voice Loss, 1st edition. Nerys Williams and Paul Carding. Published by Taylor & Francis, 2005. ISBN 0824728777. £85.
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There are six chapters of text, passing logically from pathophysiology through risk factors to assessment, prevention and treatment. All the chapters, with one egregious exception, are very well referenced. The exception is the chapter on legal matters, which is written by another hand, has no references at all (they would be very useful here as well) and reads, I am afraid to say, as if stuck on as an afterthought. An additional chapter gives a lengthy list of resources and a number of appendices have examples of assessment and policy tools for use in the workplace. Pictures are few and generally not very enlightening, with one (a diagram of the larynx) spectacularly unlabelled and uncoordinated with the accompanying text, although I think this might be a printing error. I hope that these faults would be addressed in any second edition. Overall, however, the book is very readable and it provides a useful drawing together of current practice in this important area. Occupational health professionals who spend a significant part of their practice attempting to understand the complex interrelationships between occupation, voice use and voice disorders will find it useful. It will probably also be of interest to those whose main practice lies in other areas. Anyone wishing to delve deeper into the subject will find the extensive reference and resource lists most helpful. This said, I do not believe the price (£85 for a slim volume of 119 + xii pages) represents particularly good value for money and this gives its star rating a hefty knock. ‘Print on demand’ is a publishing method increasingly used in niche, low-volume works to keep the price down and I would have thought this book a good candidate for it.
Rating
(Borrow from the library)
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