Digital library
Textbooks, references and open learning resources.

External
Human Anatomy and Physiology Laboratory Booklet
Martilias Farrell · The Pennsylvania Alliance for Design of Open Textbooks (PA-ADOPT) · 2025
This laboratory manual presents a diverse collection of hands-on and interactive activities designed to enhance understanding of human anatomy and physiology. Students will engage with skeletal anatomy by creating and decoding messages using bone terminology with anatomical models and by performing bone measurements to analyze relationships with physical attributes. The manual delves into neuroscience by investigating the perception of binaural beats through auditory experiments and by utilizing the Neuronify simulation tool to construct and analyze neural circuits demonstrating synaptic summation. Physiological concepts are explored through experiments on respiratory rate dynamics in response to exercise and the principles of lung surfactant action. Additionally, students will apply anatomical terminology to describe dance movements. These activities collectively foster skills in data collection, critical analysis, and collaborative learning.

External
The Physiology of Exercise
Rosie Lanphere · SAALCK · 2025
The Physiology of Exercise (3rd Edition) is an essential resource for upper-level undergraduates studying exercise science. Written by Rosie Lanphere, PhD, CSCS, this text provides a clear and comprehensive exploration of how the human body responds and adapts to physical activity. Covering metabolism, energy expenditure, and the integrated roles of the nervous, cardiovascular, endocrine, muscular, and respiratory systems, this edition reflects the latest research and practical applications in the field. Designed with students in mind, each chapter includes learning objectives, key terms, and scholarly questions to reinforce understanding. Whether preparing for a career in exercise science or professional certification, this book offers the foundation needed to succeed.

External
Personal Health and Safety
Ches Jones · University of Arkansas · 2024
Written by Dr. Ches Jones at the University of Arkansas.

External
Clinical Application Of Therapeutic Modalities
Andrea Cripps · Bowling Green State University Libraries · 2025
A physical therapy lab manual focusing on various therapeutic modalities, and including lab activities in every chapter.

External
Digital Health for Nursing and Midwifery in Australia
Jenny Davis; Lisa McKenna · Council of Australian University Librarians · 2025
This peer reviewed open text covers the foundations of evidence-based digital health for undergraduate nursing and midwifery students. It grounds digital health nursing concepts in concrete practices and enables students to explore these through practical online learning activities, designed around the five domains of the National Nursing and Midwifery Digital Health Capability Framework (2020). The resource provides core content for the undergraduate nursing and midwifery curriculum at Australian universities, reflecting contemporary best practice in digital health. It will also be beneficial to postgraduate courses focusing on digital health.

External
Population Health for Nurses
Jessica Ochs; Sherry Roper; Susan Schwartz · OpenStax · 2024
Population Health for Nurses prepares nurses to develop interventions, policies, and practices that promote health equity and improved health outcomes across the health care delivery continuum. The text emphasizes the social determinants of health and how nurses can plan and implement health promotion and disease prevention interventions. It takes a holistic perspective, connecting human health behavior to the dynamic, ongoing interactions of the person, social factors, and the physical environment in which people are born, live, learn, play, work, and age. OpenStax Population Health for Nurses uses a logical, thematic organization that breaks down content into manageable chunks. It presents the material in 35 chapters, organized into 7 thematic units. The text defines and distinguishes among the interrelated nursing areas of population health, public health, and community health nursing, providing both historical context and up-to-date research to help students make connections across content that can inform practice. The result is a holistic approach that applies theoretical concepts to the practical assessment, diagnosis, planning, implementation, and evaluation steps of client care and community-tailored interventions.

External
Microbiology, Pharmacology, and Immunology for Pre-Clinical Students
Jennifer Cleveland; Andrew Binks; Renée LeClair · Virginia Tech Publishing · 2025
Microbiology, Pharmacology, and Immunology for Pre-Clinical Students is a peer-reviewed open textbook designed to fill a gap in undergraduate medical education (UME) and support medical school pre-clerkship education. It covers the areas of immunology, microbiology, systems-based infections, and global mechanisms of treatment. It is aligned to USMLE(r) (United States Medical Licensing Examination) and modified from OpenStax Microbiology. The organization of this resource is driven by curricular structure to enhance integrated, multidisciplinary content delivery. This specific resource is intended to be used in various ways, mainly as a student quick-reference guide. The sections are not intended to be all-inclusive, but are primers for applied content delivery. The resource is organized into small chapters that can be used to support student preparation in any arrangement. Similarly, clinical context is only briefly discussed (or purposefully omitted) in order to allow the user to apply the basic content presented here in the clinical context used by their specific curricular structure. As cases and clinical correlates change regularly, it is beneficial to have flexible, short resources that can be applied to many scenarios.

External
Hands-on Anatomy
Jacqueline Phillips; Michael O’Hara · North Broad Press · 2024
Although palpation is a foundational skill for many healthcare disciplines, few resources provide comprehensive anatomical information and relate it to real-world clinical situations. With its detailed descriptions of musculoskeletal anatomy, instructions for palpating anatomical structures, depictions of basic injuries, and correlations with clinical practice, Hands-on Anatomy successfully bridges this gap. Hands-on Anatomy targets undergraduate or graduate students who have completed an introductory anatomy course and are beginning to apply their anatomical knowledge to the human body, as well as healthcare professionals engaged in patient assessment and treatment. Organized by region of the body, chapters discuss skeletal landmarks, muscles, ligaments, and neurovascular structures, with a focus on how to palpate these structures. Additionally, guides on assessing the range of motion of joints are provided, along with descriptions of common clinical scenarios relating to each body area. The text is supplemented with images of skeletal landmarks and muscular anatomy, photos of surface landmarks and range of motion actives, and end-of-chapter review questions to ensure understanding and retention of what was described.

External
Enabling and Optimising Recovery from COVID-19
Danielle Hitch; Genevieve Pepin; Kelli Nicola-Richmond; Valerie Watchorn · Deakin University · 2023
This textbook provides readers with up to date knowledge about the assessment, management and support of people experiencing Long COVID. Learning activities draw upon personas co-authored with people with Long COVID.

External
Community and Public Health Nursing: A Call to Action
Andrea Reed; Beth Tremblay; Chloe Gross; Felisa Smith · Virginia's Academic Library Consortium (VIVA) · 2024
Community and Public Health Nursing: A Call to Action is a primer exploring the diverse roles of community and public health nurses through a social justice lens. Students will gain the fundamental knowledge and skills to work with community members and other stakeholders to promote health and well-being and to prevent disease. This textbook examines key issues such as health disparities, access to care, cultural competence, and the impact of social determinants on public health outcomes. Students will gain knowledge, practical skills, and insight into how nurses can improve community health, advocate for health-related policies, and promote health equity at the individual through systemic levels. The textbook also maps the content to the AACN New Essentials for Baccalaureate Nursing Education. The book is accompanied by a comprehensive Instructor’s Guide designed to support educators in meeting educational goals and developing competencies. The guide offers practical teaching strategies, such as role-playing communication exercises and simulation activities; suggests clinical activities to facilitate deeper understanding and classroom engagement; and includes NCLEX-style practice questions to reinforce key concepts, test critical thinking skills, and provide students valuable practice preparing for the NCLEX exam.

External
Human Anatomy and Physiology Laboratory Manual: Understanding How Structure Determines Function
Maria Carles · ROTEL · 2024
This lab manual introduces students to Human Anatomy and Physiology concepts. The laboratory exercises contain applied activities and experiments to help students visualize anatomical structures and relate them to specific functions and the complex physiological events that allow us to maintain homeostasis.

External
Culinary Medicine
Cheryl Casey; Scott Going; Lauren McCullough; Melanie Hingle · University of Arizona · 2024
This peer-reviewed Culinary Medicine textbook is aimed at individuals and communities seeking to implement food-based disease prevention programs. While the primary audience is students taking a 400/500-level nutrition class, this book can be used and adapted by anyone. It includes recipes and case studies, as well as information on kitchen skills, food safety, menu planning, shopping and budgeting, popular diets, dietary supplements, food demonstrations, seed-to-table programs, community partnerships, and culturally centered approaches. There are also chapters on macronutrients, micronutrients, and bioactive compounds.

External
Optimizing Population Health: Strategies for Advanced Level Nurses
Kathy Andresen · University of West Florida Pressbooks · 2026
This resource provides an overview of population health concepts along with health promotion strategies utilized by advanced practice nurses. Resources are intended to be exemplary, but not exhaustive and introduce the reader to strategies that can be practiced while in graduate school as well as in healthcare settings.

External
Value-based Healthcare
Hanan Khalil · La Trobe University · 2024
This open textbook presents a contemporary overview of Value-based Healthcare: a healthcare delivery and reimbursement model that focuses on achieving the best possible health outcomes for patients while controlling costs. It represents a shift of focus from quantity to quality, and aims to align incentives to bring together the interests of patients, healthcare providers, and payers. The resource covers core content in the following topics: an introduction to value based healthcare, funding models, leadership and governance, models of care, shared decision making models, case studies, global perspectives, resources management and cost control. This text is for Masters-level courses in health administration, public health, nursing, or health information. It will also be useful more broadly for anyone studying health or working in the health sector including clinicians, managers, and policy makers.

External
Localization & Treatment Procedures in Radiation Therapy
Jared Stiles · University of Iowa · 2023
Localization and Treatment Procedures in Radiation Therapy provides an overview of patient simulation, treatment planning, and treatment delivery. The goal of the book is to educate learners on conventional and modern simulation procedures, treatment planning fundamentals and considerations, and treatment delivery techniques and technologies in an ever-evolving field. The content is designed for radiation therapy students, professionals, and all communities of interest.

External
The Basics of Health, Wellness, and Fitness
Jessica Alsup · ROTEL · 2024
This book is written for anyone who could benefit from learning more about health, wellness, and fitness. Throughout the text, readers will learn about health and wellness, setting goals, physical activity and exercise, cardiovascular fitness, muscular strength and endurance, body composition, flexibility, nutrition, stress management, as well as self-care and sleep. In addition to providing important information about the above topics, the text also includes self assessment assignments and self-reflection opportunities. It is the aim of the author that readers increase their understanding regarding the idea that we are all dealt different hands in life, and we all have our history and our own experiences, but one thing we all have in common is that we can start now from wherever we are and make small changes to improve our health, wellness, and fitness.

External
Fundamentals of Human Anatomy Laboratory Manual
Carly Manz · Iowa State University Digital Press · 2024
This laboratory manual is meant to be used in a lab course that accompanies a college-level introductory human anatomy course. It covers the language of anatomy, cells and tissues, and the organ systems that comprise the human body. Multiple open textbooks were adapted to create this lab manual. Attribution for these sources are provided at the end of each chapter.

External
Radiobiology Textbook
Sarah Baatout · Springer · 2023
This open access textbook focuses on the various aspects of radiobiology. The goal of radiobiological research is to better understand the effects of radiation exposure at the cellular and molecular levels in order to determine the impact on health. This book offers a unique perspective, by covering not only radiation biology but also radiation physics, radiation oncology, radiotherapy, radiochemistry, radiopharmacy, nuclear medicine, space radiation biology & physics, environmental and human radiation protection, nuclear emergency planning, molecular biology and bioinformatics, as well as the ethical, legal and social considerations related to radiobiology. This range of disciplines contributes to making radiobiology a broad and rather complex topic. This textbook is intended to provide a solid foundation to those interested in the basics and practice of radiobiological science. It is a learning resource, meeting the needs of students, scientists and medical staff with an interest in this rapidly evolving discipline, as well as a teaching tool, with accompanying teaching material to help educators.

External
Introduction to Health (OER)
Kelly Falcone · Palomar College · 2022
The Introduction to Health OER Textbook provides a broad overview of information pertaining to human health and opportunities for improving health and wellness throughout life. The intended goal of the book is to equip the learners with important information needed to better understand their own health and how their daily choices may impact both their quantity and quality of life. Although this is a "health" textbook, it could actually be called a "life" textbook.

External
Ultrasound Physics and its Application in Medicine
Arbin Thapaliya; Alec Sithole; Michael Welsh; Gaston Dana · PALNI · 2024
Ultrasound has a wide range of medical applications. Some of these include obstetrics (monitoring the progress of pregnancy), oncology (monitoring the growth of tumors), cardiology (visualizing the heart function and physiology), biopsy (guiding needles in various procedures), and physiotherapy. For example, today, an estimated 60-70% of pregnant women in the United States undergo ultrasound examination during pregnancy. An estimated 250 million fetal ultrasound examinations are performed every year in the USA. In the last few decades, ultrasound technology has expanded to medical imaging in various other specialties: Anesthesiology, Critical Care, Emergency Medicine, General Pediatrics, Internal Medicine, Obstetrics and Gynecology (OB-GYN), Pediatric Emergency Medicine, Physiatry, Sports Medicine, and Surgery. The increasing demand in the use of ultrasound technology in various biomedical fields points to a future in which medical professionals will be required to possess a general knowledge of ultrasound technology. While currently most medical professionals rely on technicians to perform the imaging studies, there can be a high degree of operator dependent results. Therefore, a solid foundation of the technological properties of ultrasound would give health care providers a competitive advantage in the future. This is one of the first goals of this textbook. This textbook also covers general aspects of diagnostic ultrasound providing an excellent reference for both beginners and professionals. In addition, this textbook has end-of-the-chapter experiments that will help educators conduct labs for students and any other learners to enhance their learning and solidify the practical skills.