worth paying for uptodate out of pocket or stick with what my school has?

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Starting third year soon and have been hearing good stuff about uptodate. Wanted to know if it's worth paying the $200/year for having it if my school already has mdconsult, epocrates, dynamed and some other mobile apps for the students to use? I'll probably have at least one pocket reference/questions in my coat as well for reading material.

-Thanks!

Originally Posted by secants

Starting third year soon and have been hearing good stuff about uptodate. Wanted to know if it's worth paying the $200/year for having it if my school already has mdconsult, epocrates, dynamed and some other mobile apps for the students to use? I'll probably have at least one pocket reference/questions in my coat as well for reading material.

-Thanks!

UTD is great, but if you're carrying a pocket reference, get the green book ("Pocket Medicine," whatever color it might be now) and call it a day.

No need to pony up $200 as an M3 for that when there are other resources at your disposal.

Also, any hospital at which you might be rotating may or may not have a site license allowing you to use UTD on premises.

U2D is a good resource but I wouldn't spend my money now to get it. I've been able to access it at the hospitals I've rotated through. I also have access through my school's website.

I like medscape.com for a free online resource. It's pretty concise and I find it easier to read through than U2D.

Not sure if this still works, but as a med student I used to send myself an UTD article from school to my personal email. It would come with a 30-day free trial, which I would use to look up stuff at home until it expired... then just send myself another article. You might also be able to get remote access to your academic system via a VPN, in which case you'd have electronic access to all library subscriptions from whatever personal device.

If your school doesn't subscribe to UTD at all then no biggie. I like it, but it's not uber-superior to other programs out there.

MedScape is free and personally I find it to be a better resource. I was never too impressed with UpToDate...

I agree with Medscape... I hadn't used DynaMed until my FM core, but had some assignments that required it. With that said, I find it extremely useful.

Won't need it as a med student (other references will do just fine for presentations/learning) and most residencies will have it later on.

As a med student you need AccessMedicine, MDConsult...decent textbooks. UptoDate is nice, but not worth 200 bucks as a student.

I have mobile access to UpToDate through school and use it frequently, but I'd find Medscape/Emedicine to be an acceptable substitute if it wasn't available.

If you have access to it, it is a nice resource if you want to impress a resident/attending with the management of a patient you just picked up.

Other than that, it is beyond the needs of a third year for the cost. You can reap a rich harvest of pimp-fodder elsewhere (medscape can be downloaded in its entirety to your mobile device), and spend your time and money on qbank/pretest/review books/etc.

Thanks for the advice guys, since I already have access to MDconsult, medscape, Epocrates and Dynamed, it probably won't do me any good having uptotdate.

I'll probably keep a pocket reference or two handy anyway.

You can buy uptodate for a med student price. I did and didn't regret it at all. Ended up using it all the freaking time and it really lets you shine.