Pocket med vs. epocrates

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Just wondering why everyone raves about the green pocket medicine book so much. It seems to have a lot of overlap with epocrates/uptodate, but is more expensive (assuming your school gives you access to epocrates) and cumbersome to look through. The only real benefit I've found from it is that it doesn't look like you're texting on your iphone when you're reading pocket med on the wards.

How do y'all utilize pocket med vs. epocrates on wards, and why would one be better than the other in certain situations?

Originally Posted by Aclamity

Just wondering why everyone raves about the green pocket medicine book so much. It seems to have a lot of overlap with epocrates/uptodate, but is more expensive (assuming your school gives you access to epocrates) and cumbersome to look through. The only real benefit I've found from it is that it doesn't look like you're texting on your iphone when you're reading pocket med on the wards.

How do y'all utilize pocket med vs. epocrates on wards, and why would one be better than the other in certain situations?

Epocrates- better for med dosages

Pocket med- better for everything else (what tests to order, treatments, differentials, physical exam findings, etc...)

Originally Posted by Aclamity

Just wondering why everyone raves about the green pocket medicine book so much. It seems to have a lot of overlap with epocrates/uptodate, but is more expensive (assuming your school gives you access to epocrates) and cumbersome to look through. The only real benefit I've found from it is that it doesn't look like you're texting on your iphone when you're reading pocket med on the wards.

How do y'all utilize pocket med vs. epocrates on wards, and why would one be better than the other in certain situations?

Pocket med is ridiculously useful for looking up things on the wards for diagnosis/treatment. Even if I'm sitting at a computer and I can go on uptodate or dynamed, pocketmed often has the most concise explanation for what to do in a given situation. This pertains to internal medicine.

Epocrates is pretty useless for a med student, imo. Sometimes it helps for getting more info about dosing and side effects. But your hospital's antibiotic guide is way more helpful, and those are the drugs you often have questions about.

Originally Posted by NightSwim

Pocket med is ridiculously useful for looking up things on the wards for diagnosis/treatment. Even if I'm sitting at a computer and I can go on uptodate or dynamed, pocketmed often has the most concise explanation for what to do in a given situation. This pertains to internal medicine.

Epocrates is pretty useless for a med student, imo. Sometimes it helps for getting more info about dosing and side effects. But your hospital's antibiotic guide is way more helpful, and those are the drugs you often have questions about.

Maybe this is why I haven't been able to appreciate its usefulness.. still on FM

I personally love the green book. And there is something to be said about not having your cell phone out all the time. I agree with the other poster about epocrates being pretty worthless to me as a med student. The residents use it for dosing meds, but that's about it. I use medscape more since it at least includes mechanism of action.

Originally Posted by buccsmf1

I personally love the green book. And there is something to be said about not having your cell phone out all the time. I agree with the other poster about epocrates being pretty worthless to me as a med student. The residents use it for dosing meds, but that's about it. I use medscape more since it at least includes mechanism of action.

So does Epocrates, under "Pharmacology."

Anyway, Epocrates is useful for when people like to use brand names for medications, as well as dosing, adverse reactions/contraindications, and mechanism of action. Pocket Medicine is better suited for medical management/empiric treatments on the fly.

Originally Posted by Aclamity

Maybe this is why I haven't been able to appreciate its usefulness.. still on FM

Oh okay. Agreed, Pocketmed is probably only useful for IM. What happens is that oftentimes on your IM clerkship you have a very limited amount of time after seeing the patient before you present to the resident/attending. Many of your patients are the first time you are ever actually working up acute pancreatitis/C Difficile/COPD exacerbation. So you can see why it's super helpful to be able to reference a section in this book in the precious few minutes you have to figure out the plan for your patient.

Originally Posted by greatnt249

So does Epocrates, under "Pharmacology."

Anyway, Epocrates is useful for when people like to use brand names for medications, as well as dosing, adverse reactions/contraindications, and mechanism of action. Pocket Medicine is better suited for medical management/empiric treatments on the fly.

hmmmm, not sure how i missed that one. Thanks for the heads up! The residents often note too that epocrates is more accurate than medscape

Small reminder for the Epocrates fans: for the past couple years, they've offered a free year of Epocrates Essentials -- like free Epocrates plus disease entries -- to med students for a couple weeks or so in August.

Hopefully they do it again. Almost that time.

Originally Posted by exi

Small reminder for the Epocrates fans: for the past couple years, they've offered a free year of Epocrates Essentials -- like free Epocrates plus disease entries -- to med students for a couple weeks or so in August.

Hopefully they do it again. Almost that time.

Ooh nice please post & let us know if you come across this!

Originally Posted by futuredoctor10

Ooh nice please post & let us know if you come across this!

Looks like the 2012 link is live:

http://www.epocrates.com/e/FreeforMedicalStudents2012