Anatomy/Physiology textbook recommendations for an incoming med student

[deleted1053887]

Hi all, I have been very fortunate to have been accepted to a med school (Iowa Carver, and have some more interviews coming). A lot of my current med students friends, my mom (former physician), and other advisors (also physicians) have recommended that I start looking over some anatomy or physiology textbooks so I don't get swamped when I enter next fall. Could current med students please give me any recommendations for textbooks or resources I could look into? Thank you!

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[M&L]

dont buy textbooks. At all.

instead go online, Anatomy Guy - The Vertically Integrated Education Site. this is a free resource, the guy is my professor, and the content is amazing.

 

[deleted1079620]

If you just like books (I do), I highly recommend Costanzo Physiology. The language is clear and the chapters are well organized and thorough.

 

[7331poas]

costanzo 100%

Also no need to really study from it. If anything your first class is going to be biochem/genetics most likely

 

[deleted1053887]

costanzo 100%

Also no need to really study from it. If anything your first class is going to be biochem/genetics most likely

Do you recommend brushing up on subjects like biochem/genetics? Every snapchat or pic I receive from my med school student friends is just of them slaving over their notes lol

 

[7331poas]

Do you recommend brushing up on subjects like biochem/genetics? Every snapchat or pic I receive from my med school student friends is just of them slaving over their notes lol

Not really. I actually did advocate before, but now that step 1 is pass fail there really is no value in knowing the content better than the passing score.

 

[Matthew9Thirtyfive]

There is zero reason to prestudy anything. Just get familiar with anki if you aren’t already.

 

[jurassicpark]

If you want to get a head start on anatomy, there's no harm. I would not recommend you slaving over them before you start medical school, you should enjoy some last minute freedom, or as much as you can in the time of COVID. Catch up on Netflix, the Disney+. The important stuff. Cyberpunk 2077 comes out next week too.

But Netters is always a good one to just browse through, and most importantly it looks good on your shelf years later.

 

[stickgirl390]

Do you recommend brushing up on subjects like biochem/genetics? Every snapchat or pic I receive from my med school student friends is just of them slaving over their notes lol

That will be you as well, regardless of how much you prestudy. Welcome to the grind!

 

[deleted1079620]

Do you recommend brushing up on subjects like biochem/genetics? Every snapchat or pic I receive from my med school student friends is just of them slaving over their notes lol

They’re slaving over their notes due to volume and pace of medical school, and because they haven’t figured out truly efficient study methods. Even then, expect to put in several hours every day to stay on top of the material. No amount of pre-studying will save you from that, but learning how you learn best and how to use active study methods will get you a long way while your peers scramble to stay afloat.

 

[7331poas]

They’re slaving over their notes due to volume and pace of medical school, and because they haven’t figured out truly efficient study methods. Even then, expect to put in several hours every day to stay on top of the material. No amount of pre-studying will save you from that, but learning how you learn best and how to use active study methods will get you a long way while your peers scramble to stay afloat.

Meh not always true. If you learn biochem ahead of time then you won't be slaving over biochem. Personally I pre-studied every block for med school. For instance I would finish zanki for renal while in cardio. The work ends up being exactly the same, but you are more familiar with the material come test time.

All that being said, there is no point in "being more comfortable with the content" post-step 1 since the level of knowledge you need for a pass/fail test is way lower.

 

[Matthew9Thirtyfive]

Meh not really true. If you learn biochem ahead of time then you won't be slaving over biochem. Personally I pre-studied every block for med school. For instance I would finish zanki for renal while in cardio. The work ends up being exactly the same, but you are more familiar with the material come test time.

All that being said, there is no point in "being more comfortable with the content" post-step 1 since the level of knowledge you need for a pass/fail test is way lower.

You were studying for the next block while still in the block before it? That sounds miserable and is totally not necessary.

 

[7331poas]

You were studying for the next block while still in the block before it? That sounds miserable and is totally not necessary.

Its not miserable at all. Its exactly the same amount of work except shifted. I actually highly recommend it for past medical students since it allows you to finish preclinical earlier and gives a full block to study step 1 or work on research.

It also makes tests weeks very relaxing since you already know the content.

 

[Matthew9Thirtyfive]

Its not miserable at all. Its exactly the same amount of work except shifted. I actually highly recommend it for past medical students since it allows you to finish preclinical earlier and gives a full block to study step 1 or work on research.

It also makes tests weeks very relaxing since you already know the content.

Maybe for you. Maybe I’m just stupid, I can’t take a test on something I studied a month ago and have been learning unrelated stuff the entire time in between and expect to do well.

 

[Redpancreas]

Hi all, I have been very fortunate to have been accepted to a med school (Iowa Carver, and have some more interviews coming). A lot of my current med students friends, my mom (former physician), and other advisors (also physicians) have recommended that I start looking over some anatomy or physiology textbooks so I don't get swamped when I enter next fall. Could current med students please give me any recommendations for textbooks or resources I could look into? Thank you!

Congratulations! That's an outstanding achievement. You've earnt this on your own merit and your accomplishments demonstrate you will be able to handle the rigors without pre-study. This bolded advice is not optimal and is likely them projecting them not doing well in anatomy onto you in attempt to help you. It can be done (see below) but it's extremely inefficient because you do not know what professors will emphasize/focus on, the pressure-cooker mentality is not there, and you will get stuck on a lot of little things that won't make sense to you until you learn them systematically. Even the most disciplined, well-designed, daily study pattern from tomorrow until next August will likely result in you covering the first month of material (which is you quite an accomplishment) because most gunners get through about a week's material. If you're ambitious, take time to challenge your processes (meal prep, exercise routine, stress management, etc.) because that will translate to overall success next year.


Anyways, if you want to do it... 1) Netter's plates and asking an upperclassmen for the 2) anatomy course notes for 2019-2020 discreetly. For each muscle, make a flash card with insertion, origin, function, innervation. For each nerve, focus on what it innervates and its pathway. For each organ, focus on its spatial relationships (what it communicates with). For physiology is buying 1) Physiology by Costanzo 2) Download Zanki and review the Costanzo tags will help you self-study. Edit: Supplement with Anatomy Guy above. Looks pretty cool. Wouldn't recommend the prosections at this point but the general principles may be useful. Please keep us updated if this works for you. You will pave the way for future overachievers.

 

[Vyzzle]

Do you recommend brushing up on subjects like biochem/genetics? Every snapchat or pic I receive from my med school student friends is just of them slaving over their notes lol

For every student you see slaving over their notes there are 5 that aren't. You're going to see more struggling on snapchat/IG than not so definitely don't stress over it.

You're more likely to be stuck slaving over your notes if you start utilizing multiple resources to learn the same thing. Use the next 6-8 months to r e l a x to the best extent you can. Work and save money / pay down private debt, pick up or continue your hobbies, etc.

The only thing I could recommend "pre-studying" is maybe learning how to use Anki as it's quite an effective tool when used appropriately. I'd check out the AnKing series on YouTube. Pre-studying has always been a waste, but with Step 1 going P/F it's even a bigger waste now honestly.

 

[AnonymousDoctorGuyPerson]

I actually made a thread about pre-studying last year and ended up taking the advice to not pre-study. I regret nothing. Had more time as an above poster said to work, save money, advance my hobbies, etc., and I couldn't be doing any better even if I did pre-study.

 

[FutureOrtho2024]

I used Silverthorn's Human Physiology in undergrad and now in MS1 (and into MS2) we use Medical Physiology by Guyton and Hall. If you want to evaluate books before buying them, check out pdfdrive.com. You can't always get the most recent edition for copyright reasons, but you can get most books in an older edition sufficient to compare and see what you prefer. Medical school is fast and furious, so if you haven't taken human phys before, its a good foundational class. If you have taken some phys class, move on to anatomy. The other undergrad course that is paying dividends now is Histology, which you can teach yourself while the pace is slow using a book and online microscope slides and online self-tests. If you could list what you have taken already and what you plan to take before school, we may be able to give you a better-focused target of subjects to cover. At my school, the first semester is spent getting students up to par on a broad range of topics before we plunge next semester into organ based systems, and it included biochemistry and cell biology, anatomy, genetics and histology, then pathology ad immunology, and now we are working on medical microbiology. Students who have taken all of these as biology majors have a significant advantage over those who haven't. I had taken all of these except pathology and anatomy, and those are the two that I struggled the most with. My school's policy is if you fail any 1 of those 5 fundamentals classes, you can retake it over Christmas break, but if you fail 2 or more, you repeat MS1 entirely.

 

[deleted966164]

There is no time to read textbooks...

 

[deleted849476]

+1 for Costanzo, I read it cover-to-cover and took notes in the month before school started. It helped me in physio and biochem, and physio hit our class really hard for whatever reason. It just gave me a little boosted confidence and a primer to taking 8-hour study days seriously instead of just jumping in cold. Only caveat is pace yourself, don’t sprint or you’ll crash later in the semester. Read it and really try to learn the concepts and don’t worry about memorizing details. All of this only if you must pre study.

 

[Matthew9Thirtyfive]

There is no need to read textbooks...

Fixed that for you.

 

[Angus Avagadro]

Your entire college bio chem course will be the first exam. Pre studying won't help much. Better to identify what kind of learner you are. Visual, auditory, etc.. There are tests online. Congrats on your admission.

 

[AnonymousDoctorGuyPerson]

Lol. The people chatsnapping or whatever the kids call them nowadays are probably not even studying in the first place and most likely have the attention span of squirrels.

I have the attention span of a squirrel can confirm. Fortunately very efficient in my studying haha

 

[T687]

I think that prestudying is not necessary, but it is helpful if you have spare time that you don't have a better use for. I honestly don't understand how people believe that it isn't helpful. I wouldn't recommend prestudying anatomy though, unless you know which structures your school tests. If you don't have that information, then you're going to waste time learning structures and information that you don't need to know and it's completely impractical to try to learn everything.

IMO, the best way to prestudy is by focusing on a specific subject and using that subject to familiarize yourself with the 3rd party resources and anki. For example, you could probably just spend 30 minutes a day watching a sketchy video or 2 and unsuspending the anking cards and you'll have basically all of it done by the time school starts. My personal recommendation would be to either do sketchy, which is mostly rote memorization, or to use BnB and go through a foundational topic like biochem, immunology, biostats, etc. and save the physiology for once you're actually in school.

Is it necessary to prestudy? Not at all. If you start school with all of biochem or sketchy matured in anking will you have more free time in med school? Probably. It's really up to you if you want to enjoy your time now and focus harder in school or if you want to cover the material over an extra 6 months in a more leisurely way. I personally prestudied and, while I 100% would have been completely fine without it, my only prestudying regret is that I didn't do more of it. You already have to retain the information for at least 2 years. Adding 6 months to that isn't any more unreasonable using something like anki. The argument that people frequently make that the volume is so high in med school that you can't possibly prestudy enough to be worth it doesn't make any sense to me because nothing changes once school starts that makes you suddenly more capable of handling the massive volume. If anything, that's more of an argument to prestudy.

 

[AnonymousDoctorGuyPerson]

Might also be wise to study statistics as an alternative to pre-studying, especially with research becoming even more important. This is probably the only chance that OP will have time to do so over the next few years.

I shouldve added this - outside of work I spent my free time the 3 or 4 months before med school learning stats and R (definitely no pro at R but quite comfortable with it now)

Has been super useful for getting on projects and getting them done timely, no middle man needed.

 

[deleted1053887]

Did the exact same thing. Finishing up 7 projects halfway through MS1. On pace for 55 papers ready by the end of M3 and around 70 by the end of med school. And for those who say that's unrealistic, it's possible. Know a guy who matched into nsg who had 70ish papers published in med school.

....That is unfortunate. I learned R in college and use a little for my job but I absolutely dislike coding, which is why I never wanted to be a computer science major :/ But I guess I'll just suck it up for med school.

Thanks for the advice everyone :0 and happy holidays!

 

[NeedSomeAdviceGuy]

R is more scripting than coding. Understanding the stats is more important and the code will later on just be copy/paste with a few alterations to the variables. I probably recycle 90 percent of my code. Also, probably what you'll hate even more is waiting for a statistician to take 3 weeks to run a logistic regression, something that you can do yourself in 2 hours. Do your research and find a good book tha teaches stats with R applications.

One of the great things about learning stats is that you also become faster at reading the literature and better at designing studies. During journal clubs at my school, I've noticed that I'm able to analyze papers more in depth compared to my classmates.

You sound super productive, mind answering a couple questions?

• What did you use to teach yourself the relevant stats?
• What did you use to teach yourself R?
• What kind of projects are you on and how did you approach the PI about these specific types of projects that allowed you to get 7 out in a semester?

Thanks friend!

 

[Matthew9Thirtyfive]

....That is unfortunate. I learned R in college and use a little for my job but I absolutely dislike coding, which is why I never wanted to be a computer science major :/ But I guess I'll just suck it up for med school.

Thanks for the advice everyone :0 and happy holidays!

You don’t need even remotely close to those kind of numbers.

 

[AnonymousDoctorGuyPerson]

You don’t need even remotely close to those kind of numbers.

Aye, the skills are useful - and can definitely help you be extremely productive - but it isn't necessary either. Also, it may not be something you're interested in, and if you aren't don't worry about it and focus on things you'd actually enjoy.