Best Medical Journals

[mas1996]

What are good journals/magazines/publications that are more appropriate for college students? I might be interested in those to help familiarize myself with medical vocabulary.

---

Members don't see this ad.

 

[AntiHouseMD]

Try the pre-med forum for this.

 

[mmmcdowe]

What are good journals/magazines/publications that are more appropriate for college students? I might be interested in those to help familiarize myself with medical vocabulary.

JAMA maybe. Or just go to a magazine rack and find one that is related to medicine or science.

 

[aSagacious]

Very few are aimed at college students. Here are a few prestigious journals:

- NEJM
- JAMA
- Nature
- Science
- Cell
- PNAS

... just to name a few. However I wouldn't expect you to be able to understand 99% of anything in these. You could just take a look to get a feel for what a professional paper looks like.

 

[loveoforganic]

Subscribe to medical-related rss feeds

 

[AdorableSatan]

If you want to know about the research then I boil it down and then link to everything relevant for those interested. Check it out: http://reuptake.org

Otherwise, eurekalert.org

 

[Powdermonkey]

Sign up for Journal Watch and you'll get the highlights from a number of different journals without having to read through all the other crap you don't care about. Just google journal watch. You can sign up for different specialties as well. I think it's through the NEJM.

 

[Venko]

Each journal has an "impact factor" which ranks its importance in medical literature. If you find a particular journal and are curious if it is important or not, consider using this as a metric.

Also, each specialty has their own notable journal. The only journal that is truly respected beyond its specialty is the New England Journal of Medicine.

 

[Caesar]

True that a journal with a dozen meta analysis articles testing if Drug A prevented heart attacks better than Drug B in 10 years in a specific community is high impact, but I personally enjoy reading the lower impact journals that focus on actual clinical medicine and unusual clinical cases.

A lot of mexican public health and PCP magazines do that very well without annoying filler. When you're working at 3 am in the morning and want to study a little, chances are you're less likely to snooze on the keyboard reading something more fun and practical.

I know several spanish speaking medical journals I read from time to time (such as the Hospital General de Mexico journal to name one), but they are 100% spanish and I don't know how many of you guys can actually read the language well enough to enjoy it.

....
1. 99.9% of people here are from the U.S., why would they read a spanish only journal that will inevitably contain irrelevant information?

2. Why are you all reading medical journals in the first place?! I only read them when absolutely needed.

3. Read Newsweek. If you want something science, pick a basic science journal that your university subscribes to, but even that is serious overkill. No one reads those cover to cover, you read what is relevant to what you do.

 

[owlegrad]

2. Why are you all reading medical journals in the first place?! I only read them when absolutely needed.

Yeah, I wanted to second that. No one reads medical journals for pleasure.

 

[Morsetlis]

If you wanted to read something medical, read the Richard Selzer books for inspiration.

Rituals of Surgery (1973)
Mortal Lessons: Notes on the Art of Surgery (1976)
Confessions of a Knife (1979)
Letters to a Young Doctor (1982)
Taking the World in for Repairs (1986)
Imagine a Woman (1990)
A Mile and a Half of Ink (1990)
Down from Troy: A Doctor Comes of Age (1992; autobiography)
Raising the Dead: A Doctor’s Encounter with His Own Mortality (1993)
The Doctor Stories (1998)
The Exact Location of the Soul: New and Selected Essays (2001)
The Whistler's Room: Stories and Essays (2004)
Knife Song Korea: A novel (2009)
Letters to a Best Friend (2009; with Peter Josyph)

 

[rmaj79]

What are good journals/magazines/publications that are more appropriate for college students? I might be interested in those to help familiarize myself with medical vocabulary.

If you want to familiarize yourself with medical vocabulary, one thing that I found helpful in high school was taking an EMS First Responder class... it's definitely more fun than reading a dry journal, plus you get to see lots of cool gory pictures and stick your friends with diabetes needles. Also as far as reading goes I would recommend Mountains Beyond Mountains, as well as Rendezvous with Clouds- I just couldn't ever get into the Richard Selzer stuff but to each his own.

 

[zwitterion34]

I second JAMA. 😎

 

[loveoforganic]

2. Why are you all reading medical journals in the first place?! I only read them when absolutely needed.

I don't read medical articles, but I'm just not at that point. I have however read a lot of psychology articles. How are you supposed to interpret the quality of the research/impact of the results without going into the article? Are you just content with abstracts? Or are you not concerned with it at all currently, just being a med student?

In case my writing makes me sound pretentious or snide, that isn't the tone I was going for. Just curious

 

[mmmcdowe]

I don't read medical articles, but I'm just not at that point. I have however read a lot of psychology articles. How are you supposed to interpret the quality of the research/impact of the results without going into the article? Are you just content with abstracts? Or are you not concerned with it at all currently, just being a med student?

In case my writing makes me sound pretentious or snide, that isn't the tone I was going for. Just curious

When you are learning the basics, trying to catch the recent advances can be pretty slow going. Unless you are presenting on a topic, you are generally better off with high yield materials focused on medical student education (in my opinion). I do research on the side, and so in these areas I have read up on recent articles that are relevant to me. If it is a top journal in the field, I will sometimes skim the article after reading the abstract unless I genuinely am not satisfied with the abstract or need to know the bigger picture for citation purposes.

 

[loveoforganic]

When you are learning the basics, trying to catch the recent advances can be pretty slow going. Unless you are presenting on a topic, you are generally better off with high yield materials focused on medical student education (in my opinion). I do research on the side, and so in these areas I have read up on recent articles that are relevant to me. If it is a top journal in the field, I will sometimes skim the article after reading the abstract unless I genuinely am not satisfied with the abstract or need to know the bigger picture for citation purposes.

Gotcha, thanks!

 

[Instatewaiter]

JAMA is more approachable and easier to read. It is probably better from HS and college students. NEJM is better when you get to med school (more like residency).

 

[mas1996]

Thanks guys! 😀

 

[aSagacious]

By the way, thought you hSDN gunners would like to know that we just launched the SDN Interdisciplinary Journal Club so feel free to stop by and get involved in the discussions. 😀

Welcome to the SDN interdisciplinary journal club! This is a place where students and practitioners of all fields can get together and discuss the latest literature and how it will impact their practice.

Every two weeks, a new study will be posted, along with a review article of the topic and discussion guide, to be debated among the members. The studies posted will be selected to have a broad appeal across many professions and many specialties, so that every user of SDN will be able to get something out of it.

We encourage members from every background and educational level to participate in this forum. Hopefully we can all learn from unfamiliar perspectives and unique viewpoints while taking new information to our own practices.

Thanks, and enjoy!

 

[owlegrad]

By the way, thought you hSDN gunners would like to know that we just launched the SDN Interdisciplinary Journal Club so feel free to stop by and get involved in the discussions. 😀

I thought that was a derogatory term? Or is it ok for one gunner to call another gunner that as a term of endearment?

Good link though. 👍