Book questions

[OldPsychDoc]

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You all are closer to this than I am--

I'm course director for our hospital's MS3 psych rotation.
What books are actually HELPFUL for reading during the rotation? (As in--a student might actually read it and learn something from it... 🙄 )
As different students come to us with different interests, I would appreciate your recs for 1) the best book for future psychiatrists to read on their rotation; 2) the best book for the future NON-psychiatrist to read for understanding psychiatry; and 3) the best SHELF exam prep.

Thanks--the "next generation" thanks you as well.

 

[mosche]

You all are closer to this than I am--

I'm course director for our hospital's MS3 psych rotation.
What books are actually HELPFUL for reading during the rotation? (As in--a student might actually read it and learn something from it... 🙄 )
As different students come to us with different interests, I would appreciate your recs for 1) the best book for future psychiatrists to read on their rotation; 2) the best book for the future NON-psychiatrist to read for understanding psychiatry; and 3) the best SHELF exam prep.

Thanks--the "next generation" thanks you as well.

I don't really have much to compare it to, but we used Kaplan and Sadock's textbook. If we wanted more info, our department did a really good job of finding the best explanations/lectures/journal articles and gave them to us to supplement the text. Additionally, I had bought my Step II materials and used the videos to supplement my classroom lectures.

 

[nortomaso]

You all are closer to this than I am--

I'm course director for our hospital's MS3 psych rotation.
What books are actually HELPFUL for reading during the rotation? (As in--a student might actually read it and learn something from it... 🙄 )
As different students come to us with different interests, I would appreciate your recs for 1) the best book for future psychiatrists to read on their rotation; 2) the best book for the future NON-psychiatrist to read for understanding psychiatry; and 3) the best SHELF exam prep.

Thanks--the "next generation" thanks you as well.

For Shelf Exam Prep, if memory serves me correctly, the pretest was pretty much like the real thing, and prepared me exceedingly well. As far as actually learning something, I have two negative recommendations: don't have them read Cutler's book-- its overly verbose and heavily tilted toward psychoanalysis. And Blueprints is ridiculously thin, not containing anything that wouldn't be taught in an M2 intro to psychiatry course.

As for those students headed for psyc, I would advise them to review what they learned in second year, do practice questions as test prep, but then prepare them a "journal club" packet of useful review articles on bread and butter topics such as antipsychotics, how to recognize malingering, types of substance abuse and their treatment, suicide, etc. , plus a few interesting conceptual articles (Kendel's "a new intellectul framework for pychiatry", Kapur's "psychosis as a state of aberrant salience") to get their juices flowing. Anyway, sounds like a fun job, OldPsychDoc, I hope I'll have a go at it someday too. Good luck!

 

[nortomaso]

You all are closer to this than I am--

I'm course director for our hospital's MS3 psych rotation.
What books are actually HELPFUL for reading during the rotation? (As in--a student might actually read it and learn something from it... 🙄 )
As different students come to us with different interests, I would appreciate your recs for 1) the best book for future psychiatrists to read on their rotation; 2) the best book for the future NON-psychiatrist to read for understanding psychiatry; and 3) the best SHELF exam prep.

Thanks--the "next generation" thanks you as well.

For Shelf Exam Prep, if memory serves me correctly, the pretest was pretty much like the real thing, and prepared me exceedingly well. As far as actually learning something, I have two negative recommendations: don't have them read Cutler's book-- its overly verbose and heavily tilted toward psychoanalysis. And Blueprints is ridiculously thin, not containing anything that wouldn't be taught in an M2 intro to psychiatry course.

As for those students headed for psyc, I would advise them to review what they learned in second year, do practice questions as test prep, but then prepare them a "journal club" packet of useful review articles on bread and butter topics such as antipsychotics, how to recognize malingering, types of substance abuse and their treatment, suicide, etc. , plus a few interesting conceptual articles (Kendel's "a new intellectul framework for pychiatry", Kapur's "psychosis as a state of aberrant salience") to get their juices flowing. Anyway, sounds like a fun job, OldPsychDoc, I hope I'll have a go at it someday too. Good luck!

 

[Poety]

we read you the first time norto hehe j/k

OPD: (thats your new nickname, OPD, kinda like being down with OPP, but are you down with OPD? hehe I AM A DORK! ) Anyway, pretest is good for the exam, and I read Kaplan and Saddock synopsis - I did a lot of journal searches too but kaplan/sad was great for the basics of each disease and ofcourse the DSMIV comes in handy, its not fun to try and get the DSMIV criteria out of synopsis since it can be a bit confusing with the ICD criteria too.

And don't listen to Mosche, hes an overachiever getting all those step 2 prep books and VIDEOS I take it back, MOSCHE IS A DORK <rollin eyes round and round> just kidding mosche! you're a great student, send some of that this way wouldya? 👍

 

[watto]

One thing I would advise is that students have the most recent editions of whatever it is they're buying...nearly everything from two years ago will be out of date regarding management of bipolar disorder since the new 2006 practice guidelines (replacing the 2002 edition) and 2005 Texas algorithm came out. I'm pretty sure there were some Shelf questions regarding bipolar management that might be altered by the new info.

Some review articles would be great, for somatoform disorders I like Arthur Barsky's from the Journal of Psychosomatic Research in April 2004.

Having them print out the antidepressant side effects table from Up To Date and carry it around for future reference is also a good tip for the Shelf (which is uber-focused on side fx).

 

[MDgonnabe]

i liked this book a lot, though i found it far too late to help me with my rotation. ah well. it's kinda hard to get a hold of it. i ordered my copy from amazon, though i'd originally run into it in my school's library of all places.