Books for residency

[new intern]

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Hello everyone,

I matched this year in internal medicine and am new to this forum. I was wondering about the books that I should refer/study during internal medicine residency. I believe that there will not be enough time to study but still I wanted an input from the ppl here about the good books that are commonly used.

I saw few posts for books during residency in EM, FM, Radonc and ophthal but none for IM and that is the reason for the post.

Thank you very much everyone. Your input is appreciated.

 

[lemonade02]

good q . i'm wondering the same thing.

any thoughts on cmdt as a book to try to read intern year? seems concise and well-written. waste of time trying to read cover-->cover throughout the year?

 

[JayneCobb]

I am personally not a fan of the CMDT book, it always leaves me with more questions than answers. Pretty much the same with Harrison's/Cecil's.

What my program does which I like, is we have a weekly Cecil's club (which I'm changing to Harrison's next year) and every other week we have a board review using MKSAP with Medstudy readings as well.

IMHO, those make for a great foundation, but when you run into something new, find a good review article or Up To date and if you do that every time you find something slightly more rare, you'll learn a ton more that way than just plugging through the books.

 

[zeloc]

After some research, I came up with the following book list. Is this a reasonable list for a starting intern?

Pocket Medicine: The Massachusetts General Hospital Handbook of Internal Medicine (Spiral-bound)
Clinician's Pocket Drug Reference 2008- for dosing, medications. This seems more complete than Taracson's because it also has MOAs and side effects.
The Sanford Guide to Antimicrobial Therapy, 2007 - As a reference and to learn antibiotics. Is this the way to learn antibiotics?
The Johns Hopkins Internal Medicine Board Review 2008-2009 - For practice questions and to increase my knowledge.

Do I need an on call book such as Internal Medicine on Call or On Call Principles and Protocols?

What about a reference work or will I just use something like UptoDate?

 

[JayneCobb]

After some research, I came up with the following book list. Is this a reasonable list for a starting intern?

Pocket Medicine: The Massachusetts General Hospital Handbook of Internal Medicine (Spiral-bound)
Clinician's Pocket Drug Reference 2008- for dosing, medications. This seems more complete than Taracson's because it also has MOAs and side effects.
The Sanford Guide to Antimicrobial Therapy, 2007 - As a reference and to learn antibiotics. Is this the way to learn antibiotics?
The Johns Hopkins Internal Medicine Board Review 2008-2009 - For practice questions and to increase my knowledge.

Do I need an on call book such as Internal Medicine on Call or On Call Principles and Protocols?

What about a reference work or will I just use something like UptoDate?

You'll get tired of caring around the Washington Manual, but it is a good book.

The Sanford book is also good. What I found best to learn antibiotics is to use the chart in the Sanford which goes over the normal spectrum of antibiotic coverage, then learn which bugs are responsible for which drugs, then you'll slowly start to come up with more indepth lists of possibilities of drug combos/choices.

For references, UpToDate isn't bad, but I tend to use NEJM's review articles more often for specific conditions.

 

[zeloc]

I was thinking of the MGH Pocket Medicine INSTEAD OF the Washington Manual. Is this advisable?

What about my first nights on call? Should I get a book on that topic or will I pick it up after a few months? Thanks for the great suggestions.

 

[Captopril]

I'm not a resident, but I just finished my last Medicine rotation in my final year of med school, and I had both the MGH handbook and Washington Manual. I must say I preferred the MGH handbook a lot more...much more suited to be a coat-pocket manual with concise, relevant information. I assume on residency all you are looking for is SSx, DDx, Tx. MGH will hook all of that up without the filler.

 

[BMW19]

On call principles and protocols seems like a great book just from flipping through it. The great thing about it is it presents by complaint not disease. Pocket medicine is great but you better know that the patient has ascending cholangitis or you won't know what page to turn to! In P and P it does it in reverse i.e. chapter on abdominal pain gives you all the ddx and management of each dx.

The only 2 problems I think can be 1) it is older-latest edition is 2004 2) it is published in Canada and written by Canadian docs (no bias against Canadians I think they are great but some of the terminology and dosing is quirky and different than we are use to)

Don't know much about IM on Call....

After some research, I came up with the following book list. Is this a reasonable list for a starting intern?

Pocket Medicine: The Massachusetts General Hospital Handbook of Internal Medicine (Spiral-bound)
Clinician's Pocket Drug Reference 2008- for dosing, medications. This seems more complete than Taracson's because it also has MOAs and side effects.
The Sanford Guide to Antimicrobial Therapy, 2007 - As a reference and to learn antibiotics. Is this the way to learn antibiotics?
The Johns Hopkins Internal Medicine Board Review 2008-2009 - For practice questions and to increase my knowledge.

Do I need an on call book such as Internal Medicine on Call or On Call Principles and Protocols?
What about a reference work or will I just use something like UptoDate?

 

[OneFish TwoFish]

Keep your pockets LIGHT.

Sabatini's MGH Pocket medicine is the standard. Now in the red cover edition. I've discarded everything else.

While on call, I use Up to date for more detailed information, Lexi-drug (part of Up to date) for drug info, and as a last resort Pubmed for the occassional zebras.

For boards prep I do like MKSAP for the questions but it's overly dry and much too detailed to read. I went with the MKSAP online to do questions with my free time here and there. For a systematic review I did enjoy Medstudy's materials. High yield, and interesting to read, with 95% of what you'll need to know.

Hope that helps

 

[zeloc]

Does anyone have the Swartz book on physical diagnosis? Would it be useful? At >1000 pages, it would seem to be a good reference but amazon.com does not allow one to look inside and I'm not sure how much use I would have for it...

 

[gutonc]

Does anyone have the Swartz book on physical diagnosis? Would it be useful? At >1000 pages, it would seem to be a good reference but amazon.com does not allow one to look inside and I'm not sure how much use I would have for it...

You would have less than no use for it after you pass your MS2 physical diagnosis exam. And if you decide you need, it, DeGowin (the New Testament to Swartz' Old Testament of Physical Diagnosis) is available on StatRef which your library should have access to.

Anything you can't fit in your pocket (and half the things that do fit) will be ignored during residency.