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Can anyone recommend a good book to study from for 3rd year surgery Boards and on the floor? I've heard Surgical Recall is great. Any other suggesetions?
Surgical Recall is useful for reading during down time during the day, i.e. the 10-15 minutes as the patient is getting prepped, you can read some quick facts about the topic related to the case you are scrubbing in. It doesn't provide the deeper explanations a real textbook would, however it does a good job of predicting some common pimp questions.
For a text, you should use Lawrence's Essentials of General Surgery. For a textbook, it's actually pretty accessible and not too dense. I would read as many of the big topics as you can in Lawrence -- breast, biliary disease, colon cancer, etc. Then fill in the rest by at least reading the general surgery section of recall cover to cover. It is hard to get through all of Lawrence in the 6-8 weeks of a surgery rotation, but do your best.
I cut off the binding of my Lawrence text. By doing that, I could stuff the pages that I needed in my jacket pocket or inside my Surgical Recall for reading during downtime. When I was done with my rotation, I punched holes in the pages and put them in a binder. I ended up getting the pimp questions and getting my reading done on those long nights on call when I was babysitting a patient in radiology.
I cut off the binding of my Lawrence text. By doing that, I could stuff the pages that I needed in my jacket pocket or inside my Surgical Recall for reading during downtime. When I was done with my rotation, I punched holes in the pages and put them in a binder. I ended up getting the pimp questions and getting my reading done on those long nights on call when I was babysitting a patient in radiology.
Surgical Recall was the best for me, and I was able to answer most of my pimp questions pretty well - except of course for hernias. What is it about hernias and and amnesia, for me? Don't know about them, don't care about them.
Anywhoo, I did pretty well on the shelf with surg. recall and I also read the Lawrence book, which was ok. My favorite was Case Files, very excellent for the shelf. Plus the Pestana notes, if you can find them. I wasn't able to answer the last 11 questions but still did decent, and it was my first rotation so go figure ...
I also like Lange's Current Surgical Dx and Treatment for the relevant topics