internship survival guides in med and psych

[MDhasbeen]

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i found these for my pocket pc. i'm a pocket pc freak. i'd rather lug one hunk of metal around than several books.

at any rate, i asked around at my program and everyone seems to prefer a different on call book. some people used none at all (which i guess you could get away with in our age of computers). meanwhile, i heard great things about on call psych from these boards, but haven't been able to find a copy at our bookstore.

to those of you who've used them: do you think the internship survival guides in med and psych are worthwhile? reading the reviews (or lack thereof) on amazon.com got me concerned (wrong formulas??? ugh!). 😕

 

[fiatslug]

For Medicine, I think I carried a small 3-ring binder type intern pocket guide--forget the name, think it came from Hopkins or MGH? That was helpful. That, and 24 hr access to Up to Date. 🙂

For psych, I didn't really use one, so I can't really comment about their value. ER assessment is partly knowing how to take a psych H&P, partly knowing your DSM, and partly intuitive... we were always encouraged to call back up to discuss cases. As an intern, we got the message that we'd never get "in trouble" for being too conservative with admissions. I'm more of a learn-by-doing rather than reading kind of gal anyway.

What do you start with?

 

[MDhasbeen]

For Medicine, I think I carried a small 3-ring binder type intern pocket guide--forget the name, think it came from Hopkins or MGH? That was helpful. That, and 24 hr access to Up to Date. 🙂

For psych, I didn't really use one, so I can't really comment about their value. ER assessment is partly knowing how to take a psych H&P, partly knowing your DSM, and partly intuitive... we were always encouraged to call back up to discuss cases. As an intern, we got the message that we'd never get "in trouble" for being too conservative with admissions. I'm more of a learn-by-doing rather than reading kind of gal anyway.

What do you start with?

i'm starting with psych, but go right into er from there in september (no idea why haha). i'm not freaking out too much because i am good with computers and could probably find some way to use uptodate to help me out if needed. but there are obviously things which even uptodate doesn't cover. some of the things on these survival guides are so incredibly bare bones that i'd imagine after the first few nights of call you kinda memorize the protocol your hospital has and that's what you use regardless of what these books say. at least i think that's another reason why the pgy-2's hadn't used many books.

oh, and the three ring binder thingie: is this the book? i used that book on my med sub-i. seemed more geared towards diagnosis/pathophysiology rather than treatment. very helpful, but i wanted something that's more practical so that when i get paged at 4 am on both med and psych and find myself totally mindless, i can kinda look something up in a no-brainer format and order it. make sense?

and thanks for the input!

 

[Poety]

Im using on call psychiatry hon, hope that helps. Book is small enough, and not too shabby.

 

[Anasazi23]

This book (Practical Guide to the Care of the Medical Patient) is more treatment-oriented. Some seem to like it a lot. I got a free copy, but was pretty much done with medicine by the time I got a hold of it. I still keep a Wash. Manual in my locker though. Hard to go wrong with that. Sometimes I need to pull it out in a pinch.

Keep in mind that you'll be making internal medicine friends quickly, and that they're only a phone-call away. Believe me, they won't mind calling you when that schizophrenic with the PE hits the floor with 5 psych meds.
😎

 

[fiatslug]

at least i think that's another reason why the pgy-2's hadn't used many books.

Most of our residents didn't use pocketbooks either (at least for psych).

oh, and the three ring binder thingie: is this the book?

Yep! I have an earlier edition. Yeah, as far as practical stuff goes, I liked that book b/c it had room for annotation--the specific nitty gritty orders, etc needed for that pt.

Remember, the most important thing to surviving overnight call on any service: make sure pts are prn'd, for sleepers, agitation, pain, etc. I'm amazed (and irked! 😡 ) at how frequently I get calls at 1 am for a pt on the psych unit who doesn't have orders for Trazodone, Tylenol, etc. Same thing on medicine, esp w/cross cover pts--ugh.

 

[Poety]

i'm starting with psych, but go right into er from there in september (no idea why haha). i'm not freaking out too much because i am good with computers and could probably find some way to use uptodate to help me out if needed. but there are obviously things which even uptodate doesn't cover. some of the things on these survival guides are so incredibly bare bones that i'd imagine after the first few nights of call you kinda memorize the protocol your hospital has and that's what you use regardless of what these books say. at least i think that's another reason why the pgy-2's hadn't used many books.

oh, and the three ring binder thingie: is this the book? i used that book on my med sub-i. seemed more geared towards diagnosis/pathophysiology rather than treatment. very helpful, but i wanted something that's more practical so that when i get paged at 4 am on both med and psych and find myself totally mindless, i can kinda look something up in a no-brainer format and order it. make sense?

and thanks for the input!

changs "medicine" is tiny and loaded with what to order, where to admit, what to ask, etc etc - i like that book a lot, ive been reviewing it, although Im going to have to review outpt not inpt medicine 🙂