Neuro, Physio, Immuno....Good book suggestions for MS1

[NRAI2001]

Neuro, physio, and immuno.......book suggestions for MS1.

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[ZagDoc]

What your school recommends (or more important, what MS2s at your school recommend). Lecturers often take test Q's either direct from that, or, more often, directly from their notes. Having a different "better" textbook won't help you during the courses.

 

[DoctaJay]

ZagDoc was right on the money. For my neuroscience class I didnt' use any books because the class notes were so thorough. It may be different at your school. I would reccommend Physiology by Costanzo, but you might find that you like Boron more than Costanzo, so it really is better to wait until school starts and see what the 2nd years used. I wasted so much money because I didn't follow this advice. Don't make the same mistake I did.

 

[cpants]

I kind of disagree with what Zag says. IMO, a better book will help you in the class. I think the best idea is to find out what the best text on the subject is and get that. Although all the books have pretty much the same material in them, some of them are much better written and have better diagrams. Professors often are not good at picking the best book for students. They will pick something because it emphasizes one thing over another, a friend wrote it, or some other criterion which isn't readability and clarity. I would only definitely get the recommended book if the prof himself wrote it, because then you will often see similar questions.

For physio, I can't recommend Costanzo highly enough. Best book of med school so far. For neuro I used Siegel, but it wasn't great.

 

[ZagDoc]

I kind of disagree with what Zag says. IMO, a better book will help you in the class. I think the best idea is to find out what the best text on the subject is and get that. Although all the books have pretty much the same material in them, some of them are much better written and have better diagrams. Professors often are not good at picking the best book for students. They will pick something because it emphasizes one thing over another, a friend wrote it, or some other criterion which isn't readability and clarity. I would only definitely get the recommended book if the prof himself wrote it, because then you will often see similar questions.

For physio, I can't recommend Costanzo highly enough. Best book of med school so far. For neuro I used Siegel, but it wasn't great.

Certainly everyone has different learning styles and the OP may find out that textbooks are the best way for him or her to learn.

But as far as buying textbooks the summer before MS1, its really throwing money away. Unless the books are explicitly tied to your course, you may never end up using it. No one knows the ropes better than the students at the school the OP is attending, since curriculum and teaching methods vary so greatly from school to school, so I'd strongly recommend waiting until the first week of school when they can pick the brain of someone who knows what will work best for them.

Our school distributed a little booklet put together by the MS2s at orientation, which for each of our classes had survey results from the entire class. They listed every "required" book for every first year class, what % of the class actually bought it, and what percent of those who bought it would recommend it. Thing has saved me HUNDREDS of dollars this year.

 

[cpants]

That's good advice zag. I definitely wasted money buying required books that just gathered dust on my shelf. Wait until school starts, find out what the best is, and get it (preferably used from an older student).

 

[EMH]

Neuro, physio, and immuno.......book suggestions for MS1.

The Costanzo BRS Phys gets a lot of love from many. I thought that the Young, Young, and Taylor Clinical neuroscience was good (especially the PBL clinical cases), but I like smaller readable books. If you take Biochem the Lippincott's illustrated biochemistry is absolute gold. Lippincott also came out with a new Gross atlas half way through last year that I picked up late in the year and loved due to it's cleaner, less cluttered presentation than Netter.

The above posters are correct however. Your course will differ from my course and the way you learn is different than me. I find myself purchasing way too many books and then gradually picking the ones I like. Yea I'm wasting money but it's worth it to me.

 

[Law2Doc]

Neuro, physio, and immuno.......book suggestions for MS1.

Agree with the above. Your primary resource is likely going to be your note set and lecture notes on all those courses, so it's not like college where you will be reading from a textbook. As for secondary resources, Find out what your school recommends. Then try to buy it second hand from upperclassmen. No good reason to buy them or look at them ahead of time. You will be wasting your time, your focus will be all wrong. Best to relax and plan to hit the ground running, hard, on day 1 after orientation.

 

[cpants]

With review books, go to the medical bookstore and look through all the different review books for the subject. Surprisingly, a lot of people blindly buy BRS for each subject, but usually a different series is the best for each subject.

I recommend:
BRS physio by Costanzo
High Yield Neuroanatomy by Fix
Rapid Review Biochemistry and Lippincott's Illustrated Review Biochem(awesome)

 

[gdk]

you'll need an anatomy book of course: netter and/or rohan "color atlas of anatomy" which i really liked.
also, agreed with above, find out from ms2's at your school.
otherwise, board review series phsyiology is usually pretty good and goljan rapid reveiw pathology is something you might use a lot in 2nd year.
you could also go ahead and buy first aid for step 1 and start making notes in it through 1st and 2nd year so you'll have (mostly) everything you need in one book

 

[NRAI2001]

I have already completed half of my first year here at SGU. So i have taken Anatomy, histo, embryo, biochem, ethics this past semester.

Next term I take physio, neuro, immuno primarily with a short 3 weeks of genetics and parisitology. The problem with SGU is that the book store sucks and carries random books with probably very little actual use. They had like 10 to 20 of each BRS book for a class of like 400. So i basically need to buy any book I may expect to use this summer before I head back.

I have BRS for physio and neuro already (both are excellent books; used them during my masters). Was thinking about buy BRS and High yield for Immuno?

Any other books you guys may recommend? Particularly interested in problems/cases books and also clincally correlated books.

Thanks

 

[ubcredfox]

I recommend buying the Q&A book that supplements Robins and Cotran; they have some pretty decent questions in there. I also used MKSAP 3 for questions that pertained to whatever system block I was studying. I think that really reinforces absolutely key concepts.

 

[LabMonster]

I have BRS for physio and neuro already (both are excellent books; used them during my masters). Was thinking about buy BRS and High yield for Immuno?

Any other books you guys may recommend? Particularly interested in problems/cases books and also clincally correlated books.

Thanks

I thought HY immuno was sufficient for Step 1 - otherwise follow with the recommended text. Immuno get so deep so fast that you can get lost in details unimportant in the grand scheme.

I'm a big fan of the entire Recall series - I really like Neuro Recall - wish I would have used it during my Neuro block (I will definitely use during my neuro rotation.)

I also think the Case Files series - Peds is very good for HY clinical info.

 

[remo]

The back of First Aid has a good review of many books that are best for Step 1. I have tended to agree with most of the ratings given there. They cover most of the BRS, HY, etc.. for each class.

 

[EMH]

NEURO: I thought the BRS Neuro was the weakest BRS I've used so far. I used the USMLE Road Map: Neuroscience to study for the NBME Shelf exam and scored well above what I expected to get. As I said previously, I also loved the Young Young & Taylor Clinical Neuroscience and used the clinical cases to study in a group with much success.