Pharmacology...

[colts]

Is First Aid all you need for Pharmacology?

I read in a bunch different posts that First Aid covers all the pharm you need, is this true?

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[shan564]

I feel like there have been at least 2-3 threads to discuss this in the last week. The general consensus is that there's no easy umbrella answer that applies to every situation, so you'll have to give us some more details about you if you want an answer that's different from what you "read in a bunch of different posts."

Nobody knows "everything you need" for any subject, but the general consensus has been that First Aid covers most of the pharmacology that you'll see on the exam. That said, pharm is a very conceptual field, and First Aid is not meant for teaching concepts (it's there for revising facts) - so if pharm isn't a strength for you, you'd probably benefit from using another resource in addition.

 

[Phloston]

Bare minimum: First Aid

Good: First Aid + anything encountered in the QBanks (annotate into FA)

Great: As above + Lange Pharmacology cards (annotate into FA)

Excellent: As above + Brenner pharmacology cards (annotate into FA)

--> Before the exam, (obviously) review your annotated FA.

 

[doclemon]

Excellent: As above + Brenner pharmacology cards (annotate into FA)

--> Before the exam, (obviously) review your annotated FA.

Erm, i've been following SDN for a while, and i remember a post comparing lange vs brenner, oh , yeah http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showthread.php?t=900606

I got lange cards based on this post, but, now, it comes under great Any particular thing about the brenner cards that changed your mind?

 

[SteinUmStein]

Erm, i've been following SDN for a while, and i remember a post comparing lange vs brenner, oh , yeah http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showthread.php?t=900606

I got lange cards based on this post, but, now, it comes under great Any particular thing about the brenner cards that changed your mind?

Same. I had heard the Brenner cards were too involved. Hopefully lange is enough...

 

[ijn]

The pharmacology NBME questions are all very superficial. I sincerely doubt you'd need more than First Aid if you went to a decent US medical school.

 

[Phloston]

Good point as far as that previous post is concerned.

I would not recommend the Brenner cards without having first gone through the Lange ones. As I said before, I've found them very non-specific, particularly with respect to side-effects, so I feel they're not the best study tool for Step1 study. However, they do introduce drug names that are not found in the other resources, so if you have time, I would flip through the Brenner cards and annotate those additional drug names into FA and do minor research on them, but no, I would not recommend assiduously studying them as you would the other resources.

Bottom line: In terms of actually learning and internalizing the drug information, I feel the Brenner cards do not help much, but they still provide additional drug names that might be worth the flip-through.

 

[JackShephard MD]

Can anyone comment on these two books, which they think is better to use during a Pharm course?

Pharmacology (Lippincott's Illustrated Reviews Series)
Katzung & Trevor's Pharmacology Examination and Board Review, Ninth Edition

 

[AndyRSC]

Katzung Pharm Review is the core book that most of my classmates and I myself have used. It's very well-written, contains most salient points from the full Clinical Pharm text while leaving out the minutiae, and refreshes the same high-yield concepts as FA and UW at the end of every chapter.
I've heard good things about Lippincott, and do own an older edition, but have honestly only taken it off the shelf a few times during the first two years, to seek additional details on some topic. As its name implies, it's rich in illustrations and diagrams. I imagine a very visual person would benefit more from it than I did, as some of the illustrations in it nicely sum up major concepts or drug groups. Personally, I haven't felt this to be as critical for the study of pharmacology as, say, anatomy, and prefer the 2-3 page summaries of whole drug groups that Katzung provides.