Recomended Books..

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trackstarjr1

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Starting MS in the fall.. can anyone recomend some books to read over the holidays. anything to help me for the future.. books for boards etc. ? thanks

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The House of God
Tuesday's with Morrie
On Death and Dying

If you want a great book for physiology use the Board Review Series Physiology 3rd edition by Lippincott (I don't use anything else for that class).

My suggestion is to enjoy your time off, I did and I don't regret it. Take the money you would have spent on reapplying and go some place nice.

That being said, I would suggest looking at some Medical Terminology, go over the basic anatomy of the body (just to get a feel for where your head is in comparison to your %@#). Look at some biochemistry, if you want to memorize something you could start with glycolysis and Krebs (everyone has to do it). Now that you have done all that... you should be ready for the first day...


BTW congrats :thumbup:
 
DrB said:
If you want a great book for physiology use the Board Review Series Physiology 3rd edition by Lippincott (I don't use anything else for that class).

You only used BRS? Interesting.
 
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Well to be honest... I use the lecture powerpoint slides with BRS. The book we were supposed to get is huge, I only looked at it once... way more info than I needed.

The way I figure it, get myself ready for USMLE = getting ready for COMLEX = getting ready for block exams.

What do you use?
 
DrB said:
Well to be honest... I use the lecture powerpoint slides with BRS. The book we were supposed to get is huge, I only looked at it once... way more info than I needed.

The way I figure it, get myself ready for USMLE = getting ready for COMLEX = getting ready for block exams.

What do you use?


Guyton, I love it. I'm in a PBL program though, so no lecture ppts.
 
#1 Lippincott Biochem = the best book ever
#2 Stars Review Costanzo Physiology (and BRS for cramming), skip the big text
#3 Gartner Atlas for Histo, use websites and look at tons of images, the more the better. BRS for written stuff and notes
#4 Savarese OMT Review = essential
#5 I didn’t use a text for Genetics, depends on your school I guess

These are the books that I used the most last semester (in order), but I wouldn’t start studying until you get to school.
 
Before school, read House of God, by Samuel Shem, MD

You don't need to prepare for school. It won't help.

Books you will need for 1st year:

Anatomy: Rohen's Color Atlas + Netter's Atlas + BRS

Histology: Wheater's Atlas

OMT: Savarese's OMT Review

Physiology: BRS

Neuroanatomy: BRS
 
trackstarjr1 said:
Starting MS in the fall.. can anyone recomend some books to read over the holidays. anything to help me for the future.. books for boards etc. ? thanks

My advice: Don't read anything medically related before school starts --> You'll get plenty of this while in school. This is your last few months off before a LONG and arduous journey. Enjoy it while you can. Read something entertaining, like:

1) "Wicked - The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West" by Gregory Maguire
2) "Eragon" by Christopher Paolini
3) "The Complete Calvin and Hobbes" by Bill Watterson

If you MUST read something medical:

1) "House of God" by Samuel Shem
2) "First, Do No Harm" by Lisa Belkin

That's it.. I'm sure there are other books that may be recommended (even I have more I COULD mention), remember I said RELAX!!

calmo, calmo...

jd
 
Thanks ya'll. I've certainly been far less than serious in the past months. I'm a GA and teach A&P labs and I also took a bioethics and an adv syst physio class. I feel like ill be ready w/ all the fun out of my syst. b4 starting. How about any good websites to check out in down time???
 
Whatever you do, do not buy any biochem textbook by Marks. I would wait to buy each textbook until I'd been in the class a bit to see if I needed them. Most people I know study off the powerpoints and are good. If you have to mail order the book, you may want to take that into consideration. If you haven't had biochem, get Lippincotts Biochem review and KNOW it. Make sure you can draw the TCA cycle from memory with all associated enzymes with all the various entry/exit points. Make sure you can understand big picture relationships as well as minutae choke points.

The BRS Physiology, Cell Bio and Histology and Neuroanatomy are pretty good. Forget Netter's flashcards.

For neuro, and I'm being very serious here, get the Human Brain Coloring book and a good set of colored pencils. Work through that book and you've got neuroanatomy and a lot of physio down. Also, Clinical Neurology Made Ridiculously Simple is priceless.

The biggest thing to do to prepare for medical school is: NOTHING. No matter how much you think you're ready for it, you just won't understand until you're there. It's a big shock to go from a 4.0 to making C's and having to fight for them.

Congratulations. As a radiology resident once told me,"Medicine isn't about who's the smartest, it's about who can endure the most". So far, he's right. But I can't think of anything I'd rather be doing. I love my school, the Deans, professors, the curriculum and my classmates. I'm having the time of my life......no joke.....
 
I didn't take any sciences except for the pre-reqs before I started and I thought I'll be buying every review book out there - but waited. Glad I did because I haven't used ANY books since I started (the profs have plenty of info on powerpoints and word documents). Point is, I'd wait to see how things are going as opposed to "getting a head start". Now that I think about it (we took anatomy our first 6 weeks and finished it up) - I do recommend Netters and "Dead Body Book" by Rohen. Those are actually a must in my opinion.
 
The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down by Anne Fademan
Complications by Gawande
Spend a lot of time just relaxing and having fun!!!!
 
DrB said:
The House of God
Tuesday's with Morrie
On Death and Dying

If you want a great book for physiology use the Board Review Series Physiology 3rd edition by Lippincott (I don't use anything else for that class).

My suggestion is to enjoy your time off, I did and I don't regret it. Take the money you would have spent on reapplying and go some place nice.

That being said, I would suggest looking at some Medical Terminology, go over the basic anatomy of the body (just to get a feel for where your head is in comparison to your %@#). Look at some biochemistry, if you want to memorize something you could start with glycolysis and Krebs (everyone has to do it). Now that you have done all that... you should be ready for the first day...


BTW congrats!

Excellent post Dr. B. I would recommend reading for leisure - as OSUDoc said I'm sure it won't help to actually try to learn anything now. Besides, we'll be so sick of all of the material after Med school anyway we'll be glad we had the opportunity to relax now...

I would add a few more books:

Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder
Healing the Wounds by David Hilfiker
The Spirit Catches you and you fall down (as was mentioned earlier)

I find these books very interesting because they deal with Medicine as an ART and not a SCIENCE. They speak of "wounded healers," of motivations for going into and staying in medicine, of the frustrations physicians face in dealing with sick and dying patients, etc. This is the medical education that is important to develop now, as I'm sure once med school starts there will be little time to worry about anything other than anatomy, biochem pathways and disease processes.

Just my two cents...
 
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djnels01 said:
Excellent post Dr. B. I would recommend reading for leisure - as OSUDoc said I'm sure it won't help to actually try to learn anything now. Besides, we'll be so sick of all of the material after Med school anyway we'll be glad we had the opportunity to relax now...

I would add a few more books:

Mountains Beyone Mountains by Tracy Kidder
Healing the Wounds by David Hilfiker
The Spirit Catches you and you fall down (as was mentioned earlier)

I find these books very interesting because they deal with Medicine as an ART and not a SCIENCE. They speak of "wounded healers," of motivations for going into and staying in medicine, of the frustrations physicians face in dealing with sick and dying patients, etc. This is the medical education that is important to develop now, as I'm sure once med school starts there will be little time to worry about anything other than anatomy, biochem pathways and disease processes.

Just my two cents...

This was actually required reading for the Multicultural Health class at my school.
 
I have read a couple of good medically related books:

Complications by Gawande is sweet, but I think I like "when the air hits your brain" even better.
 
Autobiography of A.T. Still by... A.T Still lol

Great book, starts out like the adventures of Huckleberry Finn and gets better from there. Really gives you an outlook of what he went through.
 
trackstarjr1 said:
Starting MS in the fall.. can anyone recomend some books to read over the holidays. anything to help me for the future.. books for boards etc. ? thanks

My advice would be to get your nose into this Anatomy textbook and read as much of it as you can over break.

0443066124.01._AA240_SCLZZZZZZZ_.jpg


Anatomy is the most challenging class you will have 1st semester. It is a pretty good bet that in our first semester, more people failed anatomy than any other course...or perhaps more than any two other courses combined for that matter. I would also guess that many if not most of them had no prior exposure to the subject matter.

Start exposing yourself to this material early and you will have a much easier time of it when school starts. If it wasn't for this book, I probably would not have met with much success in that class.
 
Old_Mil said:
My advice would be to get your nose into this Anatomy textbook and read as much of it as you can over break.

0443066124.01._AA240_SCLZZZZZZZ_.jpg


Anatomy is the most challenging class you will have 1st semester. It is a pretty good bet that in our first semester, more people failed anatomy than any other course...or perhaps more than any two other courses combined for that matter. I would also guess that many if not most of them had no prior exposure to the subject matter.

Start exposing yourself to this material early and you will have a much easier time of it when school starts. If it wasn't for this book, I probably would not have met with much success in that class.

I disagree. The only anatomy book you need other than the Rohen & Netter's Atlas is Chung's Board Review Series. It's a waste of money to buy any textbook for anatomy. Use your class notes.
 
OSUdoc08 said:
Before school, read House of God, by Samuel Shem, MD

You don't need to prepare for school. It won't help.

Books you will need for 1st year:

Anatomy: Rohen's Color Atlas + Netter's Atlas + BRS

Histology: Wheater's Atlas

OMT: Savarese's OMT Review

Physiology: BRS

Neuroanatomy: BRS


Moore is the bomb for anatomy if you really dig it. I loved anatomy.

As far as the above goes I agree. I'd add in:

1) Lippincotts Biochemestry
2) HY Neuroanatomy (this gives you the big picture quickly). I hated BRS.


For second year do yourselves a favor and grab Pharmacology Recall. Write your notes in it from class. If you work with this thing consistently you'll blow away pharm on the boards.

If you are dying to read something grab a beginners text on anatomy. You don't need an atlas yet and I would advise not even cracking one open until med school.

Otherwise live it up now cause it wont get this good again till fourth year.
 
VentdependenT said:
Moore is the bomb for anatomy if you really dig it. I loved anatomy.

As far as the above goes I agree. I'd add in:

1) Lippincotts Biochemestry
2) HY Neuroanatomy (this gives you the big picture quickly). I hated BRS.


For second year do yourselves a favor and grab Pharmacology Recall. Write your notes in it from class. If you work with this thing consistently you'll blow away pharm on the boards.

If you are dying to read something grab a beginners text on anatomy. You don't need an atlas yet and I would advise not even cracking one open until med school.

Otherwise live it up now cause it wont get this good again till fourth year.

Disclaimer on the high-yield neuroanatomy:

HY neuro is by the same author as BRS & is duplicate material. The difference is the HY is extremely abridged, and does not contain study questions.

The primary reason I use the BRS books (and my primary method of studying) is by review questions.
 
OSUdoc08 said:
I disagree. The only anatomy book you need other than the Rohen & Netter's Atlas is Chung's Board Review Series. It's a waste of money to buy any textbook for anatomy. Use your class notes.

Unfortunately, our class notes for anatomy aren't particularly good. In fact, they're pretty bad.

Regarding Moore, it's a good reference work but trying to learn the subject by reading it straight through doesn't work well in my opinion.
 
Old_Mil said:
Unfortunately, our class notes for anatomy aren't particularly good. In fact, they're pretty bad.

Regarding Moore, it's a good reference work but trying to learn the subject by reading it straight through doesn't work well in my opinion.

Yeah, my comment was written assuming your school provides you with good notes.
 
Here at KCUMB, the order for importance in anatomy seems to be:

#1) Class lecture material
#2) Class lecture material
#3) Netter's flashcards and atlas (Rohen's is even better)
#4) Moore-Dalley

Moore-Dalley is really useful at KCUMB, if only because the professors here love to use the blue-boxed highlights for exam and quiz questions.

You could learn all the necessary anatomy just by the class lecture material and lab time, but the flashcards and atlas are helpful for visualization in the rote memorization and review part for those of us who don't like living in the Anatomy Lab.
 
I agree with most that trying to "study" the summer before your first year is pretty much useless b/c you really don't know what you'll need to know... (actually... you don't yet know that you just need to know EVERYTHING). But here are some books that are medically-related and were very good reads:

1) Complications by Gawande (this is a *must* book for me)
2) Stiff by Mary Roach (I just got finished with this over break... it's a GREAT read and hilarious at times)
3) Kill as few patients as possible by Oscar London (once again... light-hearted read)

I think I'm the only person who would actually NOT recommend House of God.. hated it... but oh well... read it anyway if you want and see what you think.

Have fun before school starts and congrats on your acceptance!
 
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