Textbooks for Rotations

[BBB 1]

Hi ya'll,

A quick reality check--my school has 'required' one or more voluminous textbooks for each rotation, and I was wondering how many people actually buy/read them? I have peds first, and they've got Oski's and Nelson's listed--any preferences? Are these at all useful for shelf exams and step 2? Or do most people use the large texts at the library or something, and then buy board review books?

Thanks alot for your help!

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[uncgrad]

I would not recommend buying all those books, as you won't have time to read them and they are not very high-yield. You will also likely want concise reviews for step 2 (haven't taken it yet). I used the following books and did above 85% on all shelf exams:

Medicine, OB, : blueprints only
peds and surgery: blueprints with a little bit of A&L
Psych: BRS green book

I don't suggest this is the way to do it for everyone, but I barely had time to get through the material in the review books, so I doubt the big texts are useful. If you like qeustions more, use pretest, lots of people like those. I prefer concise text with a few questions, so I went that route. Mostly just try to learn about your patients and that will help you the most. Good luck!

 

[surg]

My recommendation is for you to get those books from the library from reference only. Check up specific things in them, but there is virtually no way you can read the whole thing in the 4-12 weeks of a typical rotation. (That would be >100pages/day of reading minimum to do on top of whatever you were doing to keep up on your patients!). Look for some shorter texts or use board review books for your primary review for shelf exams, then use the bigger books for checking up more about these diseases that are relevant to your patients.

 

[kenfused]

Unless you are sure you are going into that specialty, avoid buying things like Nelsons or Harrisons, etc..
Go with the student clerkship oriented stuff.

I'm a HUGE fan of the Blueprints series, and I agree also that NMS is good for OB/Gyn. The NMS books for Medicine and Peds are just WAY too dense to be useful.

Also, the UCVs are nice to look at, as well as for Step 2 use.