What to read during PGY1?

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gasman7k

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Hi everyone,

I will be starting my PGY1 in a categorical program in a few months. I was wondering what everyone's advice is on reading during the intern year? I was planning on using the ICU book or Morgan Mikhail and (attempting) to read it front-to-cover on a case-by-case basis. Ie, when I admit a COPD exacerbation I'll read about intraop considerations (rather than more medicine-centric topics of COPD).

Is this a reasonable goal or a terribly misguided one? lol

Thanks for any response.

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On every rotation, read exactly what an intern of the same specialty would read. Forget about anesthesia; you'll have 3 years to study it.

If you really want to have an advantage compared to your CA-1 classmates, read Clinical Anesthesiology during the intern year, but only after reading up on your daily internal medicine and/or surgery. Don't become a one trick-pony who knows only anesthesia, as written in the anesthesia books. Read medicine books, surgery books, whatever opens up your 3D view about the disease processes and their treatments. You need to get the mindset and knowledge base of an OR intensivist, not of a stool sitter. I still fall back on knowledge and experience from my medical intern year; for example, knowing the treatment options for a disease allows you to estimate how sick the patient is just by looking at his medications.

To use your example: when you get a COPD exacerbation, first read about COPD either from uptodate or from some good book like CMDT. Then, and only then, read up on the anesthetic implications. Actually, for that purpose, Anesthesia and Co-existing Disease is a much better book than Clinical Anesthesiology.
 
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I read Anesthesia and Co-existing Disease, and ICU Book.


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We tell our interns that they should read for whatever rotation they are on. For Gen Med--> then read the appropriate chapters from Harrison's Principles of Internal Medicine ( we actually give them this book during intern year). Our intern year blocks are 4 weeks. For the first two weeks they should be reading for the rotation. The last 2 weeks we tell them to read the corresponding chapter from baby miller or if no corresponding chapter then try to read some other chapter. About 3 months before they start 1:1, we send them another email basically stating that they should have completely finished reading baby miller before July 1. During CA1-CA2 year, your goal is read Barash or "Big Miller." During CA3 year, your focus is to really understand the "major studies" in anesthesia. During CA3 year, when presenting to our attendings we were expected to quote papers, studies, etc to back up our anesthetic plan, goals, etc. We had a file of ~200 papers ( each rotation would give us a quick drive with 20-30 papers that we had to read). This really helped when arguing with new surgeons who had trained at other institutions.

Intern year: Harrison's (obviously you wont read this entire book. But the major chapters we tell them to cover are: ID, Cards, Pulm, Renal, GI, Endocrine, & Neuro), Baby miller and "The ICU Book."
CA1-CA2 year: Barash or "Big Miller," Co-Existing disease, ITE Prep: Big Blue
CA3 year: ITE prep: Big Blue, Evidenced-Based Practice of Anesthesiology, and studies/reviews.
 
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Thank you everyone for the advice. I'm glad I posted this question, as I have heard somewhat contrary advice (ie pick one anesthesia book and use that to read about your patients)
 
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