Clinical Textbooks by clinical attachments

[Matt]

This thread is to discuss which textbooks you find most useful for clinical years attachment and identify those textbooks widely regarded as being essential. Like the interpreting tests thread the first page will serve to record those textbooks considered particularly useful.

Only textbooks that are very highly recommended will be recorded on the front page noting that, with the exception of Talley and O'Connor's clinical examination textbook, no textbook is essential for all medical students to have during clinical years. In particular this thread will try to identify those textbooks written by Australian doctors for Australian medical students.

Medicine

• General
  • Clinical Examination (Talley and O'Connor)
  • Oxford Handbook of Clinical Medicine
• Cardiology
  • ECGs made easy
• Respiratory medicine
• Renal medicine
• Neurology
• Endocrinology

Surgery

• General surgery
  • Essential Surgery (Burkitt, Quick, Reed)
• Orthopaedic surgery
  • Apley's concise orthopaedics (Warwick, Nayagam)
• Urology
• Vascular surgery

Specialist rotations

• Obstetrics and Gynaecology
  • Essentials of Obstetrics and Gynecology by Hacker, Moore and Gambone
• Psychiatry
• Paediatrics
  • Practical Paediatrics (Robertson, South)
• General Practice

Miscellaneous

 

[Matt]

The nature of this thread is that it will show a heavy bias toward those textbooks that I think are good. There is no good way of getting around this bias and I'm quite comfortable with it existing but I will acknowledge its sizeable influence now.

I've already mentioned a couple of textbooks. First is Essential Surgery by Burkitt, in my collection of textbooks this one is my favourite, it is concise and to the point, pitched perfectly at the medical student level. It covers all surgery a medical student might need to know except orthopaedic surgery. On the topic of orthopaedic surgery, Apley is widely-considered to be hold 'bible-status' in terms of orthopaedics and I believe his concise textbook is also perfectly pitched for the medical student.

I've added ECGs made easy but I don't own this book. Nevertheless, it remains a hugely popular book among medical students. Ditto Oxford Handbook of Clinical medicine.

Practical paediatrics is a textbook I also believe to be perfectly pitched at medical students and is particularly advantaged by having Australian authors. There are other textbooks people find useful (Nelson's Essential Paediatrics, for example, or the 'sunflower book') but I think this is the best one and I'm not sure the others are quite as popular.

I also included a clinical cases book, it's one I borrowed out from the library, authored by some Professors from JCU, and is very practically useful to me. It is very advantaged by having Australian authors as I find American textbooks to cover different topics. I almost considered adding Hacker and Moore to the Obstetrics and Gynaecology one as I think it's brilliant but I'm aware it's not universally popular.

 

[leegan]

Hi matt
Oh another excellent thread topic, hope this takes off.
Have you had a look at Browses introduction to the symptoms and signs of surgical disease. Yes it is geared to UK but at least it isnt america. I find it useful for a sort of overview of surgical diseases and exams
Also something that I found recently and found pretty decent but i dont think its quite mainstream. Clinical Gastroenterology A practical problem based approach by talley and martin. i quite like it.

 

[Matt]

Browse is a very traditionally popular textbook, it will be well known to many of the older surgeons where it was a standard textbook among most students and junior doctors. It is very good, I think it's up there with Talley and O'Connor, personally, only it doesn't have the same influence on clinical exams as that textbook does.

I own the clinical gastro book you mention, and I'm doing a gastro rotation, it is quite good but it's method of presenting complaints as chapters is sometimes difficult because many patients will have a number of those presenting complaints all at once and it's difficult then to understand the unifying diagnosis if you're flicking between chapters. Nevertheless, it's one of those very valuable textbooks that teaches you an approach to patients rather than just giving you the relevant information. It's a good book.

 

[Matt]

Just bought Hacker and Moore's Essentials of Obstetrics and Gynaceology online because I thought it was such an excellent textbook while I was doing that term. I also decided to buy Marshall and Reudy's On Call: Principles and Protocols for my upcoming preinternship because it's not expensive and it sounds like it might be really useful.

 

[leegan]

Oh Marshall and Reudy? How much did you get that for? I was having a look at that recently and it actually seems pretty good.

 

[Matt]

Oh Marshall and Reudy? How much did you get that for? I was having a look at that recently and it actually seems pretty good.

I think it was about $40 on book depository. I suggest you hold off on buying it until final year though because I think the scope of your learning in 3rd year is more broad and a new edition might come out. I believe this book is popular among UNSW final years before their terrifying end of final year VIVAs.

 

[leegan]

Yeah I guess it is a little early for me to get it. Agreed it is a bit limited in its scope though. Btw what is the essential surgery text like? Is it more targeted at med students and residents or surgical regs? I havent had a look at it but I have seen quite a number of ppl carrying around on my surg placement (1 student and 2 residents)

 

[Matt]

It's far too big to be carried around on the wards but it is my favourite textbook (and I'm one those people who knew very early on they didn't want to do surgery).

 

[Season]

being on the wards makes me want to buy everything. however I think investing in a kindle/sony ereader would be nicer to my back.

 

[Jordan]

being on the wards makes me want to buy everything. however I think investing in a kindle/sony ereader would be nicer to my back.

Not to mention your wallet although how would it go with textbooks with lots of diagrams and pictures?

 

[Season]

You can emlarge pictures on those readers these days. I think you can get bigger ones designed for textbooks as well.

 

[Season]

Ever realised that all you ever you wanted was right there in front of you?

yes I have just renewed my love for talley and o'connor, and I suddenly how my friend/arch enemy was able to grade the severity of the aortic stenosis after one week of cardio

I was so disappointed as she managed to outgeek me on world geek day

 

[woozy]

Clinical Cases and OSCE's in Surgery by Manoj Ramachandran and Marc Gladman 2nd edn. The new 'Talley' for Surgery, so popular that the 2nd edn. sold out in weeks and now has to get reprinted. Mac Gladman is Prof. of Surgery at UWS.

 

[Matt]

Clinical Cases and OSCE's in Surgery by Manoj Ramachandran and Marc Gladman 2nd edn. The new 'Talley' for Surgery, so popular that the 2nd edn. sold out in weeks and now has to get reprinted. Mac Gladman is Prof. of Surgery at UWS.

WTF? I've never heard of this Marc Gladman guy, they never tell us rural kids anything.... A quick google search is interesting, though. Gotta say, he's a little bit young and handsome for a chair of surgery...

 

[woozy]

WTF? I've never heard of this Marc Gladman guy, they never tell us rural kids anything.... A quick google search is interesting, though. Gotta say, he's a little bit young and handsome for a chair of surgery...

Haha you googled him, yeah I swear every theatre I went into this week he was the subject of all the gossip and banter most of the Surgeons this week were saying he was too young, etc. But I think their just jealous, lol.

 

[Ken2010]

Toronto Notes provide a comprehensible summary of each body system, with some of the relevant tests. I think a good thing about Toronto Notes is that it was written by Medical students/graduates, for other Medical students. You can either purchase it or "download" it somewhere...

 

[zvyx]

Don't mind me resurrecting, but currently on paeds and was looking for advice on what paed textbook to get, because sometimes I like getting off a screen and just doing some old fashioned reading + writing notes Will try practical paeds, theres quite a few copies here (apparently there's a new edition coming out in a month's time?).
Last year I came across Internship: Common Clinical Cases by Senanayake (Aus author) - whilst it didn't cover everything, and is fairly expensive for it's size (~$50 and is a pocket-sized book), it is Australian based and I thought the cases were quite decent; I borrowed it from the library and kept renewing it
Other than that I can't say I've come across any others I'd recommend.
Whilst I'm here, might as well mention that Tierney's The Patient History is getting a new edition in a bit over 2 months, and roughly at that same time, a new edition of Kumar and Clark's Clinical Medicine is coming out as well. I can't really offer any review for these two books though.

 

[waterproof cordial]

Does anyone have an opinion on the CURRENT medical diagnosis and treatment textbooks?
Just at a glance, I really like how they are set out. Has anyone used them before? What did
you think?

 

[Sentinel]

Hi guys, my next rotation is general medicine and I was wondering if you guys could recommend me a book/s for it?
It would be great if you could help me out on this