Reddit mentions: The best pathology clinical chemistry books

I'm not sure if this will be helpful for you, but I really liked this book when I was completely lost. I have a feeling you may be past this point in trying to pick a specialty, but this may be a good place to get a better understanding of the field. If you don't have access to this book and want it, PM me and I'll send you a copy. Also check out this post with comprehensive spreadsheet that another student put together.. it is pretty amazing

 

One things I often tell underclassmen is that it is better to shoot for the "harder" specialty because you can switch over to the easier one if you change your mind. However, going the other way around is often impossible. So a lot of people start residency in general surgery and change their minds about it and switch to anesthesiology. This is very common and anesthesiology is a very welcoming field to people who've changed their minds after starting residency. I would say if you're really torn and on the fence about general surgery vs anesthesiology know that you could always go for anesthesia later. You probably will not be able to choose where you go location wise, but you won't be locked of out the specialty if you decide to go with gen surg first.

 

I actually matched into anesthesiology (current MS4). Obviously take everything I have to say with a grain of salt... but I think anesthesiology is a great specialty. I'm surprised that you've heard people complaining that their job could be done by midlevels. At my program (and on my interviews) I've honestly never met an anesthesiologist who didn't love their job. Perhaps the rotation site you're at just doesn't have the complexity of cases that are seen at other places. I think the biggest thing about anesthesiology is that you have to be ok with many cases being a standard routine. Everyone agrees that you can teach a monkey to intubate and turn on some gas, but being a physician really matters in those cases where things aren't routine. Being prepared for those critical/scary situations is what the training is really about. Also, the anesthesiologists I work with are always trying to perfect what they are doing in their usual routine. Often they are trying to tweak things so patients are as comfortable as possible when they wake up. Anyways, I will admit that anesthesiology isn't for everyone, but I wouldn't rule out the specialty because a few people you've met are unhappy. Anecdotally, I find that the field has really high job satisfaction compared to other specialties (among residents and attendings).

 

Also not sure if this is going to be a big deciding factor for you, but I know many well regarded MD anesthesiology residency programs are DO friendly. One program I interviewed at that I remember most clearly being very DO friendly is case western. In terms of competitiveness, I would say anesthesiology is relatively easy. You do not need to be top of your class to match into this field. Refer to the spreadsheet above for numbers on competitiveness. My personal experience is that I got interviews from many of the top programs without being very competitive (bottom half of my class for sure and nothing especially impressive on my application to compensate for it).
 


Best of luck to you!

Trust the process. You'll learn what you need to learn.

BRS is nice and dense, but somewhat outdated.

Your best resource, by far is going to be Pediatrics in Review (and for NICU, NeoReview). They provide excellent review articles for any topic you might wish to learn about. Read these articles often.

Nelsons is the reference "bible" if you will, but I don't know if I'd drop the dough on paying for a full Nelson's. Nelson's Essentials on the other hand, is quite digestible.

You mentioned Pocket Medicine, and there is a Pocket Pediatrics, but I've never used it. Harriet Lane is definitively the standard reference but a bit thick to stick in a white coat pocket (every halfway decent program has like 4-5 of these strewn about the resident work-room).

The good news is, you can sort of pick and choose what reference texts you want. For board prep you'll get the usual "laughing your way", PREP, and medstudy, etc. I also think it's not a bad idea to pick up a text correlating to your field of interest.

For instance, I like critical care. So I picked up Roger's Handbook of Pediatric Intensive Care (the much more portable version of the larger text).

Hope that helps!!

This book is not too bad. Has a profile for each specialty, as well as specific advice. I picked up the old version cheap a while ago.

The AAMC Careers in Medicine page is actually pretty good too. You have to sign up and log in to see the material, but they go through lots of stats. A new version of Charting Outcomes from the Match will likely be published by the NRMP/AAMC this year or next, and will have valuable data regarding each specialty's competitiveness.

But as far as "playing the game" goes, it's a much simpler game than the med school admissions process was. You don't have to have extensive lists of extracurriculars, and a lot of it boils down to a few big things you need to do.

• Do well on Step 1, obviously
  
• Get lots of good grades in the clinical years
  
• Get involved in research
  
• Get good letters of rec, which usually results from doing well on rotations
  
• Getting inducted into AOA can be very helpful
  
  Those are really the biggest things, and it applies to virtually every specialty. The more competitive a specialty is, the more you will need to excel in each of those areas.

I'm amazed that you nominated him for "most evil person" on the basis of this one quote. Wikipedia's bio on him describes a man who "was captivated by 'the many mysteries of the brain'" and tried to further our understand of how it works for the benefit of everyone. Some excerpts:

> During the Spanish Civil War he joined the Republican side and served as a medical corpsman on the Republican side while he was a medical student.
...
Some consider one of Delgado's most promising finds is that of an area called the septum within the limbic region. This area, when stimulated by Delgado, produced feelings of strong euphoria. These euphoric feelings were sometimes strong enough to overcome physical pain and depression.
...
Other than the stimoceiver, Delgado also created a "chemitrode" which was an implantable device that released controlled amounts of a drug into specific brain areas. Delgado also invented an early version of what is now a cardiac pacemaker.
...
Delgado hypothesized that the [stimoceiver] method used on Paddy [the chimpanzee] could be used on others to stop panic attacks, seizures, and other disorders controlled by certain signals within the brain.

I don't think that he meant by "political control" any kind of authoritarian mind control of the populace, like something out of dystopian SF. People in this thread are bringing up CIA programs like MKULTRA, but I see no mention that Delgado agreed with or was involved in those programs. It sounds more like a proposal for a more humane alternative to prisons and asylums: instead of locking someone up for being a kleptomaniac or sociopath or drug addict, fix their brains instead and let them free.

I haven't read his book Physical Control of the Mind: Toward a Psychocivilised Society (although it's now on my reading list), but here's a blurb:

> In this Delgado has discussed how we have managed to tame and civilize our surrounding nature. Now it was time to civilize our inner being. ... The tone of the book was challenging and the philosophical speculations went beyond the data. However, the intent was benevolent to encourage less cruel, happier, better man.

And from an Amazon review:

> Dr. Delgado was one of the pioneers of deep brain stimulation research, a technology that is used today to reduce suffering in cases of chronic pain, epilepsy and Parkinson's disease. It never was and is not today capable of turning people into the mind-controlled automatons found in sci-fi thrillers such as the Manchurian Candidate or the X-files. The book offers a lucid and concise description of Dr. Delgado's work up to 1969 and a provocative look at possible applications of this technology (from a 1960's perspective). A recommended read for any Neuroscience or Neural Engineering student.

I hope the knee-jerk replies here celebrating his death and hoping he suffers in Hell, as well as everyone who upvoted this to third-highest in the "most evil" thread, are just assuming "mind control = evil" and don't actually know who he was.

We need more people like José Delgado.

Edit: Physical Control of the Mind is available online. I highly recommend Chapter 21, "Ethical Considerations," as well as the rest if you're likewise fascinated by his work.

> In the early 1950s, a patient in a state mental hospital approached Dr. Hannibal Hamlin and me requesting help. She was an attractive 24-year-old woman of average intelligence and education who had a long record of arrests for disorderly conduct, She had been repeatedly involved in bar brawls in which she incited men to fight over her and had spent most of the preceding few years either in jail or in mental institutions. The patient expressed a strong desire as well as an inability to alter her conduct, and because psychiatric treatment had failed, she and her mother urgently requested that some kind of brain surgery be performed in order to control her disreputable, impulsive behavior.
...
Medical knowledge and experience at that time could not ascertain whether ESB or the application of cerebral lesions could help to solve this patient's problem, and surgical intervention was therefore rejected. When this decision was explained, both the patient and her mother reacted with similar anxious comments, asking, "What is the future? Only jail or the hospital? Is there no hope?" ... People are changing their character by self-medication through hallucinogenic drugs, but do they have the right to demand that doctors administer treatment that will radically alter their behavior? What are the limits of individual rights and doctors' obligations?

There isn't much in the way of TSM doctors in Spain (a Contral Clinic around Malaga www.medivitalclinic.com), but the information on how to use TSM is free, so if you can get the Naltrexone then it's fairly easy to use the TSM protocol. Naltrexone is available in some places in Spain without prescription, but my guess is that if you ask the pharmacy for a referral to a doctor that has prescribed it recently that may be all you need to get a script/prescription for it.

Here's a link to the book "The Cure for Alcoholism", it's a free PDF:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/60fs7gmvbyzs1kk/Cure%20for%20Alcoholism.pdf?dl=0

I don't think there's a free Spanish version, but here's a link to the Spanish version on Amazon:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B015BU19LW

But the protocol is simple. Take the medication an hour before your first drink of the day, ONLY on drinking days. Start with a reduced dose in case there are transient side effects and increase to a full pill when you can (this is paraphrased from the book). That's it.

For community support, go to r/Alcoholism_Medication or http://optionssavelives.freeforums.net/

To get to your private messages this link should do the trick. I'll send you a PM so you have one to read if you don't already.

https://www.reddit.com/message/messages/

Hi there,

Some suggestions for ya!

The Quest for Consciousness by Christof Koch. Minimal neuroscience background required, but the more you know, the more you'll derive from this book. Focused on illustrating how complex networks can manifest behaviour (and consciousness). Outside of Koch's regular pursuits as an electrophysiology, he worked alongside Francis Crick (ya that one), to study arousal and consciousness. It's a fantastic read, and it's quite humbling.

Rhythms of the Brain by Gyorgy Buzsaki. Written for neuroscientists and engineers as an introductory textbook into network dynamics, oscillations, and behaviour. One of my favorite books in the field, but it can also be the most challenging.

Treatise of Man by Rene Descarte. Personal favorite, simply because it highlights how far we've come (e.g. pineal gland, pain, and animal spirits).

Synaptic Self by Joseph LeDoux provides the fantastic realization that "you are your synapse". Great circuit/network book written with a lot of psychological and philosophical considerations.

Finally...

Physical control of the mind--towards of psychocivilized society by the one and only Jose Delgado. (In)Famous for his experiments where he stopped a bull charging at him through amygdala stimulation- along with some similar experiments in people- Delgado skirts the line between good intention and mad science. It's too bad he's not taught more in history of neuroscience.

I would definitely start with a Med Chem textbook. I've not read the one that u/fourninetwo posted but I use Foye's Principles of Medicinal Chemistry pretty frequently (which is also on TPB) and think its pretty good. Or an amazon link

I used Dr. Satar (pathoma) to supplement path and physiology. His program is amazing!!!

My other half is in med school so I stole his "First aid" book. That thing is super helpful: First Aid for the USMLE Step 1 2018, 28th Edition https://www.amazon.com/dp/1260116123/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_np.ZDbN2E99SM

Also used sketchy pharm and osmosis a ton. (A lot of the osmosis videos can be found on YouTube) There is also another guy on youtube I used: Dr. Armondo Hausdungan.

For all my primary care courses I supplemented with the Fitzgerald, APEA, and Leik books doing all the sections in each book for whatever was going on in class.

Very institution dependent, so it’s hard to give general advice. Some places you carry a pager and field clinical questions. Other places it’s pretty much self-taught and you show up for didactics once a day. Just show up and be interested, and you’ll be fine. If you’re looking for something to read, start with this book for an overview of clinical pathology.

Also, love the username.

Thanks for doing this again! I saved your posts from previous years and read them recently. They're definitely helpful and appreciated.

For anyone else who might want something to read before intern year, I'm reading 'resident readiness: general surgery (amazon link - Our school library gets us access to the electronic copy, so yours might as well). I'm only doing 2 cases / day which takes me about 30 - 60 minutes if I'm slow. I literally just wake up, do the 2 cases then dick around for the rest of the day. It's such a tiny amount of effort and you actually learn something with plenty of time to relax for the rest of the day.

inb4: "where are the memes? stfu. gunner. chill brah no one expects you to know anything lol".

I used Doctors In Training videos! I put myself on a schedule using Cram Fighter . Then I would read that section in Step Up To Medicine. Lastly everyday I would do a random set of UWORLD questions. The actual test will be random so make sure to practice this way. During the last 4 weeks of studying (I studied for 7), I did an NBME or a UWSA. These are good to show you how the questions will be asked and what topics are important. DO NOT take your score to heart, I never scored above a 230 and I got a 262. Most important thing is keep learning from your mistakes and moving forward!

✨INTJ ✨interested in Cardiology or Palliative Care

I knew this sounded familiar. I came across The Ultimate Guide to Choosing a Medical Specialty by Brian Freeman, MD a couple of years ago and found this chart relating personality types and specialties: 1 and 2. Just something fun to look through!

Step-up to Medicine, it's a review book on Internal Medicine (Amazon). It's one book in the "Step-up series", but its the most well-known and respected.

​

I personally did not use the Step-up books because I felt Q-banks were a better use of time. Up to you though...

Here's the one I was talking about:
http://www.amazon.com/Comprehensive-Certification-Recertification-Examinations-Assistants/dp/1605477265/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1380770283&sr=8-2&keywords=pance+review

Here's the Davis, which has better reviews:
http://www.amazon.com/Daviss-PA-Exam-Review-Focused/dp/0803629516/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1380770187&sr=8-1&keywords=pance+review

Here's my personal favorite:
http://www.amazon.com/Step-Up-Medicine-Series-Steven-Agabegi/dp/1609133609/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1380770247&sr=8-1&keywords=step+up+to+medicine

Just to be specific, this one, not First Aid for Step 1. The latter is good too, but the former really is much better -- esp for child psych, psychopharm, and therapy.

Starting medical school in September and this is one of the books I need to buy. I'm currently working a minimum wage job in London- all of my wage goes on rent and food. Just this small thing would help a lot. :)

Oxford Handbook


It's pretty much a med student's bible in the UK, dunno how well it'd translate to US boards

I suck at pharm too. I hit up my school library for a few books. I ended up buying the deja review, because it was small and the question and answer teaching style worked well for me. I have also heard good things about the Kaplan pharm cards but I haven't used them.
The best source I found for antibiotics was Clinical Microbiology Made Ridiculously Simple.

Should I get the First Aid for USMLE Step 1 now or wait for it to be updated in January... I'm going to be a first year but have heard its a useful tool for studying regardless

Buy this: http://www.amazon.com/Master-Wards-Internal-Medicine-Clerkship/dp/1609781376

It's an excellent book.

The Link

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I'd agree with the important difference, that at first glance, it doesn't seem to include explicit frameworks. Like this, for example

Drugs listed are limited and haven’t been updated since 2015, but can be helpful. Authors are UK based and some dosage forms are not in available in other countries.

https://www.amazon.com/Handbook-Administration-Enteral-Feeding-Tubes/dp/0857111620

http://www.amazon.com/Ultimate-Choosing-Medical-Specialty-Edition/dp/0071790276

This book might be helpful

I'm assuming Roald Hoffman? He complied a lot of his papers on solid state chemistry/physics in single book.

http://www.amazon.com/Solids-surfaces-chemists-extended-structures/dp/0895737094/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8

The first holiday my wife was in school, I got her this book on choosing a medical specialty. The year she graduated, I got her a collection of papers that were specific to the specialty she matched into (her idea, not mine haha). When she started rotations, I got her an iPad--they weren't necessary for her rotations, but she got a lot out of it.

https://www.amazon.com/Case-Files-Anesthesiology-LANGE/dp/0071606394

I use this book:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Top-100-Drugs-Pharmacology-Prescribing/dp/0702055166

And it covers most things I come across

http://www.amazon.com/First-Aid-USMLE-Step-2011/dp/0071742301/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1322339558&sr=8-1

https://www.amazon.com/First-USMLE-Step-2018-28th/dp/1260116123

https://www.amazon.com/First-Aid-Basic-Sciences-Systems/dp/1259587037/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=USMLE+step+1+organ+systems&qid=1554656016&s=gateway&sr=8-1 get this book

Oh right, sorry. First Aid Psych is a standalone book, NOT the psych chapter out of first aid for step 2.

This is what I'm referring to.

In my medicinal chemistry classes (pharmacy specific) we use Foye's, which is supposedly the medicinal chemistry textbook. https://www.amazon.com/Foyes-Prin (possibly more for PharmD specific than hard Chem specific) ciples-Medicinal-Chemistry-Williams/dp/1609133455

For study:

• USMLE First Aid is probably the most popular book for studying for the boards (end of year 2).
  
• Seconding the idea of noise-cancelling headphones.
  
• Single-serve Keurig. If you want to buy her K-cups, the Green Mountain Nantucket Blend is my personal favorite. However, I hate how terrible K-cups are for the environment, so you can buy her a reusable filter if you want.

Yes! 1) PANCE Prep Pearls, 2) Step-Up To Medicine, 3) First Aid for the Psychiatry Clerkship, 4) Pathophysiology Made Ridiculously Simple, 5) Clinical Neuroanatomy Made Ridiculously Easy.

2) Don't be afraid to change your study habits. You probably won't study the same way you did in undergrad or even post-bacc. It's a whole new ballgame.