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| By: Bradley D Mittman, MD ISBN: 0979192501 Publisher: Frontrunners Publishing Release Date: 01 March, 2007 Bioscience book rank: 152819 | I really loved this book because it took risks that paid off nicely when it came to remembering all my medicine for my Step 3 & ABIM exams. It basically takes all of Internal Medicine and presents it as memory aids; very cool. The best part is I didn't need "mnemonics to help me remember the mnemonics". This was due in large part to very thoughtful design, where the anagrams themselves generally are related to the disorder/differential/findings/etc being summarized (eg "P.H.O.T.O." for Amiodarone Toxicities (photosensitivity, photophobia, etc); "P.A.I.N.L.E.S.S." for Ecthyma Gangrenosum; and "Yer Leg B.U.M.P.S. for Erythema Nodosum).
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<br />There's also a lot of humor to help keep your eyes wide open (eg "B.A.N.A.N.A. P.E.E.L.S." for Progressive Supranuclear Palsy which both helps to remember the vertical gaze palsy; impaired downward gaze; and frequent falls AND, of course, helps you easily recall the mnemonic itself). All these mechanisms really make a huge difference when you've got to quickly recall critical differentials, findings, key labs, etc in an exam situation, where time is of the essence, and there's little room for error.
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<br />My favourite sections of the book were the "Quick Diffs", the "Dermatology Quick Links", and the Appendix itself. The Appendix is priceless and summarizes all 400 mnemonics in the book, and you can quickly find the best memory aid for any topic you have to know or present on, and also helps big-time on rounds every day.
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<br />All the clever anagrams, pearls, summaries, algorithms, unique tables, and memory aids in general, really made this book not just a quick read and fun studying, but truly "memorable".
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<br />Actually, the BEST part of the book for me was that it was free. I used it alongside Frontrunners Syllabus and their Q&A in prepping for my exams, and it came free when I got my package thru their [...] website.
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<br />My favourite mnemonics are "F.A.T. L.I.P.S." for Hereditary Angioneurotic Edema (HANE); "I H.O.A.R.D. G.A.S." for Celiac Sprue; and "B.E.T. T.H.E. F.A.R.M." for Farmer's Lung. But I'm sure you'll have your own. High yield, one of my favourite books, and a huge advantage on my boards.
<br /> As Residency Director, I invested in Turbo Mnemonics for the Boards and some of Frontrunners other Internal Medicine Board Review resources for our own internal medicine board review prep course in an effort to boost seriously lagging results. All the residents who used the book, which we had to keep on a tight leash, found Turbo Mnemonics to be a truly brilliant review of internal medicine through mnemonics. Retention rates were extremely high with this book when we did our own weekly quizzes. The book is extremely well organized, and the mnemonics are simply genius. All of the mnemonics are either named with a term related to the disease itself that's being summarized, OR are simply so clever, that you can't possibly forget them! In the end, using Turbo Mnemonics, Frontrunners Internal Medicine Board Review Syllabus along with the companion 1300 practice Q&A was the PERFECT recipe for success! For the first time ever in our institution, pass rates shot to 100%, making this Residency Director one happy guy. And residents came back after their exam saying the material in these 3 books was all over their internal medicine boards. Turbo Mnemonics is a brilliant board prep resource and nothing else even comes close when it comes to its 400 extremely clever clinical medical mnemonics. Naysayers (those shamelessly pitch their own products while pretending to be reviewing this book--see below-- only call attention to their desperation and L.O.W. I.Q., a mnemonic which stands for "Low on Wisdom. Insincere Qualms." Because of it's popularity among our own residency program, we ended up having to purchase individual copies for each resident, including our second years, who will be entering the ABIM zone soon. I keep mine next to my Harrison's. Frontrunners has samples of all 3 books on its website www.frontrunners.info. Outstanding internal medicine board review curriculum. Frontrunners, thanks for the pass rates. You make us all look good! This is a great idea for a book. Unfortunately, most of the mnemonics suffer from being not terribly useful. Many of them are based on acronyms that have no relevance to the actual topics. Even worse, any given letter -- e.g. "O" in L.O.W. -- might be explained to be a way to remember "Overall, you need to remember that the anion gap is Na - (Cl + HCO3)." In other words, pretty difficult to remember. <br /> <br />The book reads as if a bunch of people just contributed their own mnemonics, and they were all added in random (alphabetical) order without attention to whether or not they were good or useful at all. Nor are there any graphical/visual mnemonics, except for one nice diagram on tick-borne illness. <br /> <br />There are other books that excel at mnemonic aids (such as the "Made Ridiculously Simple" series from publisher Medmaster -- though those books are not geared specifically for the Boards. <br /> <br />Given the free resources online at MedicalMnemonics.com, you might want to check that out first, or even instead. | |
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| By: Vikas Bhushan, Tao Le ISBN: 0071440674 Publisher: McGraw-Hill/Appleton & Lange Release Date: 17 December, 2004 Bioscience book rank: 133924 | An older edition of first aid but is beneficial for the reason, it is the last edition before the switch to systems based first aids. Useful for shelves or a quick review for particular classes. There are much newer editions for the actual Step 1 People often make the mistake of thinking that knowing this book forwards and backwards translates into a superior score. It probably doesn't. The pathology and physiology material in particular lacks both concepts and details that you will need for Step 1. Every edition of the book is laden with errors and should be used with caution. Finally the book is awkward to read and contains too many lists. <br /> <br />On the plus side, the pharmacology section is excellent. If you do not understand the figures you see, however, you should use another source to figure them out. My recommendation would be to use this book to wrap up your review after using other sources, to catch high yield information you may have previously missed. While the book does not come close to containing everything you need to know (except perhaps in pharm), it does a pretty good job of limiting itself to things that are likely to be on your test. Good enough, but if you have already done kaplan and Goljan, you will find very little new things here. Still a fair review. | |
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| By: Joel S. Goldberg ISBN: 0071451935 Publisher: McGraw-Hill Medical Release Date: 03 March, 2006 Bioscience book rank: 407942 | ||
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| By: Adam Brochert ISBN: 1560534842 Publisher: Hanley & Belfus Release Date: July, 2001 Bioscience book rank: 430477 | with such great reviews i was so happy to have found this book but once i opened it... it was all down ill after that. i think if ur really freash with step 2 then its a useful book. but i was a 3rd year resident when i decided to take it and i needed far more indeth recall and studying for step 3. even failed step 3. so finally took kaplan live lectures. brilliant. after 10 days i was ready to take the exam. fastest prep of all time are the kaplan live lecture ones.. but my case was different.. just get over ur step3 real quick. as fast as u can. for the early birds im sure this is a great book. for me way too superficial. I am finishing my preparation for Step 3. It's September. The application process started already. I am doing a rotation in Mount Sinai Hospital Miami in Critical Care and at the same time I am studing for my Step 3, which I must take before January to have chance of H Visa. I have done Qbank with USMLE World and Kaplan, I have read First Aid and I bought Crush Step 3 as one the the last points before getting ready to take the exam. Pleasantly, I found this book very helpful. I really recommend it. crush is a well-written, succinct, adequate step 3 review source. i used it along with some online questions, and after having taken the exam, feel that it prepared me well. | |
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| By: Andreas Carl ISBN: 0940780720 Publisher: MedMaster Release Date: 01 January, 2007 Bioscience book rank: 243844 | I found the concept of tables and visually organized facts good. However, this book should not be used as single source as many facts are not as current as they should be, e.g. treatment for hyperlipidemia without statins etc.
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<br />Again, the book does a very good job in organizing key facts such as clinical signs and symptoms. Those are not subject to tremendous change over time.
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<br />For clinical, especially therapeutic issues, please take care and consult another more "serious" review book. Excellent book. The information is in a very useful summary, and the CD allows to practice before the test, something extremely important. This book is the "sine qua non" for the Step 2. Do not go to the test without studying it . In just one hour I read about 45 pages with ease, this book is intended for those who are short of time and need the facts in a simple clear way. It is not intended to be a complete resource for your usmle preparation but for sure it is a great help. | |
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| By: Jennifer K. Rooney ISBN: 0071488235 Publisher: McGraw-Hill Medical Release Date: 16 April, 2007 Bioscience book rank: 584070 | Started out with this book, since it was small, portable, and I borrowed a copy for free. A week before the exam I gave in and spent $45 on First Aid instead, which actually told me what I needed to know for the exam. I agree with everything in the previous review: the color scheme is misleading, and the lists of questions and physical exam steps are overly detailed and incorrect. The differentials are mostly correct but sometimes incomplete. In the earlier edition that I used, the follow-up list included such items as medications, referrals, etc. which are not supposed to be listed on the real Step 2 CS. I would not recommend buying this book. This is a book for someone who wants to waste his money <br />I wish I had donated the money This book was utterly useless and infact misleading in many ways. I was initially misled by the cover which has the same color coordination as the highly successful (and very helpful) First Aid for Step 2 CS. <br /> <br />Then there are errors in this book which could lead to failure if you follow them, for example: <br />"Name and address of the patient is important for every patient" The name is provided and you will just fluster the poor actors and yourself if you ask them for their home address. <br /> <br />Clearly this book was written by someone who has no experiance whatsoever with the real step 2 CS. <br /> <br />I did pass my Step CS but because of the first aid for step 2 CS. I never write reviews but I felt that after being duped I had to warn others about this book. | |
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| By: John S Lazo, Bruce R Pitt, Joseph C Glorioso ISBN: 0781779219 Publisher: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins Release Date: 01 December, 2005 Bioscience book rank: 302996 | These questions along with UW questions is all you need to feel really prepared for step1. Of course you have to read FA and the other books, but regarding to questions practice: This is the book! Sure this book has tons of great USMLE type questions, and doing questions will help cement the key facts that you learn while studying for boards. However, this book is just a series of 17 entire practice exams. The questions are NOT organized into topics which I found to be key to studying (this is why so many students spend $$$ for the Kaplan QBank because you can choose questions that you just studied that day). Its hard, frustrating, and low yield to do questions if you have not studied the topic yet. I only recommend using this book when you have completely mastered all the subject topics of the USMLE. Well, I did like this book. However, it has a very inconvenient particularity: questions are so repetitive. I mean, for a patient description, two many questions were asked, of course, for different aspects of that particular patient. But it, then, moves away from the original purpose, which is to simulate, as much close as possible, the "real-life" aspects of USMLE test. Still, the CD-ROM that accompanies the book is not well formulated. It has the advantage of allowing to choose topics to study but it gets so boring when you try to simulate the 50-questions set of USMLE and it starts repeating questions all over again. So, please, take care when you buy this book: if you want to review by topics, good; if the purpose is to simulate USMLE, forget this book... | |
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| By: Joel S. Goldberg ISBN: 0071451927 Publisher: McGraw-Hill Medical Release Date: 17 February, 2006 Bioscience book rank: 147014 | ||
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| By: Theodore X. O'Connell, Timothy J. Horita ISBN: 1416025472 Publisher: Saunders Release Date: 19 September, 2005 Bioscience book rank: 315562 | I have also used First Aid and USMLE World to study for the Step 2 CS. I found "Case-Based Simulation" to be particularly helpful for studying the musculoskeletal components of the exam. This book has very easy to understand descriptions and diagrams of the maneuvers for examining the knee, shoulder and back. It also describes the pathophysiology that may be related to each type of complaint. After practicing the exams, I now feel that I can do these exams with confidence.
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<br />I would still buy First Aid or subscribe to UW to study, but this book is very helpful as a companion or to practice with classmates. I found this book to be very helpful, with thorough discussions of the topics. The book is designed to be used for study with other people to practice cases. I have used this book and First Aid. | |
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| By: Michael J Parmely ISBN: 0071452982 Publisher: McGraw-Hill Medical Release Date: 22 March, 2006 Bioscience book rank: 38882 | Pharmacology is tested more often on step 1 than immunology, however, the same book "road map pharmacology" actually has less pages than this book. This book definitely has too much information. Maybe it is good for the actual class, it is certainly not a good book for step 1 review.
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<br />I was going to rate it a 3. "apoptosis" rated it a 5, therefore, I had to rate this book a 2. I also have read the high yield immunology. At least that book is managable, you will go crazy if you want to study this book. It has listed some diseases which are not even mentioned on the brs pathology book, for example, do you know about the Job's symdrome or "systemic inflammatory response syndrome," selective IGG2 deficiency, selective IGA deficiency, etc. It has way too much detailed information. I bet, not even the author himself can remember everything he wrote in that book.
<br /> Perfect for the KUMC Immunology course, a must have for any medical student I guess I have to write a new review on this book, as my answer to Preppy Jock. <br />First of all, I'd say, that too much info is always better than not enough, especially, if someone has managed to put all this info in a concise and readable way. <br />Comparing different books from the same series only by their page numbers isn't the very helpful method to judge about their quality - these books may be at the different level of reviewing - what is "Lippincott's Illustrated Reviews: Pharmacology" or "Katzung and Trevor's Review of Pharmacology" (NOT "USMLE Road Map: Pharmacology"!) for pharmacology, the same is "USMLE Road Map: Immunology" for immunology - read my amazon review about "USMLE Road Map: Pharmacology", 2nd ed. and you'll understand what do I mean. <br />224 pages long review of immunology couldn't "make you crazy, because it's too detailed" - your only complaint is that you can find all the aspects of immunology in this tiny book, but this just means that the author has done an excellent job - you'll be able to answer every question about immunology on your step 1 exam, even the most difficult one! <br />Also, who said that "BRS Pathology" is the standard for the USMLE step 1 and only those diseases, which are mentioned in that book will be tested on the actual exam? <br />You may feel more comfortable reading "High-Yield Immunology" - that book is oversimplified and so, you'll be reading mostly the stuff you already know - you wouldn't need much effort, but I guess, this wouldn't make your performance on the USMLE step 1 better. | |
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