Medical & Surgical Training Resources by RookieDoctor.com

For Your White Coat:

You don't need to get all of these. You want to avoid having too many references and too many things in your pockets. Too many references can give you analysis paralysis - where you spend more time flipping through pages and reading multiple sources, and not enough time with the patient, or the family, or the data. If you have too many things in your pockets, you start to get headaches, neck pain, and back pain.

Basically, if you don't have a handheld device (Palm, Pocket PC, Blackberry, etc), you should get one general pocket reference, one on-call pocket reference, and one drug pocket reference. Until I got my PDA, I had...

Ferri's Internal Medicine - I scrapped the Washington Manual after about a week. I like Ferri's better.

Tarascon Pocket Pharmacopoeia - I kept this one in my pocket even after getting a PDA.

The Sanford Guide - I pretty much only used 6 pages (the charts in the middle), but I used them almost everyday.

That's it. Everything else is extra. And the truth is, computers are usually everywhere, and you may not even need any of these books if you are skilled at finding reliable reference material online. More on this in the RookieDoctor.com Members Section.

Internal Medicine On Call

On Call Procedures

On Call Surgery

The Sanford Guide to Antimicrobial Therapy 2007

Tarascon Pocket Pharmacopoeia 2008 Classic Shirt-pocket Edition

Tarascon Internal Medicine & Critical Care Pocketbook

Tarascon Pediatric Outpatient Pocketbook

Pocket Medicine: Handbook of Internal Medicine (Sabatine Pocket Notebook Series)

ICU Intern Pocket Survival Guide

Pocket Emergency Medicine (Pocket Notebook Series)

Emergency Room Intern Pocket Survival Guide

The Washington Manual (Spiral Manual Series)

Harrison's Manual of Medicine

The Surgical Intern Pocket Survival Guide

P.I.M.P. Protector A Medical Reference Guide for Rotations

Harriet Lane Handbook: A Manual for Pediatric House Officers

High-Yield™ Surgery

Large Books Worth Carrying Around With You (at times):

The ICU Book

Griffith's 5-Minute Clinical Consult, 2006

Other References:

Sure, it would be great to have a ton of references. But the reality is that you will rarely use them. Something inside makes you feel good when you get books - but you're only paying your guilty conscience. The other thing is that (with the exception of chest x-rays and ECGs) most of your material will be out of date in a few years. So, here's a major money-saving tip... Get your program to buy them and leave them in a common area - the lounge, the call area, a shelf in the ER, the OR waiting room, the Medicine Clinic, etc.

ECGs Made Easy - Book and Pocket Reference Package

Dorland's Pocket Medical Dictionary Book + CDROM

Gesundheit!: Bringing Good Health to You, the Medical System, and Society through Physician Service, Complementary Therapies, Humor, and Joy

Harrison's Principles of Internal Medicine, 15th Edition

Cecil Essentials of Medicine

Massachusetts General Hospital Handbook of General Hospital Psychiatry

Current Consult Medicine 2007

Guidebook to Better Medical Writing

ATLS Advanced Trauma Life Support Program for Doctors (7th Ed.)

Principles of Ambulatory Medicine

Crush Step 3: The Ultimate USMLE Step 3 Review

Field Guide to the Chest X-Ray