texts for surgery clerkship
By Guest on Friday, 25 March 2005
Posted in Match Center
Replies 6
Likes 0
Views 11
Votes 0
Sorry if this is off topic, I wasn't sure where to put it ... and searches came up empty.

Considering honoring my 3rd year surgery rotation would be quite helpful, I was wondering if you guys have suggestions for textbooks to use. I already have the following:

Recall (for quick pimp-esque info)
(Levien's) Introduction to Surgery
&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp(small quick read that I should be done with before rotation starts)
Cope's Early Diagnosis of the Acute Abdomen
&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp(not sure if I'll have time to read this ... is it worth it?)

What I'm trying to select now is "The Text" that I'll study daily to prepare for the oral and shelf exams. So far, it's been Blueprints for all my other rotations, but I've heard it sucks for surgery. Plus, considering it's actually what I want to do, I feel like a text is warranted this time. The ones that I know of currently are:

(Lawrence's) Essentials of General Surgery
&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp(recommended by friends, but is it only for people not interested in surgery?)
Sabiston Essentials of Surgery
&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp(heard this is harder to read but the one surgical types should get)

Which one text should I go for, to read cover to cover for the exams? Any other suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thanks, and congratulations to all you lucky bastards out there (male & female, of course) who matched.

b
Recall is awesome. It is really all I used during my rotation and I ended up with Honors. I had Lawrence's text, but didn't really use it at all. Depends on how your grading works, but for us, clinical performance was the key to success. Our shelf exams were pass/fail and it ended up being a lot of medicine anyway - not really a surgery test.

Good luck
Guest
·
21 years ago
·
0 Likes
·
0 Votes
·
0 Comments
·
agree with BD. i read most of both books (recall and lawrence); to me recall is like a summary of lawrence. the lawrence chapters can take some time to read. in my opinion the shelf exam has enough trauma on it to make the lawrence chapter on trauma worth the read. sebastions is overkill. i would stick with recall and lawrence. they compliment each other well. our shelf was worth a significant portion of our grade.
Guest
·
21 years ago
·
0 Likes
·
0 Votes
·
0 Comments
·
i would stick with recall and lawrence. they compliment each other well. our shelf was worth a significant portion of our grade.


same here, the shelf is important. there's some rule where you have to score above 90 (maybe 85) to honor the rotation ... and then it's also some significant percentage of the grade, like 25% or something.

so, to get 90+ on the shelf ... recall and lawrence should do it? any suggestions on question/case books? i've used pretest and a&l for my rotations so far, and hated both. it seems pretest is too simple (more geared toward usmle type short questions/answers), and a&l is too detailed and long for shelf. or maybe the surgery one's better ...?

thanks!
b
Guest
·
21 years ago
·
0 Likes
·
0 Votes
·
0 Comments
·
anyone use Surgical Anatomy and Technique by Skandalakis? it's slightly bigger than would fit in a coat pocket, and has concise descriptions of mostly abdominal procedures with relevant anatomy. just wondering if it's any good. i could just use netter/grant's of course ... just always tough to figure out what's actually important.

thanks,
b
Guest
·
21 years ago
·
0 Likes
·
0 Votes
·
0 Comments
·
For me, I used BRS surgery. It seemed to have everything that was on the shelf. Also did some A&L which were harder than the actual shelf. This worked for me getting honors. good luck man.
Guest
·
21 years ago
·
0 Likes
·
0 Votes
·
0 Comments
·
View Full Post