books to get BEFORE starting clinicals

joshic (Alumni)

Step Up to Medicine for internal medicine is the book most clinical students recommend before starting rotations. Get it a couple of months before your first medicine rotation and start reading.

lancea (Student)

Pocket Medicine (Mass General Handbook) is the small physical reference that most medicine residents keep in their coat. Have it available during your medicine rotations.

ashton.estrada (Student)

Building on what lancea mentioned. Clinical Microbiology Made Ridiculously Simple is worth reading before you start if you haven't reviewed micro in a while. A lot of clinical decision making ties back to basic micro.

nbautista (Student)

Surgical Recall is the book to have before your surgery rotation. It's formatted as rapid fire questions and answers which is exactly how surgical pimping works on rounds.

maya_alabi (Student)

Not entirely with ashton.estrada on this one. Don't load up on books before you know which rotation you're starting with. Buy the rotation-specific book about three to four weeks before each rotation starts rather than buying everything at once.

shirleym (Student)

What lancea said is pretty much where I landed too. Many of the best resources are now app-based. UpToDate for clinical information, Epocrates for quick drug references, and a good ECG app are more practically useful day-to-day than physical books on most rotations.