Medicine Recall

Great book to keep in a small bag. Excellent for 'light' reading. I found it really useful and enjoyable.

Medicine Recall covers a summary of the basics of the different medical subspecialties including cardiology, respiratory medicine, nephrology, immunology, infectious diseases, endocrinology, rheumatology, dermatology and neurology among others that have been covered briefly such as pharmacology and psychiatry. Similar to the other recall series books, the book was written in questions and answers style. The questions are in the left side of each page and the answers are on the right side of the same page. The questions are short and clear and the answers are brief and written in clear simple English and to the point. This style of writing makes reading quite easy and the concentration level needed to grasp the information much less than the classic way of writing review books in essay style. This style has made the books quite handy as light reading material when you are in your way in the train or the bus or whenever you do not feel like reading a textbook to get an answer to a basic question because of having to read long paragraphs to get the answer. The book covers the definitional, clinical, basic patho-physiological, diagnostic, and management aspects of the hot topics in medicine. The target readers of the book range from medical students starting their clinical rotations to house officers. The questions' flow in most chapter is quite logical starting by definitions, epidemiology, clinical signs and symptoms, diagnostic tests and findings, prognostics, and ending up with management. They are the sort of questions that consultants like to pimp their juniors with and they cover high yield information that show up in viva's or at the end clinical assessment exercises. In this book, I particularly liked the hematology, infectious disease and nephrology sections. The hematology section was the best or in simple words most of what you need to know and to the point. In the infectious disease section, many of the common infections e.g. UTIs and sexually transmitted diseases were covered in very nice summaries of what you need to know about them with little to be looked up in other books (does not often include dosages or duration of treatment). One of the problems of the book is the use mg/dl unit instead of the international unit system of mmol/l, so you will have to convert those units to mmol/ l. The index could be improved as some of the covered topics may not show up there. The book lacks a reference ranges which would have the book even better. I found this book very useful in aiding my learning and I would highly recommend it to medical students, trainees interns, and junior house officers as a crash course for the different medical runs that are covered by this book I have got most of the other books of this series and I believe it was the best of them all! However, you have to realize that for the highly specialized questions you will need to consult one of those high BMI ( > 30) textbooks or medline to get an answer to the questio

Medicine Recall has been an invaluable source of quick, high-yield information both in clinic and as a reference. It is thorough, accurate and up to date. It is written in a very clear question-answer format that you will definitely encounter on rounds. I advise all students to avail themselves of this resource at the beginning of their third year if not sooner. It was even helpful for board preparation.