Pocket Medicine: The Massachusetts General Hospital Handbook of Internal Medicine, 4th Edition (Pocket Notebook)

Frankly, I'm underwhelmed. After so many "YOU NEED THIS!" reviews, I find it's less useful and more inconvenient than just UpToDate-ing. I'm almost all the way through my intern year and I've cracked this thing open about 3 times. All 3 times, I had to go to UpToDate for followup info anyway.To be fair, though, I'm doing a transitional year before ophthalmology, so... it's possible that an actual IM resident would get more out of it. Bottom line, though, YMMV.

great book for a medical student, it is a summary really well built. it covers most of the more common diseases. you can use it also as a notebook as it is a binder book so you can buy a few more pages and add them. the images are really sharp, the paper is plastified so it can resist some water spoiling, the cover is all plastic and the front page might come off a little with use. But the content is what matters right so this part is great. each pathology comes with a description diagnostic procedures and treatment all very concise. great review book.

Great read. Provides details about key medical conditions, treatment, diagnostics, and quotes the relevant research articles based on the findings. Easily affordable as well. Not bulky and fits into the pockets of any white coat. Only caveat is that the print can sometimes be rather small in certain areas of the book.

This is a must have for medicine rounds. Especially if you are thinking about IM. However, it is good for any student. Quick access to lots of information. Just take some time prior to your rotation to get familiar with how to use it.It does not have details, but provides disease process, symptoms, evaluation, treatment algorithim, RX, charts, etc when appropriate. It gives you a good place to start anyway.For example:PITUITARY DISORDERS -- etiologies, clinical manifestations, diagnostic studies, treatment, then lists the different hormones and how they may be affected.

This book is great. Small and light enough to carry around in your white coat pocket all day. Pretty much every student and resident I've seen during my IM rotation has it in their pocket. As another reviewer said, this is not necessarily a great study aid, as you have to have a good base of knowledge to get any use out of it. However, I prefer using it to study from while on the floors, rather than carry around something like Step Up To Medicine on the floors as some other students do. Overall, I would say it's a great buy for any IM rotation and is probably useful for certain others as well.

During my internal med rotation, I used this reference extensively. It has a very convenient format, and information was very fast to look up. I found it faster than looking it up on UptoDate. It is organized by systems, and then by diseases, and provides good differential diagnoses so you can make your notes sound much smarter.This was also good for some pimping questions. Things like acid-base and electrolytes are kind of hard to remember, but this provides a really good step by step guide to evaluate those problems. Sometimes when the attending is distracted, I'll try to quickly look up info. It also has areas where you can write your own notes, which was really helpful when attendings give small talks about management. I can record some finer points of medical management and have it with me.As for studying, this isn't a good resource for studying for the shelf. I would recommend Step Up To Medicine, and MSKAP as those provide better details for testing.

Pocket Medicine is a quick, light-weight guide that you can easily find when digging around in the pocket of your white coat. The distinctive feel of the cover's edges - which feel similar to those of the old plastic trapper keepers from grade school - allows you to distinguish it from whatever else you may have stuffed in there as you make your way through the hospital. As a medical student - and, I imagine as a resident - this book can potentially save you from a lot of mistakes and/or embarrassment. That being said, it isn't perfect, and it's not something that's automatically going to make you better at diagnosis or patient care. The best way to use this book is to see things coming down the line, anticipate questions that might arise, and then read up. (Granted, that's a skill, and as any medical student can tell you, it can be almost impossible to anticipate some attendings. There will always be those cases; that's part of the process.)Generally speaking, I was able to find the answer to most any question regarding diagnosis and treatment, and it was rare that my attendings would ask/lecture about something that wasn't at least covered.Pros:- Size: It's really small, and just about the perfect size for a white coat. (Hauling textbooks around a hospital is the worst, because it a) begins to warp your spine until you look and feel like someone who once angered a voodoo priestess, b) you never have time to find what you need in that sea of text anyway, and c) it marks you even more clearly as a younger doctor who is mostly getting by on luck, good recall, and the kindness of nurses.)- Covering the common stuff: one of the few truisms of medicine is that common things are common - and this book does a great job of covering the common stuff in detail. Referring to this book made me very comfortable that I was conforming to best standards of practice. And on a few occasions, it definitely helped me impress my residents and attendings as being very thorough - maybe even overly so. When you're starting out in medicine, this makes you appear kind of adorable (which I wasn't sure how I felt about) and attentive to detail (which is a really good quality for practitioners to have).- Diagnostic criteria: The diseases don't read the books, and so of course, not all of these will apply. But overall, I found this book to be helpful in aiding diagnosis. Specifically, it would help me to limit my differential. Also - and I don't know if this was intended by the authors, or more just a side effect of the book's content and structure - I found myself weeding out more of the 'zebra' diagnoses. New doctors are especially prone to that sort of thing, and I felt like this book helped me to stay a little more grounded.Cons:- Size: The text is proportional to the rest of the book - which is to say that it's really tiny, and parsing through all of those lines can get old pretty fast. It's much easier if you know the location of the info you want on the page... which, sadly, only comes from having hunted for it a few times. We read small text on our phones and so forth all the time, but when it's late into your call night, small text seems like an added cruelty.- You actually do have to read it: this isn't a con, so much as a caveat which probably applies to all medical books. A lot of health professional students spend a lot of money on books and resources that eventually just get skimmed. You do have to read this book - at least the parts relevant to your rotation - for it to be useful. Speaking as someone who's done the same thing, we all need to remember that all of these resources aren't talismans. We have to do the mental leg work. And unfortunately, this isn't the most captivating of reads; be ready for a lot of dry, incomplete sentences, and loads of tables. The occasional graph seems downright opulent, after a little while.Hope this review helped! (And good luck to my fellow students. We're getting there, I promise.)

Fantastic book for the wards, great alternative to the Oxford Handbook. Concise, well layed out chapters on all major aspects of internal medicine.

I wasn't too impressed with the online versionIt's a bit dullBut it's not a bad book for a quick review of general medical conditions .

Terrific little guide. Fits in the pocket. Competes well with digital format. Sometimes spotty such as a terrific discussion on Rheumatoid Arthritis but as far as I can tell totally lacking on malignant neuroleptic syndrome.  Pocket Medicine: The Massachusetts General Hospital Handbook of Internal MedicinePocket Medicine: The Massachusetts General Hospital Handbook of Internal Medicine

Este es probablemente el mejor libro de medicina interna de bolsillo que he visto. Super completo, preciso y exacto. Un único problema: un exceso exagerado de abreviaturas que hacen la consulta de un libro que debería ser rápida en algo lento y enervante. Me pregunto sí les habría costado tanto imprimir unas cuantas páginas más...Por su completísimo contenido le daría 5 estrellas, por la mala ejecución le quito una.

MUST MUST MuST have for internal med residents!