Always love a useful medical resource that is free!

The Castle Connolly Graduate Medical Publishing (CCGMP) have released its full list of 14 medical board review manuals – for FREE. They are now available online at no charge for physicians, physician assistants, nurse practitioners, medical and nursing students and other medical professionals through the publisher’s website.

These vital study materials for medical specialties, including cardiovascular disease, pediatrics and obstetrics and gynecology, are now accessible online at no charge to medical professionals preparing for board certification and re-certification. We are proud to offer these resources to medical professionals everywhere through the convenience of this new online portal. – CCGMP Executive Vice President Michael D. Wolf, Ph.D.

I have registered with the CCGMP website and signed up for the books. The online editions each allow full-context text searches, stored note-taking, and bookmarking. Certainly is a useful resource with over 10,000 pages of content available as well as interactive study tools for infectious diseases and neurology.

The information on the site is fantastic and the books certainly packed full of information. However I find the page load time slow (poor internet speed). Hopefully they will extend the online version into a specific iPad application next….

Life in the Fast Lane Medical Blog - Emergency Medicine education blog

Are you a medical student about to do an Emergency Medicine rotation and want to impress the hell out of your supervisors?

Here’s a tip.

Read the Emergency Medicine Clerkship Primer by David A. Wald and colleagues – if you absorb even 10% of the wisdom in this small book you will succeed in your goal.

What’s great about this book?

• the book is short (only about 100 pages), well organized and easy to read.
• it’s free to download here as a pdf from the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine.
• You will gain insight into what makes emergency medicine unique in terms of philosophy and approach.
• The book is comprehensive in scope – there are 24 chapters covering:
  • an  introduction to emergency medicine and unique aspects of the specialty
  • focused history taking and physical examination and how to recognize sick patients
  • building a differential diagnoses and plan of action
  • decision making and diagnostic testing
  • the role of diagnosis in emergency medicine and the overriding importance of disposition
  • documentation and discharge instructions
  • oral case presentation and interacting with supervisors
  • procedural skills
  • how to refer patients for consultation from other specialties
  • achieving patient satisfaction
  • getting the most out of the rotation by being an active learner
  • further reading and educational resources
  • advice for those considering a career in emergency medicine
• It will be useful for all medical students regardless of whether they see themselves pursuing a career in emergency medicine in the future.
• There is an impressive list of references that will keep even the interminably curious occupied.

What’s not-so great?

• The book is understandably US-centric. Emergency medicine works a little differently in different countries and terminology may vary. However, most of the book is broadly applicable to emergency medicine anywhere.
• Well, it’s a book, it doesn’t read itself…

The bottom line: any medical student (or junior doctor) about to do a rotation in emergency medicine should download the book and at least scan through it before they start. Chances are you’ll come back to it again and again throughout your rotation.

Don’t believe me? Read the review from the Journal of Academic Emergency Medicine at Michelle Lin’s (@m_yin) Academic Life in Emergency Medicine blog.

Other recommended resources for medical students and interns in Emergency Medicine:

• ED Case Presentation for Medical Students
• @movinmeat‘s Advice to Emergency Medicine Interns, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4.
• You Will Survive – The doc2doc guide for newly qualified doctors (more for the wards)

Life in the Fast Lane Medical Blog - Emergency Medicine education blog