Medical Reference

[Tealcat95]

Being a retired nurse, I have a boatload of my old refernce books. Also I was on a training team when I was Active Duty C.G. and USN, so I have almost ALL of the training manuals, which includes the Dental Tech basic and advanced, USN Preventive Med manual, and the Nuclear war and survival skills manual.
I also have The Survival Nurse, WTIN Doctor and Dentist, Emergency War Surgery, and Herbal antibiotics just to name a few.

[Robert96]

If the CLS materials activate your firing mechanism, check out the Military Edition of the Prehospital Trauma Life Support (PHTLS) book from the National Association of EMT's, ISBN-13:978-0-323-03986-4. Also useful is the 68W Advanced Fieldcraft Combat Medic Skills book from the American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons. It's ISBN 978-0-7637-3564-7. Both books are excellent tactical medicine resources. For austere medicine, any of the Wilderness texts, Wilderness First Responder, or Wilderness EMT, are quite useful. In general, any EMT text is helpful, but much more so if you enroll in the subject course.

Also check out the Ranger Medic Handbook, and the Advanced Tactical Paramedic Protocols Handbook. I think the former is available from North American Rescue, and the latter is an annual supplement to the Journal of Special Operations Medicine, available on their website. Both of them travel in my deployment gear.

[Fidel MD]

We (my wife, the PhD research pharmacist) and I have a few books - we collect old / antique medical and scientific books and equipment. At least a ton of them, in fact. I also have about 160GB of e-books on several USB drives.

There are a few books available online that are quite worth downloading, IMHO, for long-term medical care. These are mostly based on treatment aboard merchant ships, which can be away from medical care for a couple of weeks at a time. Search for International Medical Guide for Ships, and Ships Medical Chest and Medical Care at Sea.

I also keep handy (downloaded to my laptop, tablet and smartphone) the following books and apps:
SOF Medical Handbook, 2nd Ed (Not the old, 1960's edition), Ranger Medical Handbook, REMM (Radiological Emergency Medical Management), WISER for Windows (Hazmat info), Buttarviolli's Minor Medical Emergencies, Surviving Terrorism, Trott's Wounds and Lacerations, Planning Guidance for Response to a Nuclear Detonation 2nd Ed

A copy of Gray's Anatomy is probably not terribly useful for most - and if it's the 'historical' version, it's not terribly useful for anyone.

Here are the more or less standard texts used today in medical school, listed by subject and author (you can use that on Amazon to find the books). The first, and most important book to get is a professional level medical dictionary. They're mostly all the same, I prefer Stedman's but Tabor and Dorland have the same words.

The really large textbooks (>5 lbs, >$150) like Harrison's Internal Medicine, etc are for refined study. If you want to know the history of diabetes treatment, for example, thats a place to go look.


Anatomy: Netter, Rohen

Embryology: Langmans

Histology: No real standard, but usually its the atlas by Wheater

Physiology: Guyton

Biochemistry: Lippincott's review

Medical Psychology: Kaplan and Kaplan

Biostatistics: Glasers High-Yield Review. "Studying the Study and Testing the Test" by Riegelman should be required reading for anyone who reads a medical journal, as should "The Trouble with Medical Journals" by Richard Smith

Neuroanatomy: Snell, and for an atlas, Haines

Pharmacology: Lange

Pathology: Robbins and Coltrane

Clinical Medicine: This is where it gets interesting.

Most everyone uses the book (and videos) by Bates for physical exam skills. These were originally written for training nurses and nurse practitioners, and are somewhat basic for physicians. They do show the basic mechanical skills well enough for beginners.

I prefer teaching using Schwartz for the basics, and then using De Gowin for the details.

3-M/Littman has a series of recordings available on line and free for interpreting heart and lung sounds.

For interpretation of ECG, the go-to book is Dubin, and then for more refined interpretation Garcia's 12-lead ECG

For general weird diagnosis stuff, the standard book (updated yearly) is Current Medical Diagnosis and Treatment, published by Lange.

I recommend that all new medical students (3rd year to end of 1st year of residency) have a copy of the Clinicians Pocket Reference by Gomella (also called the Scut Monkey's Handbook), and the Maxwell's Quick Medical Reference. Also a drug reference, ideally on their PDA or Smartphone (Epocrates) or a paper copy of something like Tarascon or Sanford. Something like the Merck Manual is less valuable to carry around.

In training rotations like Internal Medicine, a guide like the Washington Manual of Medical Therapeutics, or the Fermi Guide, is good to have.

In Pediatrics, the Harriet Lane book.

In Surgery, something like Surgical Recall, but students need to be studying the textbooks like Schwartz's. In addition to the Scut Monkey's Handbook (Gomella's Clinicians Pocket Reference) I have a copy of Mosby's Pocket Manual of Basic Surgical Skills. I also like (and occasionally still refer to) a book that is long out of print, Surgical Knots and Suturing Techiques - but most people should NOT be closing wounds in the field, no matter what. I'll post a rant on that separately. For the times you should, Trott's Wounds and Lacerations.

Emergency Medicine is not all about Trauma. It incorporates a lot of primary care medicine. The standard texts for EM are either Rosen's Emergency Medicine ($373 on Amazon), or Tintinalli's Emergency Medicine (around $200). Both big books.

A good family practice text might be helpful, Davidsons Principals and Practice.

People (including medical students) seem to think they can get by with just buying course review, or test prep books, like the Board Review Series (BRS), Made Ridiculously Simple series, etc. Not a good idea, medicine isn't learned by memorizing "for this, that" kinds of factoids.

And the "Where there is no Doctor/Dentist/whatever" series is pretty basic stuff - designed for real third world areas where the patients have never seen a medical professional, and their health care giver is just slightly trained.

For carrying around books in a medical kit, the good ones these days are (IMPO) the Special Operations Forces Medical Handbook, available from the US GPO; Auerbach's Field Guide to Wilderness Medicine (the textbook, Wilderness Medicine is also quite good, not just the two chapters I wrote).

HTH