Latifa Patel, University of Liverpool

I really like this book. I’d liked to have discovered it earlier. As mentioned by Sabreen it is more suited for the earlier years. In a nutshell it has a bit of information about a lot of things. It is quite similar to rapid medicine but easier on the eyes and with colour. It will make you look good on the wards and help you with revision. The diagrams are really simple to follow too and do actually aid the learning. It provides a great basis to start learning about a topic. An added bonus is the normal values page on the back cover and the High-return facts section at the end of every chapter, again a little about a lot. Enjoy, L (“,)

Posted 21st Feb 2011

Sabreen Ali, The University of Sheffield

This textbook certainly lives up to its name by providing a basic skeleton of information about core medical conditions to build on as one progresses through medical school. Ideally it is suited for medical students in earlier years; it is certainly not a reference book for medicine, but neither does it claim to be - instead, it provides information on a need-to-know basis. Each individual body system is covered in parts, with each part being further divided into 3 sections. Section 1 is known as ‘The big picture’, which gives a global look at the body system in question - covering points relevant to its’ pathologies. Contents of this spread vary depending on relevance to the system, from morbidity, mortality and incidence for lung disease to the anatomy of the biliary tracts for liver disease. It is a good way to give background to common medical conditions, rather than being heavy-handed and incorporating it with the main text. Section 2 is entitled ‘High-return facts’, and has several paragraphs of information that are important to know and repeatedly used. This 2 page spread at the start of each section gives a preview of the conditions to come, and provides simple, high-yield facts in the form of bite-sized information. These pages are especially useful to supplement the basic sciences, as they provide clinical context without an overload of information. Part 3 is entitled ‘Fleshed out’, and as the name suggests, is the meaty bit of each chapter. Although these chapters clearly contain a lot of information, the way they are presented makes it seem less tedious and more manageable. Each sub-chapter does not span more than 2 pages, making revision and pre-ward-round reading a lot easier. Another stand-out feature of this book: the line diagrams are very easy to understand and demonstrate that, sometimes, less truly is more. As I said before though, the content is based on what one needs to know - there is no doubt that the subject matter covered is the minimum one must know before finals. This is, at the end of the day, the high and low point of the book - concise and clear information, but one feels obliged to learn all of it. All in all though, if you are in the pre-clinical or early clinical years, or fancy some light yet high-yield revision, this textbook is well worth considering for your bookshelf.

Posted 14th Dec 2010