In Medic school.

[Shishkabob]

So, I took the plunge and registered for medic school. Silly me.


Anyhow, aside from the 1,000,000,000 books the class provides(slight exaggeration), any recommendations for books to get to help? ALS Field Guide perhaps?


Any other tips?


Class starts May 20th. Pray for me.

 

[daedalus]

Congratulations!

No field guides, just a good attitude has so far served me well.

 

[medic417]

Dale Dubin - EKG
Get the mosby, the brady, the aaos Paramedic books. Each book has strong and weak points. By researching all 3 you will get a better understanding.

 

[Sasha]

So, I took the plunge and registered for medic school. Silly me.


Anyhow, aside from the 1,000,000,000 books the class provides(slight exaggeration), any recommendations for books to get to help? ALS Field Guide perhaps?


Any other tips?


Class starts May 20th. Pray for me.

I would stay away from field guides for now. I'm such a hypocrite because I have one, but I used it for drugs and such. My favorite preceptor once told me "I hate field guides for students. It makes people think they know more than they really do".

Brady puts out a Paramedic drug guide, I'd recommend it. I don't personally have it but a friend of mine does, and it has some really good information.

I'd also recommend Lippincott's Critical Care Nursing. It's a nursing book, yes, but it's got a ton of information that is practical both to nursing and to paramedicine.

I recently found Atlas of Airway Managment in a book store and was flipping through it. It looked like a good book for knowledge.

I also just got Textbook Of Medical Physiology by Arthur C. Guyton and haven't quite finished the first chapter, but so far it looks like it would be a useful read for the paramedic education!

Tips? Stay away from those who just want to "get by.

And good luck. I know you'll do great!

 

[Shishkabob]

I would stay away from field guides for now. I'm such a hypocrite because I have one


Brady puts out a Paramedic drug guide, I'd recommend it. I don't personally have it

SO, long story short, don't do what you did, and do what you did not do?

 

[Sasha]

SO, long story short, don't do what you did, and do what you did not do?

I would have bought the drug guide had I not broken down and got a nursing drug guide, which includes far more drugs and more information than the paramedic drug guide. I found it incredibly cheap too! Amazon, baby!

 

[medic417]

Mosby has a huge drug guide more geared towards doctors and it costs about $150 but great for researching drugs.

 

[2630]

the drug guide from brady is a good one to have. i have used it a ton and it is fairly easy to navigate. i just started back to medic school (for the second time) a few weeks ago myself. i had a book for cardiology that was along the lines of "cardiology for dummies" and it was a great addition for the times when i was struggling abit. got lots of looks the first time around but then it did serve its purpose quite well.

 

[Shishkabob]

I bought the "Idiots guide to A&P" just to refresh myself on A&P. Didn't buy a drug book as I didn't find a decent one at the store.



Anyone have any tips to learning all 50 drugs? The school recommends making drug cards with indications/contraindication, drug name, dosage and route to study from.

Drugs are actually 57 total, but 7 of them are Basic drugs.

 

[AnthonyM83]

Flashcards. I broke them down to about 4 per drug (generic/trade name/mechanism of action on 1, indications/contraindications on 2, precautions/interactions/sideeffects on 3, route/dosages on 4)

If you could get at least card 1 done for each of the drugs, it'll help you get familiar with each one, especially when you hear the names again and again in class and in the text. Then, when you actually start studying them, you know the names and class because you're familiar with them, rather than having to memorize them.

Like Benadryl. It's not going to be hard to memorize the name and class, because we hear about it so much, probably in everyday life and from medics.

 

[2630]

i can second the flash cards. i use them and take them everywhere i go. started with a few, and every couple of weeks add another one or two until done.

2630

 

[marineman]

How to remember drugs depends on what helps you learn. I did the whole flash card bit for a while but I found I didn't really learn it until I typed up about a 2 page paper on each drug, then during clinicals I would constantly be re-reading those and I now feel I have a pretty decent understanding of each of the drugs.

As a side note don't count the 7 basic drugs out, even though we think we know them all because we're allowed to use them when you start doing a little more reading it's surprising how little we actually know. I'm not sure which 7 drugs you're considering basic but even learning science behind activated charcoal is something that we should know. The understanding has to go a little bit beyond we give x dose for x problem.

 

[fma08]

Lippincott's Illustrated Reviews: Pharmacology, it was recommended to me, I just got it and have skimmed through it and gotten through a couple chapters. I really like it. Better than just the medic book by far.

 

[Veneficus]

I am trying to get medical physiology by guyton as required for the medic program I teach at.


I haven't seen anything that explains acid/base or fluid shift so well. We use the book for our classes, but it is really easy to read, it assumes you know nothing at all and explains in a way you don't need a degree in chemistry or biology to understand. You could substitute any chapter for the brady or mosby text of the same name. But Guyton will be more detailed, unsimplified, and much easier to understand because it is not abbreviated or partial info. Many of the chapters are between 7-12 pages in length.

Lippincott's illustrated review of pharm also is very good.

If you get this you'll never need another pharm book. It is listed as a review but the illustrated review series is easily substituted for most texts if you remember to actively figure out the pictures and not gloss over them.

I found the best way to get students to learn meds is to have them memorize :

Brand name
Generiec Name
method of action
indications/dose for each
relative contra indications
absolute contra indications
side effects
excretion

If you pick 3-5 drugs a week, you will be much better off then waiting for the section they are covered in.

forget the flip guides till you are out of school.

Our program requires basic arrhythmias 6th edition by walraven, published by brady. Again I have not found a beter book.

High yield heart makes cardiology really simple. Not a bad $40 investment.

If you really want to master history and physical Bate's guide (not the pocket guide) of history and physical exam is the gold standard everywhere. On my list of materials to be required, but not as important as guyton.

The mosby paramedic books all stink in my opinion. Too much nformation attempted to be condensed in 1 volume. Brady one volume has same issues.

The 5 volume brady set is what we use and I endorse as your basic text. Forget the skills workbook, you should get NR testing sheets from the program.

Your school should have Kumar's pathological basis of disease as a reference book. (I wouldn't suggest you buy it, it is expensive, detailed, and way more than you will need as a medic, but a limited amount topics are readily usable) I hear there is a simplified version, but I wouldn't know what's in it as this is required here.

They should also have a Harrison's Internal Medicine for reference too.
again, way too expensive for personal use unless it is required by your school. (aka med school)

Places without such I hold a harry eyeball to as they are informally the international standard of medical reference.

 

[medic417]

Another helpful point to drugs is after you write them test yourself daily by writing from memory.

Another thing record yourself reading the cards and then listen to them a few times a day besides still reading ad testinf self. Now you are using multiple senses so you will retain more.

 

[fma08]

Another helpful point to drugs is after you write them test yourself daily by writing from memory.

Another thing record yourself reading the cards and then listen to them a few times a day besides still reading ad testinf self. Now you are using multiple senses so you will retain more.

To add to that, make sure you actually practicing drawing up the different dosages in school.

 

[Shishkabob]

I learn so much better by listening then writing and doing. When we were coming up on practical testing in EMT, I downloaded a podcast that went through the assessments and listened to that over and over. I was one of the only ones to pass both trauma and medical assessments on the first try.



So that recording idea would actually be great. I'll have to go buy a recorder.



Thanks so much guys. I know I'll have an unlimited supply of resources while here.

 

[2630]

is anybody recording the classroom sessions? thinking about doing it so that i can review the lecture also.
we currently use the jblearning setup and i am finding it pretty hard to deal with. the paramedic interaction portion of it at least. anyone have reccomendations?

2630

 

[Sasha]

I learn so much better by listening then writing and doing.

Me too. During medic school I drove my classmates crazy because I'd sit with my book closed and listen to lecture and still put them to shame on tests.

The way I learned the drugs was writing them over and over and over. I think I have seven or eight sets of drug cards laying around here, all hand written. At first I had the hardest time learning the basic set of 50 or so drugs, by the time I was done I needed an olam myself :] But rewriting was the key to my drug success.

 

[AnthonyM83]

A number of people use electronic recorders and review them on the drives to and from school. I have a short commute, so probably wouldn't get around to listening to them for the class, though would love to listen to them a couple years from now and see how much more I pick up. The act of writing out notes, even though I'll never look at them again, helps me retain information. That's only true for some people, though.