Vital Signs & Fool's Review Medstudy Internal Medicine Board Review Title:Medstudy Internal Medicine Board Review 10th Edition Medstudy.com List Price $395.99 Format Book Date 2003-04 Pros: Simply the best Internal Medicine board review material out there. Hands down. Explains key concepts well Cons: Included questions are not board style. Few areas have content in too much detail. Content Usefullness Coolness Overall

Cleveland Clinic Internal Medicine Board Review


Harrisons Internal Medicine CD Set

MedStudy advertises their material as THE Internal Medicine Board Review, and for very good reason! It's damn good. When you're sitting in the parking lot at the ABIM exam, waiting to go inside, listening to Eminemand getting pumped up, you'll see EVERYONE else there sitting in their cars, flipping through the MedStudy Books! The reason? It's the best.

You can't prepare efficiently for the ABIM exam without the Medstudy Internal Medicine Board Review books. The various disciplines are broken down into 4 major books. Each specialty is between 7-40 or so pages, depending on the specialty. For example, allergy and immunology is very short, but pulmonary and cardiology are much longer.

Every core topic is covered in adequate depth. MedStudy thoroughly explains things like cardiac murmurs (and stuff no one can remember straight, like which murmurs get louder with inspiration, or with squatting) and makes it so much easier to understand. When it comes to GI, MedStudy covers everything cleanly and efficiently, from autoimmune hepatitis, to peptic ulcer disease, to infectious diarrhea. In fact, many people say they wished they had read MedStudy during residency. There are many topics where MedStudy's explainations were so good, that they retaught many residents.

For example, after you read a few pages on statistics, you'll forever remember how to calculate positive predictive values and sensitivity in your sleep! There are just so many great sections of Medstudy, and since this is the 10th edition, the quality shows!

Each chapter is very dense and detail packed, so this is not a light read! Imagine Cliff's Notes for all of internal medicine! It does take many hours to properly read each chapter. Inside the chapter are places for you to make notes, and some "Quick Quiz" sections where they make sure you remember key concepts before moving on.

And a word to the wise, when they say "On the Boards if you see X", you will definitely see a few of those! When they say it's important, IT IS!

The questions at the end of each chapter are mostly simple multiple choice, True/False, and fill in the blank style, and they don't match the boards format. They're mostly for your own review to see if you've mastered the topics. If you're short on time, skip these and go straight to your MKSAP questions.

A few things that you won't have to know are things that are covered regarding antibiotic action mechanisms, MHC mechanisms, T cell maturation, etc... There are a few areas that they could have left out, but probably 95% of the material is relevant (and that's pretty good compared to other sources.)

In summary, no matter how you decide to prepare for the ABIM Internal Medicine Board Exam, this will be the best $400 you ever spent! (Esp if you consider that repeat test takers have only a 30% pass rate!)