Hi, I love your blog and how organised you seem to be in your studies. I was wondering if you had any advises on which books to use for pathology and pharmacology and tips on how you studied these subjects?
My references for pathology were the following:
This is an excellent reference but the issue is that the book itself will only provide you with the most high yield information so it’s criticized often for not being comprehensive enough.
I enjoyed it a lot, Dr. Hussain Sattar would integrate pathophysiology and clinical features in a way that makes sense so you understand it and can infer things without having to memorize.
Lecture slides (annotated with my notes from lecture)
Before lecture: do the pathoma video (ie listen and annotate on the book)
Before lecture: print the lecture slides
During lecture: annotate the lecture slides with class notes
Add any additional class notes to pathoma OR
Make my own summary using pathoma and class notes (if the topic was long enough to warrant that)
Refer to Robbins for anything I don’t understand/feel I need extra info about
Go over pathoma or my own summaries
As for pharmacology, I was blessed with an amazing professor. I rarely ever needed to refer to anything other than her lecture slides combined with my class notes. On the rare chance I did want extra information; I’d refer to Katzung’s Basic and Clinical Pharmacology. Some of my friends swear by SketchyPharm but I never got into it.
I found studying pharmacology easier when it was in the context of disease. So my advice would be not to try to memorize drugs, indications, contraindications and side effects; rather try integrating these things with the disease(s) those drugs are related to.
