Medicine & Surgery
Here are some resources to help with learning Medicine & Surgery during the first clinical year. The main book to use is Oxford Clinical Cases in Medicine and Surgery, which can be supplemented with Oxford Handbook of Clinical Medicine. Use PassMedicine textbook and question bank to exam-orient the learning. Click the links below to be directed to each resource.
Oxford Clinical Cases in Medicine and Surgery
The best single resource to use during the first year at clinical school. The chapters are split into presenting complaints, e.g. chest pain, shortness of breath etc. Each chapter starts with a clinical core case like “Mr X comes in with sudden onset chest pain radiating down left arm and up to the jaw”. Then will run through questions to ask in history, examinations and important findings to look out for. It’ll then move onto discuss investigations and management. The aim is to arrive at a diagnosis and so it’ll start with a big list of differential diagnoses and whittle it down to the most likely diagnosis based on history, exam, investigation findings. Each chapter has a few short cases at the end that covers the other diagnoses and also has some VIVA (verbal questions you might get asked in a practical exam) questions at the end. The perfect and best resource to learn diagnostic reasoning.
Oxford Handbook of Clinical Medicine
“Pocket size” book of everything clinical. Personally, I dislike this book as it has tiny fonts and masses of information presented in a hard to read and hard to remember format. However, whilst it’s not great to learn from, it’s great to refer to and have on the wards when the internet connection is dodgy. Has all the key information and is a good reference.
Top tips
Start with Oxford Cases first and use PassMedicine textbook feature to learn more “facts” about each condition and do the relevant questions. Use Geeky Medics to learn history taking and especially clinical examinations. Have a watch of our videos on approaching the start of clinical school for more information.
