Customer Reviews

Blueprints Surgery

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

blue prints surgery is a very good review book for surgery .it is just 113 pages which makes it very easy to study and covers the important topics tested in the usmle. has got very good diagrams and tables.not for indepth study, but good source of reveiw for the boards.i recommend this book for anyone preparing for the boards.

I used many of the blueprints books during my clincal rotations in medical school. This one was by far the worst one. The information is more of a cursory overview of several topics. There is just not enough scope or detail in this book for it to be useful. I used this book in conjunction with "Surgical Recall" which is an excellent book. I also referred to the "Essential of General Surgery" book on some specific topics such as fluid and electrolyte management that are not well covered in either book.

Perhaps future editions of this book will be better.

I did particularly well on the surgical subcategory of Step 2, and it's owed to this book. Hands down, it's the best, highest-yield 3rd/4th year review for surgical disease - including epidemiology, symptoms, signs, diagnosis, and management. Awesome for review before the big test; also useful for overview of surgical diseases during your clerkship. One small complaint: it costs lots of dollars for about 100 pages.

This book was far too superficial to use as a review book for shelf exams or to obtain an adequate understanding in general surgery. I would recommend the Lawrence surgery book, which takes longer to read, but at least you are gaining a better grasp of the material.

This book contains not much of details for USMLE. Even you have very little time left and lots of topics to cram, don't think about this one.

If you are looking for something to review and help while on the wards or for Step2, this is not a good text. It is way too general. Blueprints for some other topics are great, but not this one. I was very disappointed.

You can consider a book in two ways: (1) USMLE/shelf exam prep or (2) clinical rotation/patient exposure prep. This book fails in both respects. It is astonishingly brief, one of the smaller blueprints books in the series. It skims the surface of most surgical concepts and lacks much detail. It lacks the detail and topic coverage to be an effective textbook for exam study. As for rounds and actual surgeries, this may cover some of the topics that you will be pimped on, but you'll likely be running to up-to-date for more information. I would suggest First Aid for the Surgery Clerkship which more than prepared me for both the clinical aspects and the shelf exam or Essentials of General Surgery.

the shelf exam emphasized all the main topics that were indeed covered in blueprints surgery. The shelf exam emphasizes application of concepts, there is no single text or question source out there that is so comprehensive that you will be able to take the shelf and generate the answer on the basis of straight memory recall. You need to be able to answer the questions de novo and apply what you've learned. Blueprints Q&A was a great accompaniment to blueprints surgery and there were actually repeat questions on the shelf exam from blueprints q & a. I read blueprints Q&A, and blueprints surgery, half of preTest, most of First Aid, and also Underground clinical vignettes for the shelf, I didn't learn a whole lot on rounds in the clerkship, but when I took the shelf I felt like there wasn't really anything on the shelf that wasn't discussed in blueprints.

This is not one of the better blueprint books. I'd start with a copy of Surgical Recall and the NMS casebook and see if you really want a more structured textbook reading experience after going through those.

Surgery blueprints does not provide enough detail to do a formal case presentation / writeup off of or to really do well on the shelf. It does, however, provide a good overview of the key disease and treatments in surgery.

If I thought another book did a better job I'd give this a three star rating but for this amount of space to cover this amount of material I can't imaging anyone really doing a great job.

This book is JUST fine for a third-year medical student seeking guidance and an introduction to their surgery rotations. They should start here; I'd consider Abernathy's Surgical Secrets, too.