Customer Reviews

Essentials of Family Medicine

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

 

 

The first third of the book has information for someone who is about to enter a residency. The last two thirds has chapters for someone that is about to enter their third year. I have yet to understand that reason why they included this seemingly different information in one book. It should be split into two.

This book was required for my FamMed clerkship. I like the general format and flow of it, but it doesn't provide much in the way of strong clinical guidelines "rules of thumb" that you need to make decisions in the real world; memorizing the endless epi / study data presented is useless.

Fatal Flaw: This is the FIFTH edition of this book. (If I understand that correctly, it means it has been re-edited and re-printed 5 times.) The number of typos is absurd and unacceptable. One or two is understandable, but after a while, you start to get the feeling that no one really cared enough about this book to bother with proof reading it. Spelling errors are annoying. The WORST is when they use an abbreviation(eg ATFL) and define it as one thing (anterior talofibular ligament) and then use it to mean other things a few pages later (anterior tibiofibular ligament...fyi, these are not the same ligaments...) SO ANNOYING!

This book was "required" reading at my med school, and NO ONE found it helpful. It had a very general overview of concepts, but was not good for a reference book or for studying for the shelf exam. As a resident, I wouldn't waste my time with it either.

This was recommended by a friend and I have been using it to study for the family practice boards. Is a wonderful review book that really sums up alot of information. Great quick read that is a wonderful base. Would highly recommend.

This text is the required book for my Family Medicine program. While I have never been a fan of dense books, I can honestly state that this is the most cumbersome book I have read for medical school. It is dense, flows poorly, and the advise within chapters is very often contradictory.

The absolute worse feature of the book is it is very light in clinical material. It sites empirical and evidence based medicine ad nauseum, but when it mentioned a maneuver it almost never explains how it is performed, when a differential supports the use of the maneuver, and what would be a positive sign. I found this very frustrating because I needed another book to read this book!

This book lacks the most basic insights that should be gained after a Family Medicine rotation. After reading the URI chapter it offers very little practical advise for separating bacterial vs. viral infections.

The book is a great collection of guidelines and recommendations that you can share with your patients, but does not teach what you need to know to learn or practice Family Medicine. This book should be titled "Lagniappe of Family Medicine"

The typos that other reviewers state are severe enough to warrant not buying the book are really not that bad. They are mostly simple spelling errors, and overall the book is a good tool to help develop a differential diagnosis for common presenting symptoms.

In addition to the typos (for example, "thiomeresol"), this book says "initial self management of hyperglycemia asks the patient to substitute some carbohydrates for others" and goes on to state that "concentrated forms of sugar" are "to be avoided". As evidence supporting this statement, the authors refer to the American Diabetes Association's 2004 statement on "Nutrition Principles and Recommendations in Diabetes." What the ADA statement actually says is "intake of sucrose and sucrose-containing foods by people with diabetes does not need to be restricted because of concern about aggravating hyperglycemia."

What can I say? This is one of the worst medical texts I've ever come across. Unfortunately, it was required reading for my FM clerkship; otherwise, I would have stopped reading about three chapters in. The authors are very preoccupied with evidence-based medicine; obviously this isn't a bad thing, or at least it wouldn't be if they would occasionally make some clinical correlations! The text is chock full of information about studies, meta-analyses, numbers needed to treat, etc. etc. ad nauseum, but where is the information I actually NEED in the clinic? It's all well and good to tell me the sensitivity and specificity of a given diagnostic procedure, but how about telling me how the procedure is performed? And it seems that every other page is plastered with tables of useless information like this -- various percentages and statistics that will be forgotten as soon as they're read. The truly useful bits must be hunted down and sorted from all the fluff -- and even then you'll end up referencing Bates half the time. Simply put, this book is all theory and little action.

Oh, and to add insult to injury, the editing in this book is, no kidding, the worst I've ever seen in a medical text. I think there must have been at least one typo or grammatical error on every page, and some pages had as many as four or five! How is this possible in the FIFTH EDITION of a textbook? It smacks of carelessness.

In short: Unless you are absolutely required to buy this book, avoid it like the plague.

The content of this book is very good. There are many, many spelling and formatting type-o's that make it a bit hard to read. The publisher needs to pay more to have the book edited. Other than the editing problems, I have no complaints.

I used this for my Primary Care Clerkship in 3rd year medical school. It was an excellent tool to give you all the basics of all areas in family medicine and primary care. The reading is easy and there are great figures and tables to give you clear and concise information.