Customer Reviews

Case Files Family Medicine, Second Edition (LANGE Case Files)

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

 

 

I purchased this book because one of the authors is the director of the family medicine clerkship at my medical school. The book is a great introduction to family medicine and the most common patient cases you will see in the clinic. The book focuses more on clinical diagnosis and disease management than it does on pathophysiology, so if you want disease process details, you will need to supplement your learning with another source. Overall, I give this book 5* because of its comprehensive coverage of bread and butter family medicine diagnosis and treatment. As an aside, at least 3-4 of my NBME family medicine shelf questions were identical to cases illustrated in this book. The NBME family medicine shelf is difficult, and I don't yet know how I did, but I felt prepared, due in part because of this book.

Because Family Medicine is so broad (medicine + peds + obgyn), these cases can only scratch the surface of what you need to know. When I started doing questions in Pretest, which turned about to be fairly representative of the shelf. I felt that this book did not prepare me well. I agree with another review that this makes a good introduction to the clerkship, but will leave major gaps in your knowledge base if you don't use anything else. Try to schedule your FM rotation toward the end if you can.

I need to start off by saying that I think (and most people would agree) Case Files in general is less a preparatory text than it is a way to fill small gaps of time within a clerkship. It's certainly not a resource that students should be pulling out at home when they have an hour or two to do some real studying because the information is just not detailed enough. However, it is better than just seeing patients and not following each interaction up with some educational resource. That being said, I think the Case Files Family Medicine book is one of the poorer ones in the series. Students in their third year know most of the information contained in the text already from studying for Step 1, and while the text covers outpatient issues, the shelf exam is on outpatient and inpatient. Sadly, for me and a number of my classmates, using this resource was a waste of time, which could have been better spent on a more detailed text. Considering the relative lack of studying resources for the family medicine clerkship, my recommendation is to treat it as a combined medicine and pediatrics rotation, focusing more heavily on the former and using resources available for those clerkships as tools for success in family medicine.

If hindsight is 20/20 and I had to do it again, this book is definitely a keeper. Studying for the family medicine shelf exam is a lot like studying for step 2, and in my experience, I found myself relying on step 2 review material and question banks more than I did on books geared towards family medicine. Though the topics for the family medicine shelf are broad in nature, I was pleasantly surprised with the scope of material that this book covered. It really gave key hitters for things that were seen in the clinic and things that were tested on the shelf exam. However, don't expect it to cover the entire shelf exam. If you want to do well, then I recommend supplementing this book with other review materials for step 2. In my case, I started with case files to cover the basics and then moved on to usmleworld's internal medicine questions. My shelf score came out tip top!

Really good for clinic stuff, but Pretest is by far the best for the shelf and Step 3. I'd buy pretest first, but this is a good second.

This is a great book for the family medicine shelf. It's organized into distinct cases on different topics, and the review questions at the end of each case is helpful. It helped me do well on my family medicine shelf, even though it was my first one. It covers a lot of the things that you need to know, but may not see on the individual rotation site.

I used this to study for the Family Med shelf. The book itself is well written, and I got through it in a few weeks. But, it didn't help at all for the exam. I think the MKSAP4 Ambulatory Questions, and maybe those FP online questions are better. I guess that made it a HUGE waste of time to read, but if you're going to be a FP Dr., maybe this is a book you'd enjoy?

The product, Family Medicine Case Files, was described as "good - with some bending of the cover pages". However, the seller failed to mention that there were several pages with highlighting, pen marks everywhere, and questions already answered (the product was a prep book for Family Medicine national exam, so clearly the purpose of having the book is to learn from doing the questions, which I can no longer do). I now do not have enough time to return the book and buy another one, as my exam is too soon. I feel that the seller was dishonest, which is a mark of a bad seller.

I received this product super quickly = just a couple of days & was pleased with it.