Customer Reviews

NMS Surgery Casebook (National Medical Series for Independent Study)

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This is as near perfect a surgery review text as you can find that will prepare you for both your third year surgery clerkship and NBME surgery subject exam and Step 2. This book is very quick reading and is FULL of tons of great diagrams, charts, CT, X-rays, U/S, angiograms, etc. It's written in a clinical cases format with specific and pertinent management questions and solutions, as well as differentials and diagnosing discussions, that will prepare you clinically for the wards, as well as prepare you for shelf exams (which contain a lot of patient management questions, many of which were discussed in this book). It also has enough anatomy and pathophysiology discussion for it to be useful as a source for background reading for surgeries you are planning on scrubbing in on. The radiographic images are especially useful, however, it would have been useful to have more diagnostic findings specifically labelled on many of the images. Most importantly, this is a book that you can realistically expect to finish and even master within the timeframe of your 8-12 week clerkship. Highly recommended.

I really like this book. The book is presented in a case-based question/answer format. The book is written in narrative form (no bullets, or choppy info). I like the design of the book and it's easy to read and understand. The cases presented are classic and in-depth. It's a long read though, and may be too much for boards when its crunch time. I used it mostly for reference and when I didn't understand something when I was studying for Step 2. It's a great book for 3rd year surgery rotation and the shelf exam. Good luck!!

I just finished my surgery rotation and took the shelf exam. I have to say that reading this book really prepared me for the shelf and also for the whole surgery rotation. I highly recommend this book. You may also want to have a question book such as pre-test surgery to do some practice questions.
Good luck in surgery.

I used five different review books on my clerkship and this was by far my favorite. Compared to Case Files, there are more topics and the format was definitely better.

This book is perfect for the shelf. I read it three times and also read maybe half of case files, and I got a 94 raw score. I highly recommend it.

A surgical intern recommended this book to me 4 weeks into my surgery rotation. I'm so glad I listed to her and bought this book. No idea how I would have gotten through the surgery shelf without it! It is a relatively quick read, and the format is conducive to making the material stick in your head. I used this along with the Pestana review and I did well on my surgery shelf, even though it was my first rotation, and I had not had medicine yet. Even though the majority of my classmates used Case Files (and I tried it for awhile, too), I would highly recommed NMS casebook over Case Files for surgery.

I was ecstatic at trying this book after seeing the reviews. I read it twice, and I honestly admit that it is an excellent source. It is very clinically oriented and presents each case in a clinical vignette that has a number of questions that follow. The questions are organized enough to help students understand decision making in surgery. On the shelf examination I estimate that 30-40% end the question with "what would be your next step." This book helped me tackle these questions the best that I could. However, the problem comes up when people say that this book is all that and a bag of potatoes. Still 60-70% of the question I had were not management questions. They dealt with diagnosis and complications of diseases, and this is where the book falls short. NMS casefiles does a fair job of covering these topics, but it is by no means comprehensive enough to get you in the 99th percentile. In fact, the case files format often makes it difficult to compare conditions clearly (e.g. cholangitis vs. cholecystitis) and the differences in management conditions. At the end of this book, you may have some difficultly delineating where one diagnosis ends and the other starts. I relate this mostly to the lack of good diagrams and tables that would allow clear contrast between items. Rather, most everything is contained in the text. In retrospect, I wish that I would have selected a source like First Aid or Blueprints to read through before doing this book. I don't think that I needed to background to understand this book, but it would have at least laid out complications of diseases and clear contrasts between conditions that are a little hazy in this book.

Good book to REVIEW what you learned in surgery. I do not recommend this book to help you learn surgery as most of the information contained in it will not make sense unless you have already read about and seen what the book is talking about. I consider the information contained in this book advanced because it assumes that you already have a foundation in Internal Medicine. I plan to use this to help me prepare for Shelf once I have finished building a stronger foundation by reading (a pocket book is not enough)to build a good foundation.

Addendum
This book is not essential to do well on the Shelf...check out Pestana notes!!!

The NMS casebook and surgical recall make a really good set. While Recall is just a list of high yield facts organized around a known diagnosis the NMS case book is organized by surgical discipline with a walk through of disease presentations and discussion of key features.

It reads like more of a text book than case files which I liked given that I was not going to use another textbook for surgery. If you are looking for pure clinical cases in more of a questions and answer format go for casefiles or even pretest.

Excellent review and format is very good. Start with one problem and then throw another spin on it or complications. Describes procedures as well which is nice to see. Good stepwise and logical "If" "Then" process. Pretty easy to read and will definitely prepare you for the shelf and step2. BUT supplement trauma by using that chapter from Sabistan's Surgery textbook. Highly recommended