Pharmacology

Pharmcards: Review Cards for Medical Students

•  "My hesitation with these was not the amount, but the cost.  So, before I purchased them I went our school bookstore where they have an open copy to look through.  The price totally sucks, but besides First Aid & qbank, this was my next most useful resource.  The beginning handful of cards has schematic overviews of how to tx common diagnoses...very helpful in getting the big picture.  Plus they highlight the important stuff in bold."

• "Now that I am in 3rd year, I actually use these a lot for the wards.  I keep a handful of relevant cards in my coat pocket & review them as I can." 
• "Yes, there is a lot of them, but its worth it.  I matched what First Aid said we needed w/ the pharmcards."  Totally worth it."
• "I went back and forth on getting these for a while.  There is excess, but it helps me understand the concept better than the "listing" of drugs in other resources."

Katzung & Trevor's Pharmacology Examination and Board Review

• “I only used this one and I am quite satisfied with the process. No pharma questions got me by surprise in the actual exam (but they were so few!). The tables, and the "Key Drugs" section at the end were pure gold to me.”
• "The chapters are more lined up with the way my pharmacology class is set up, and it (briefly) includes lower-yield topics covered on my exams but not heavily emphasized on the Step 1. These topics are readily identifiable, however. The book itself includes an alphabetical listing of the 200 or so most tested drugs on Step 1, along with a brief description of the mechanism of action, toxicity, and the corresponding chapter or chapters that discuss this drug. Within each chapter, key drugs are listed in table format. Lippincott's seems less organized, and each chapter is organized differently than the next, making it more difficult to orient yourself when moving on to subsequent chapters."
• "Great review book. Especially if using for the boards. It has good information, just enough detail and it doesn't drag. It also has fantastic questions at the end to test yourself."

Lippincott's Illustrated Reviews: Pharmacology

• "I used this text to prepare for the boards, having already read Katzung's Pharmacology in class. This is a concise book, uniform, with many illustrations (many of them however could easily be omitted, since they simply present drug adverse effects graphically)."
• "Please be advised that though you may find the illustrations helpful and entertaining, some of descriptive pharmacology contains fatal errors. For example, on page 119:
  "Cocaine can induce seizures as well as fatal cardiac arrythmias. IV diazepam and propanolol may be required to control cocaine-induced seizures and cardiac arrythmias."
  Propanolol is CONTRAINDICATED in cocaine-induced cardiac arrythmias because of coronary artery vasoconstriction. Responsible health-care providers need to know this."
• "LIR Pharm seems to be one of those books that everyone uses in medical school. It's really not short or quick to read at over 500 pages. But the fact that the authors keep all of the chapters at about 10-15 pages makes each one a fairly easy and digestible read. As others have already said, the greatest strength of the book by far is the excellent illustrations.
  One thing about this book annoyed me a lot, and that was the huge number of typos that are present throughout."

High Yield Pharmacology

• “I was looking for a good pharm book, never found one, this one is terrible, not much more detail than First Aid.”