Blueprints Notes & Cases: Behavioral Science and Epidemiology (Blueprints Notes and Cases)

Rating:
Summary: OUTSTANDING RESOURCE FOR PSYCHIATRY and EPIDEMIOLOGY
Review: There are books that you use in order to learn course material. Then there are books that captivate you and impart their knowledge onto you for a lifetime. Neugroschl and Hoblyn's excellent Blueprints Notes and Cases in Behavioral Science and Epidemiology is quiet simply the model of review books. The authors' comprehensive brilliance is displayed in page after page of thoughtful and thought-provoking material, which provides thorough coverage of all vital and relevant information, yet never treads into the dark realm of minutiae. The book is brilliantly organized into unique and classic cases with case-based questions that are nearly identical to the Psychiatry Shelf and Step 2 questions. My score on Step 2 was a whopping 284 - and I scored in the 100% and 99%, respectively, on the Behavioral Science and Epidemiology sections. The only book I used throughout my Psychiatry rotation and to prepare for Step 2 was this book. Beyond scores though, this book has made me a more competent clinician. My approach and management of psychiatric patients borders on brilliance, thanks in large part to this text. It covers the whole spectrum of disorders and virtually every reasonable and widely accepted treatment. The format and syntax of the text is rapidly consumed, easily assimilated, and effectively recalled. I recall passages and examples wholly intact, and use the wisdom in patient managament daily. I am going into emergency medicine and have used suggestions from the book repeatedly in management of many diverse patients since the completion of my psychiatry rotation. The epidemiology portion is similarly outstanding. It teaches epidemiological principles and stastical analysis in an intelligent, thorough, and useful fahsion, and will make you an adept and critical analyst of the medical literature. I have two PhD candidate colleagues who use this book as their primary resource for understanding and evaluating the medical literature and for designing their own protocols.
If you buy only one book during your clinical years of medical school it should be Tarascon's Pharmacopeia. But if you will splurge on two books, your second should be this INVALUABLE RESOURCE.