Appleton & Lange Review of Internal Medicine

Rating:
Summary: this book actually may have hurt me
Review: Caveat: I passed step 2 in 2003.

I needed a question book that provided me with questions broken down by subject. Most question books don't break questions down by subject---e.g. you'll have a practice exam with mixed surgery, OB/Gyn, Psychiatry, IM, Pediatrics questions.

The way I study, I want to do questions after I've completed a specific subject. Example, I just studied cardiology, now I want to do cardiology questions. You can't do that with most question books without having to spend wasted, tedious hours fishing for this through hundreds of questions.

So I at first thought this book would help. IM after all is the bread & butter of USMLE Step 2 & 3. I already exhausted all the questions I could've used in Kaplan's Q-book which also has questions divided by residency-surgery, IM etc, but not by subject.

Unfortunately, the questions in this book aren't high yield. I would go through 20 questions at a time and sometimes get over 15 wrong, making me think I was going to fail the exam-which I didn't. The problem is that some of the questions are so esoteric and won't possibly be on the exam that even veteran attendings won't be able to answer them.

If anything, this book only scared me, and made me think I was going to fail the exam. Whenever I did the Kaplan Q-book questions, I would ace the questions, but this book just screwed with my head.

If you want a hard IM question book to challege you, I'd suggest the Harrison's book of Internal Medicine question book. While those questions are harder, they are also fair and won't screw with you before going into the exam. The Appleton & Lange book does have its merits, but it won't give you a good picture of where you are and where you need to be with the USMLE. If anything its just a good old fashioned "we'll give you questions so hard no one will be able to answer them that won't possibly be on the exam".

If anything this book will be good for a last minute psychological screw up on someone you don't like who is taking the exam in the near future. Give them this book, tell them its very accurate to the questions on the exam (which it isn't) and when they start messing up, they'll think they'll fail the USMLE Step 2 or 3.

Rating:
Summary: Good Stuff for practise
Review: It is good in the sense that reviews every major system in medicine.But at the same time contains information not very relavant or important for the exam.Good if you have time but does not contain high yield material if you need a concise review.