Product Description

More than ever, the sixth edition of the highly acclaimed "Oxford Handbook of Clinical Specialties" fulfils its role as the essential one-stop port of call for all the clinical specialties: Obstetrics, Gynaecology, Paediatrics, Psychiatry, Primary Care, ENT, Eyes, Skin diseases, Anaesthesia, Orthopaedics and Trauma. It's ten books in one, and from this point of view alone it must the best-value medical book ever. And it's an exciting read because, by virtue of its diversity and because within it all the specialties are ineterrelated, it offers unrivalled opportunities for multidisciplinary learning. It's only one inch thick, yet in this inch lie all the ideas and facts essential to those who will or are already caring for patients whose needs may or may not fit within the traditional bounds of individual specialties. The ideas may be difficult, and the facts may be numerous, but here they are made comprehensible and memorable, laid out in the "Oxford Handbooks'" characteristic style, the consistent page-a-topic format with space for the reader's own updatings and refinements. So this new edition scores 10 out of 10 because: it's ten books for the price of one-so there is no medical exam that it cannot help you to pass (for a start, it even teaches you to master your own anxiety); it's intimately linked to the "Oxford Handbook of Clinical Medicine", so that together they provide an internally consistent view of the whole of clinical medicine and cover everything you need to know about medicine and surgery; full of practical advice, with step-by-step guides and dosages given in full; it's thoroughly up-to-date and more evidence-based than ever before; with many hundreds of links to reliable medical internet sites such as Medline and Clinical Evidence, it is easy for readers to probe beneath the topics covered; it's holistic and multidisciplinary; it's authoritative (all sections double-checked by senior specialists)-yet always aware of medicine's short-comings. This new edition scores 10 out of 10 because: it's human, it's humorous, yet all the while it is deeply serious about communicating not just recipes for care but a philosophy of medicine which has come to be respected around the world; more illustrations, with new colour pictures in Ophthalmology and Dermatology; and it's small; it's neat - and it just can't wait to get into your pocket.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #338522 in Books
• Published on: 2003-01-30
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 815 pages

Review
Finally the new edition has arrived and in short it's brilliant. Northwing (Sheffield Medical School Magazine)

Northwing (Sheffield Medical School Magazine)
"Finally the new edition has arrived and in short it's brilliant."

Northwing (Sheffield Medical School Magazine)
"Finally the new edition has arrived and in short it's brilliant."

Customer Reviews

completely indispensible
My copy of this book is breaking apart at the spine and has a few missing pages: this is a testment only to the fact that I've used it so much. I'm an SHO in Paediatrics now, and, since I bought this book in third year I have used it countless times as both as a quick reference guide, and during revision for numerous exams. I quickly came to rely on this book and it's yellow-skinned cousin (OHCM) for brief and memorable introductions to ailments I encountered on the wards and during my revision. This edition is divided into several chapters including Obstetrics and Gynaecology, Paediatrics, Ophthalmology, ENT, Dermatology, A£E, Orthopaedics, General Practice, and Psychiatry (amongst others).

While some might feel the poetic subtext on many of the pages is somewhat annoying and pretentious (read the page entitled 'a journey on foot' in the orthopaedic section), I have always found it a welcome augmentation to the raw medical dimension contained within the books pages.

No junior doctor in the UK should be without these books, of that I am certain.

A must for any med. student for quick reference on the wards
This book together with the Handbook for Clinical Medicine is absolutely essential for survival on the wards. If you havn't got a clue what's wrong with the patient, what the consultant is talking about or what you are meant to do next- these books help you out. They are compact enough to stick in your pocket, but have enough information crammed in to tell you everything that you could be expected to know about any condition. As I said this is a must for any med. student or junior doc. The proof really is that these aren't some new fancy books that have to be put to the test now, everyone I've spoken to seems to have been using them for years- Good Luck!

An essential buy, but its not quite OHCM...
'Salt and Vinegar', as this book has affectionately come to be know, has become something of a bible to a 3rd year med student. It has most of the information you'd need for the specialty rotations.
When compared to the OHCM, however, improvements to the layout of some of the text needs improving.
Also, the 'insights' given in this book- quotes from books, ethical tangents, are all too often not insightful at all. They're long and not always optional reading, as they're woven into the essential reading.