Scott's Spiel

A lot of people who I meet coming to start at Glasgow are confused about whether they should be buying lots of books before hand. Probably not, it’s almost certainly better to wait until you start. Despite that, I thought I’d give my views on some books typically used in 1st year at Glasgow. All books link to Amazon although I don’t receive royalty for the links (so click away!).

Tortora	Now in a 2 volume 12th edition Tortora (as it’s affectionately known as) remains a favourite for 1st years. Covering most of the anatomy and physiology you will ever encounter, this is one a lot of people buy. Personally I would try and experiment a bit more, it’s a decent book but the faculty hate it. Some of the individual anatomy and physiology books offer more and explain things clearer.
McMinn's	Either this one or one of the updated Clinical or Colour atlases are faculty favourites for anatomy learning. I haven’t seen the updated books but I found McMinn’s a tricky book for beginners. Almost all of the images are based on dissected specimens which, although very realistic, make it hard to see what’s going where. I much prefer the (slightly larger) book below.
Moore	Recently updated, this excellent anatomy book tries to make everything seem relevant by relating it to clinical practice. Whilst perhaps a bit much for 1st or even 2nd year, I wish I’d bought it early and actually got the full use out of it. One to look at!
Colo(u)ring	Not to be laughed at, this book is actually really good at making you apply anatomy – which is generally quite dull. It does require a bit of time to get it usable as a book but for something you are only slightly interested in learning (something you’ve come across but not expected to know in detail, for example) it can be useful.
Fast Track	I’ve only come across this recently but I’ve grown to like it. It presents a question and answer format for the most important and commonly encountered anatomy topics. A chapter is finished with pictures (not the best of quality) which show some of the topics. Nice and small book, perfect for the train or similar.

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It’s not unusual – I go home or manage to meet up with my family. I’ll usually be presented with a “present” in the form of a cut or bruise from my brother or sister. More recently I’ve had the joy of a rash. These are generally trivial and more of a joke than any serious test of what I’ve learned.

Move up a few generations and things are a bit different. Here I have statins, B-blockers and ACE inhibitors of all sizes. I get updated on any recent changes (whether I want to know or not) and spend a bit of time trying to work out what the trade name actually is. This is fine, I’m (sadly) quite interested in this. I stop myself from making any real comments though – save maybe trying to explain what the drug does. Anything beyond that 1) I tend not to know and 2) don’t want to treat my family anyway.

Unfortunately my restraint doesn’t seem to be shared by my peers. The most recent example of this was one of my colleagues explaining to a relative the findings of a new study. The relative was told they “probably don’t need to be on it” and that it “has these new problems”. More annoyingly, my friend was planning to send the article so that it could be taken to their relatives GP who “might not have seen it”.

I have no doubt that evidence based medicine isn’t practiced as well as it possible could be but this concerns me for different reasons. Firstly, treating family members is not exactly recommended, even by those fully qualified. More than that, however, is the poor GP who is going to be presented with a BMJ article that the patient was told to bring.

It’s confusing for the patient and annoying for the GP. I don’t like it.

This isn’t an isolated incident either. I’ve heard of younger students advising about post-stroke medication for example.

Perhaps we should be taught about where our limits should be as students? I can think of a few sessions that this could fit into.