Acute Medicine

"Acute medicine is a part of the CCU series from Wiley which are a useful set of titles that allow the reader to encounter a range of acute medical conditions, 22 presentations that give the reader a reasonable overview. The start of the title is particularly useful as it goes over the ABCDE of acute triage of patients which is an essential skill to understand as a medical student approaching your finals and certainly as a doctor. Following this for the medical student the title usefully recaps history & examination skills for medicine before discussing important investigations and finally prior to the cases giving a lengthy easy to understand discourse on the ECG and how to interpret it.

After the cases there is a self assessment section that tests the reader on the knowledge that they should have based on what the title has covered. Having used this book in part to revise for my finals, I found the difficulty & style of these questions to be similar to and a good reflection of what was encountered within the finals examinations.

The disadvantage of this title I suppose is the small number of cases it has, although these cases cover a broad range of medical conditions/presentations that you could expect to encounter in the hospital there aren't that many. Other series such as the 100 cases series (by their title) cover a significantly greater number of clinical conditions/presentations, though not in as much detail, this may be more desirable to some.

In conclusion this series of titles is well worth considering using for preparing for your finals examinations and others as an undergraduate medical student. It may however be worth you considering borrowing the title from your medical school or other library first and if you feel it is worth adding to your personal library, then doing so." (Medical Student, Lancaster University)

"This is a great book for people who like solid answers to practical questions. Unlike some revision books this one is actually useful to doctors and not just medical students wanting to pass finals. It tackles common presentations, not rare conditions and is interesting to read." (The Murmer, August 2009)