Pediatrics (Board Review Series) 1st Edition

I got this in the last two weeks of my pediatrics clerkship, and the bottom line is that I'd wish I'd had it the entire time. I used significant portions of Pretest, Case Files, and First Aid for Step 2 for this rotation as well, and BRS combined the best of all of them, in my opinion.Here's what I love about it:- Leaves nothing out. It's meant to be a complete package and it succeeds. Case Files does it's best to cover everything by working outlying issues into semi-related cases, but some information still falls through the cracks. In BRS, it's all there as you go through it- Incredibly organized. I think this is the main strength of BRS. You can go through whichever topics you want, as in depth as you want making it perfect for both learning and review. Resources like Pretest and Case Files have little, if any organization, and are somewhat difficult to use for anything other than learning exactly the way it's presented.- Quality questions. The questions are superb, and with nearly 400 questions that are tied into the information presented, Pretests 500 questions (and questions only) seem pretty superfluous.Remember, pediatrics is a massive subject, and BRS is a large, dense book by necessity. But it's an easy read and the impeccable organization allows you to go shallower on subjects that you feel confident on.Do yourself a favor and get this at the beginning of you pediatrics rotation. You won't regret using it.

PROS:/+/ Covers the majority of the information that is on the shelf for the Peds clerkship./+/ Relatively streamlined presentation of information - while it's still a fairly lengthy read, it's definitely doable during the Peds clerkship if you read a little bit each day./+/ Well-organized. I appreciate the way the chapters were divided, as I thought that it made sense and made it easier to pick certain topics to focus on (for example, I was able to read the Emergency Medicine chapter before my Peds ED portion of the clerkship).CONS:/-/ The book is old, with the first edition (which I was I bought, and until I went to review I had no idea that an updated edition was on the way) being released in 2004. Some of the information is obviously outdated as a result. Does that matter for the shelf (which is composed of questions that are several years old and have been phased out of the Step 2 CK bank)? Probably not overall - there may be some discrepancies here and there, but nothing major as far as I could tell. Just don't expect it to be suitable for actual clinical decision making on the wards, though you should probably say the same about any test-prep review book.For what it's worth, I read BRS, did UWorld, did parts of PreTest, and watched the OnlineMedEd videos to prepare for the shelf. I didn't do the end of chapter questions in BRS as I found them to be less helpful than UWorld or PreTest, but if you're looking for additional questions it's an added bonus. Overall, I'd recommend BRS for anyone in the Peds clerkship. It'll work better for people who prefer reading about material first and then doing questions (rather than learning from doing questions alone), but I could still see it being useful even for the latter type of student if they also like to have something where they can look up more shelf-relevant information about a particular disease (similar to how most people use First Aid when Step studying).

I'm usually not a big fan of the BRS series, they just tend to give me the impression of long text description for each topic with minimal picture/illustration. However, I got this one because one of the authors wrote the school exam for my peds clerkship, and I heard that the exam was based on this book. Turned out that the book was pretty good, and was very comprehensive in the variety of topics covered. The chapters are organized by organ systems (Renal, pulmonary, etc.) Practice questions follow each chapter and there is also a comprehensive exam at the very end. There do seem to be more details than needed for a 3rd year med student level, and reading the entire book once does take some time.

I am now an intern in Pediatrics and use this book for brief review and general knowledge from time to time; however when I was studying for the shelf exam, I found this book late and was only able to selectively read through about half of the content. It was dead on with high yield topics! I made note cards off the high yield information to help digest the information, because let's face it, reading outlines of information is not entertaining but more efficient than reading paragraphs full of fluff. This helped me to score extremely high on the shelf; all thanks to this book. If you are a 3rd year medical student, I HIGHLY recommend this book without reservation, even if it is the only book you will use. I lent it to my friends when they did their Peds rotation; and although they hated Peds, they still did very well on the shelf! Compared to Pretest, High Yield, etc... no other book compares.

This was a very good review and I thought the information was well presented. However, this book is long overdue for an update which really takes away from the rating. Given an update I think BRS would potentially be better that Blueprints, but as of now I would not recommend this book for the Pediatric shelf exam (MD/DO). The only way I would see this book as being useful would be in addition to other review sources.

To start off, with the help of this book I scored 99/100 on the 3rd year medical school pediatric shelf exam. That aside, I found this book gave me a strong foundation in pediatric medicine and, as best I can tell, helped me with every single pediatric patient I have taken care of in medical school. The book is written in an easy to read, rapidly digestible outline format. It is well organized and easy to break into chunks. I would recommend this book to provide an excellent foundation for medical students and interns; more advanced providers my find their learning needs are beyond the scope of this book.