NMS Surgery, 5th Edition (The National Medical Series for Independent Study)

If you liked the bullet-point outline format of Goljian's Rapid Review Pathology, you will like this. If you hate bullet-points, then this book is NOT for you. It's a relatively hefty tome for a review book; you can't carry this in your pocket. But it's well worth a one-time-read-through to prepare for the shelf. It contains all the pertinent points regarding disease presentation and management. Although a few topics are a tad outdated, I doubt they really affected my test taking. I blazed through the entire book over the course of 2 weekends (skipping some low-yield sections). In addition to UWorld surgery questions + PreTest surgery questions, I got a 99 on the shelf. Definitely worth it if you can tolerate reading walls of text.

Its a great book. I nailed my shelf exam as well as a detailed presentation on portal htn because of this thing. Its a surgery book written in a format that is similar to Pathoma (outline format) that makes learning easy. Wonderfully organized and each portion contains a gracious amount of pertinent physiology/pathology to show you exactly how/why a particular procedure is indicated. The diagrams are wonderful but there are not enough of them. But hey, thats why google images exists. With this, you should do well on your surgery rotation. I also recommend a free online source called onlinemeded.com.

I bought this book for my third year surgery clerkship rotation to study for my shelf exam. The book is packed with tiny print and highly detailed information. I felt it was too much! This book is more for a surgery resident, not a medical student. I ended up not even reading the book because there was no way I could remember all the detailed information from this book in the little time I had to study for the shelf during a 4 week rotation. I also bought the question book that goes with this book, but I was so overwhelmed with information in such a short time period that I didn't even attempt the questions.

I am a 3rd year med student on my surgery rotation right now and though this book is definitely outdated, I find it is great for pimping questions. I look up the section on whatever surgeries I have the next day and usually can answer all the surgeons questions. Where I miss things is where there have been advances/additions since the publication of this book which is almost 10 years ago now. NMS surgery cases I hear is very good for oral boards and shelf exams but I haven't taken those yet.

If you like learning information in an outline-style format, this is a good book for that. One thing that is missing is a dedicated section on appendicitis. Weird. It's kind of old, but a lot of the information is still accurate for today.

This book provides an extensive review of important surgical information; very detailed with good explanations. Not the greatest text for quick reviews, however.

I chose this book over surgical recall and I would say that i regret it. The format of the book is good with all the bullet points but it fails to explain a certain concept. And to add more I think it is quite a rough read. I wouldn't recommend to buy this book for your rotations. Well I've also heard good things about NMS case files but after reading this one I'm quite disappointed and I don't think that I would try that.

Good book for quick consult