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Rosen’s & Barkin’s 5-Minute Emergency Medicine Consult—5th Edition
BOOK AND MEDIA REVIEW Rosen’s & Barkin’s 5-Minute Emergency Medicine Consult—5th Edition Review by Loice Anne Swisher, MD 0196-0644/$-see front matter Copyright © 2015 by the American College of Emergency Physicians.
Rosen’s & Barkin’s 5-Minute Emergency Medicine Consult—5th Edition Hayden SR, Barkin AZ, Barkin RM, et al Wolters Kluwer 2010 1300 pages, $99.99 ISBN-13: 978-1-60831-630-4 ISBN-10: 1608316300 At 6.5 pounds and 1,286 pages, the 5th edition of Rosen & Barkin’s 5-Minute Emergency Medicine Consult falls firmly in the category of “reference,” most likely to reside on a shelf in the department beside Rosen, Tintinalli, and Roberts & Hedges. However, this compendium differs from those other emergency medicine texts by its organizational layout. Approximately 625 different entities are placed in alphabetical order, from abdominal aortic aneurysm to wound ballistics. It could be called “an encyclopedia of emergency medicine.” An opposing 2-page outline format allows the busy emergency physician to see all the subject information at a single glance. The most consistently interesting sections are the blue-boxed alerts and the pearls and pitfalls. Occasionally, a buried treasure came to light, such as using acetone to dissolve Styrofoam impacted in the ear. Some notable observations about this text deserve comment. Reference to medications seemed to be consistently the weakest in giving direction to the confused. For example, in the acidosis section the medications listed are dextrose, naloxone, and thiamine. Clinical acumen is imperative to sort out which acidotic situations would benefit from any or all of these drugs. If one is looking for help with therapeutic drug choices, a difference resource would be better. Also of note, except for the Rumack-Matthew nomogram for acetaminophen poisoning, there are no figures, pictures, or radiographs. Of potential aid to the reader is the presence of a small bleeding edge on each page
96 Annals of Emergency Medicine
to indicate the alphabetical location, making it easy to flip through the pages to find the general area of interest, and the inclusion of bonus reference information located inside the front and back covers of the book. There is a standard version and premium version of this newest edition of 5-Minute Emergency Medicine Consult. The difference is that the latter includes a year’s access to the Web site (http://www.5minuteconsult.com) and costs about $100 more—which is the Web site subscription price minus the text. The standard version allows a 10-day access, but anyone can access a free 10-day trial subscription from the Web site. This is not a review of the Web site; however, I did peruse it. The book and the Web site are distinctly different. In fact, some the sections are written by entirely different authors, leading me to suspect it is a conglomeration of all the 5-Minute Consult books. The Web site provides vastly more bells and whistles than the book, including continuing medical education opportunities, drug information, clinical guidelines and algorithms, more than 2,000 disease/condition entities, and hot links to reference abstracts. To me, the customer wanting a quick “just-in-time” emergency medicine review might find this book most helpful. The bullet-point schema seems best suited to a more experienced emergency physician who has learned the basics and established a clinical framework of thinking. Personally, I think I will find this book most useful a few weeks before my next American Board of Emergency Medicine recertification examination as an excellent selfassessment tool highlighting those areas that deserve more attention. Loice Anne Swisher, MD Mercy Hospital of Philadelphia Philadelphia, PA http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.annemergmed.2015.03.023
Volume 66, no. 1 : July 2015
Rosen’s & Barkin’s 5-Minute Emergency Medicine Consult—5th Edition Hayden SR, Barkin AZ, Barkin RM, et al Wolters Kluwer 2010 1300 pages, $99.99 ISBN-13: 978-1-60831-630-4 ISBN-10: 1608316300 At 6.5 pounds and 1,286 pages, the 5th edition of Rosen & Barkin’s 5-Minute Emergency Medicine Consult falls firmly in the category of “reference,” most likely to reside on a shelf in the department beside Rosen, Tintinalli, and Roberts & Hedges. However, this compendium differs from those other emergency medicine texts by its organizational layout. Approximately 625 different entities are placed in alphabetical order, from abdominal aortic aneurysm to wound ballistics. It could be called “an encyclopedia of emergency medicine.” An opposing 2-page outline format allows the busy emergency physician to see all the subject information at a single glance. The most consistently interesting sections are the blue-boxed alerts and the pearls and pitfalls. Occasionally, a buried treasure came to light, such as using acetone to dissolve Styrofoam impacted in the ear. Some notable observations about this text deserve comment. Reference to medications seemed to be consistently the weakest in giving direction to the confused. For example, in the acidosis section the medications listed are dextrose, naloxone, and thiamine. Clinical acumen is imperative to sort out which acidotic situations would benefit from any or all of these drugs. If one is looking for help with therapeutic drug choices, a difference resource would be better. Also of note, except for the Rumack-Matthew nomogram for acetaminophen poisoning, there are no figures, pictures, or radiographs. Of potential aid to the reader is the presence of a small bleeding edge on each page
96 Annals of Emergency Medicine
to indicate the alphabetical location, making it easy to flip through the pages to find the general area of interest, and the inclusion of bonus reference information located inside the front and back covers of the book. There is a standard version and premium version of this newest edition of 5-Minute Emergency Medicine Consult. The difference is that the latter includes a year’s access to the Web site (http://www.5minuteconsult.com) and costs about $100 more—which is the Web site subscription price minus the text. The standard version allows a 10-day access, but anyone can access a free 10-day trial subscription from the Web site. This is not a review of the Web site; however, I did peruse it. The book and the Web site are distinctly different. In fact, some the sections are written by entirely different authors, leading me to suspect it is a conglomeration of all the 5-Minute Consult books. The Web site provides vastly more bells and whistles than the book, including continuing medical education opportunities, drug information, clinical guidelines and algorithms, more than 2,000 disease/condition entities, and hot links to reference abstracts. To me, the customer wanting a quick “just-in-time” emergency medicine review might find this book most helpful. The bullet-point schema seems best suited to a more experienced emergency physician who has learned the basics and established a clinical framework of thinking. Personally, I think I will find this book most useful a few weeks before my next American Board of Emergency Medicine recertification examination as an excellent selfassessment tool highlighting those areas that deserve more attention. Loice Anne Swisher, MD Mercy Hospital of Philadelphia Philadelphia, PA http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.annemergmed.2015.03.023
Volume 66, no. 1 : July 2015