During my Medicine Clerkship I found that books like the "Washington Manual" were directed only at patient management with little information on pathophysiology.  As its utility waned, it became heavier.  I used "MD Consult," and spent countless hours searching for relevant articles. I found those articles useful to a point.  They tended to be overly detailed and, more importantly, were impossible to review later.  Using my 2nd year lecture notes as core material, I created a rudimentary pocketbook that served me well as a relevant portable reference and review book. The pocketbook was fully developed as an ISP project to provide medical students starting their core Medicine Clerkship with:

1) a handy portable concise relevant reference of essential topics and
2) the greatest freedom in determining what they will carry in their already packed pockets.   

I hope this pocketbook will help you read up on common topics and, more importantly, to review and review and review those topics so you can avoid hearing that dreaded phrase, "you should read more."  Each of the topics covered has a clinical emphasis with all attempts made to make each one concise and relevant (to the best of my abilities.)  Most topics are greatly redacted and reformatted lecture notes from the 2nd year,  and summaries prepared for short talks on topics.  Each chapter is formatted in a double sided printable format in a Microsoft Word document that can be printed, trimmed and then bound. 

I have tried my best to be accurate and up to date with each chapter.  A great thanks goes out to student, fellow and faculty reviewers who gave constructive criticism on various chapters in the pocketbook: Colleen Bailey M.D., Harry Bluestein M.D., Richard Channick M.D., Quyen Dao, Timothy Dresselhaus M.D., Robert Engler M.D., Ulrika Green M.D.., Alan Maisel M.D., Daniel O'Connor M.D., Truc Pham, Leland Rickman M.D., Thomas Savides M.D, Stephen Seagren M.D., and Paul Wolf M.D.  Inevitably there will be some errors.  Those are wholly my own.  Feedback is greatly encouraged via the comments page and will allow those errors to be corrected in future versions. 

I would also like to thank C. Brian Webb and Josh Breslow in the SOM Office of Educational Computing for helping to translate my idea into working source code.

Finally, much thanks goes to Dr. Bluestein, Dr. Dresselhaus, and Dr. Hoffman for all of their help and guidance in the evolution of this project. 

Good Luck on the Wards!!
Kenneth Antons
UCSD Class of 2002