Medicine - What course/text books?

Hi - what sort of text books do medical students get assigned? Does anyone know of a resource where I can go and look to see a book list for all modules on a medical course?

Should probably note that I'm not doing a degree in medicine. I've just finished a degree in Earth Sciences (so academia isn't new to me) - but I miss learning new things and find medicine fascinating. I could go do a degree in it but I'm not sure I actually would want to work in medicine/apply what I'm learning.

Reply 1

username5319484

19

Original post by Snr1

Hi - what sort of text books do medical students get assigned? Does anyone know of a resource where I can go and look to see a book list for all modules on a medical course?

Should probably note that I'm not doing a degree in medicine. I've just finished a degree in Earth Sciences (so academia isn't new to me) - but I miss learning new things and find medicine fascinating. I could go do a degree in it but I'm not sure I actually would want to work in medicine/apply what I'm learning.

What parts of medicine interest you? I've only finished first year in dentistry but I haven't found textbooks to be that helpful; everything I needed were in the lecture slides.

Reply 2

artful_lounger

Universities Forum Helper

21

To be honest if you're just interested in learning about "medicine" but not doing it, you might be better served looking to learn more in the field of the biological sciences broadly, than medicine specifically. I gather medics learn as much of the science as they need to support their clinical decision making, and no more than that - so if you're just interested in the science of medicine and medical treatments, you would probably be better off looking at things from the science side (e.g. the kinds of things they study in biomedical sciences/pharmacology/physiology/microbiology/virology degrees and similar) rather than what they study in medicine. As those are the courses studying it for the sake of studying it (rather than studying it for the sake of preparing to be a clinician).

If you are interested in that, some example reading lists for the Cambridge bioscience papers in natural sciences can be found here: https://libguides.cam.ac.uk/naturalsciences/biosci

Note though that textbooks are usually expected to just be a starting point and quite quickly students in science degrees are expected to begin surveying current literature being published in academic journals to see the new things being discovered in the field!

(edited 1 year ago)

Reply 3

Snr1

OP

11

Thank you! I just want to know the sciences and get to a level where I can understand enough to read a medical journal and understand the gist. I don't want work experience - I'm intending to go into a completely different field (earth sciences) - i just really want to know more about the body, how it functions and how/why it goes wrong.

Reply 4

Snr1

OP

11

Original post by hungrysalamander

What parts of medicine interest you? I've only finished first year in dentistry but I haven't found textbooks to be that helpful; everything I needed were in the lecture slides.

Anatomy and systems to start with I think? Then just investigate avenues that really interest me - I find the reproductive system fascinating and would love to know more but for that i'm getting the impression you need a wider knowledge base on how the body works as a whole then I currently have.

Reply 5

Snr1

OP

11

Original post by artful_lounger

To be honest if you're just interested in learning about "medicine" but not doing it, you might be better served looking to learn more in the field of the biological sciences broadly, than medicine specifically. I gather medics learn as much of the science as they need to support their clinical decision making, and no more than that - so if you're just interested in the science of medicine and medical treatments, you would probably be better off looking at things from the science side (e.g. the kinds of things they study in biomedical sciences/pharmacology/physiology/microbiology/virology degrees and similar) rather than what they study in medicine. As those are the courses studying it for the sake of studying it (rather than studying it for the sake of preparing to be a clinician).

If you are interested in that, some example reading lists for the Cambridge bioscience papers in natural sciences can be found here: https://libguides.cam.ac.uk/naturalsciences/biosci

Note though that textbooks are usually expected to just be a starting point and quite quickly students in science degrees are expected to begin surveying current literature being published in academic journals to see the new things being discovered in the field!

Yes - that's pretty much it! Thank you for summarising it so neatly xD.

Ahh I'll give them a look - thank you! I actually just completed my masters in Geology so I'm quite familiar with academic journals. I'm working on the assumption that my knowledge base for biology isn't anywhere near wide enough to understand the academic papers - hence trying to get my knowledge up to the same level medical students would get to before switching primarily onto journals. I didn't do Biology at A Level so I just have my GCSE knowledge to pull from xD.

Reply 6

girl_in_black

16

Original post by Snr1

Yes - that's pretty much it! Thank you for summarising it so neatly xD.

Ahh I'll give them a look - thank you! I actually just completed my masters in Geology so I'm quite familiar with academic journals. I'm working on the assumption that my knowledge base for biology isn't anywhere near wide enough to understand the academic papers - hence trying to get my knowledge up to the same level medical students would get to before switching primarily onto journals. I didn't do Biology at A Level so I just have my GCSE knowledge to pull from xD.

I would suggest starting with an A-Level human biology text book and going from there.

Reply 7

artful_lounger

Universities Forum Helper

21

Original post by Snr1

Yes - that's pretty much it! Thank you for summarising it so neatly xD.

Ahh I'll give them a look - thank you! I actually just completed my masters in Geology so I'm quite familiar with academic journals. I'm working on the assumption that my knowledge base for biology isn't anywhere near wide enough to understand the academic papers - hence trying to get my knowledge up to the same level medical students would get to before switching primarily onto journals. I didn't do Biology at A Level so I just have my GCSE knowledge to pull from xD.

I mean you can always look at current papers and then go back to textbooks for bits that you don't understand, basically working backwards. But in any case you're probably best off starting with bioscience textbooks rather than medical ones, as the bioscience ones will go into more detail of how and why particular mechanisms work the way they do I would expect, rather than focusing on the clinical importance.