The only drug card set specifically designed for first and second year medical students, this unique tool provides a clear and easy-to-use review of the medications most commonly tested on the USMLE Step 1. Each card has the following categories of information: Mechanism, Clinical (Use), Side Effects, Contraindications, Metabolism, and Notes.
Customer Reviews:
Avg. Customer Rating: 4.5 / 5.0
Good but could be much better:
The cards have lots of information but I often found myself confused as to how the drugs actually worked. The cards often had inadequate (at least for me) explanation of drug mechanism. I also disliked how commonly there was a card only for a protype drug and then all of the other drugs in that class were listed at the bottom. I would have preferred a card for each drug.
I personally don't find the cards very helpful and plan on looking for a more comprehensive card set. However, I believe that... more info
Step 1 mut have:
For me this has been the best way to remember and start to understand all the drugs. I used these for step-1 but I wish I wuld have had them for my first two years of med school. Still use them in my 3rd and 4rth years. Very good depth and detail, but still managable and easy to comprehend.
great resource:
There's a third edition out now (as of 2007), and I highly recommend these cards as a study-aid. Compared to some other pharm cards I've seen, these are not actually that crammed with text. They hit all the important points for each drug, have very useful tables, mechanism pictures, and groupings of drugs on the back side of many of the cards, which break up the text nicely without overwhelming the user with non-board relevant material.
They are ok but too much detail:
I started my second year using these cards and they were helpful but they still have too much information. The problem is that similar drugs are grouped together in one card despite being indicated for different conditions which made them hard to study for class where you need to know the specific side effects of each one. As a Board review-there is alot more than what you really need- I would stick to using the First Aid and Kaplan Pharm instead.
