Resources for the Clerkship

Attendings, Residents, Interns and Students

Your attendings, residents and interns are all aware that medical student education is an integral component of the department's mission. Ask them for regular feedback about your performance. Ask them specific questions about pediatric topics or formulating differential diagnoses or patient management. Buddying up with a specific resident while on inpatient provides a great opportunity to do all of the above. In addition, this may be the sole exposure you have to pediatrics for the rest of your career; take charge of the experience and gather all the information you can from all the pediatricians you encounter.

In addition, you should work together as a team of students, sharing knowledge and helping to teach each other. Only in this way will you truly maximize the learning potential available on the clerkship.

Texts

A variety of texts will be useful during your pediatrics clerkship. To evaluate and solve your patients' problems (around four per day as outpatient, three or more total as an inpatient), you will need to read from a major textbook or use Medline to familiarize yourself with the current literature. Because the clerkship is so short, it is strongly recommended that you skim an abbreviated textbook to obtain an appropriate overview of the field of pediatrics. Furthermore, in both the inpatient and outpatient settings, students have found the handbooks below to be valuable quick references. You may also find books for differential diagnosis helpful, especially in the outpatient setting. The point is not to try to memorize every detail in these texts, but rather to have access to them and learn how to use them.

The books below are sold at the Book Store, are available for local use on some wards and clinics, and are on reserve at the Health Sciences Library. In addition, there are small libraries in Children's Hospital of NY and in each of the affiliated hospitals. Check them out and learn how to look up articles when necessary. Highly recommended books are indicated in bold.

Pediatrics Textbooks

Textbooks are good for providing background information on a subject matter (like an encyclopedia), but are frequently very general with statements such as, "The use of steroids to treat meningitis is controversial." In order to learn more about the controversy, it is important to read the original literature which is referenced at the end of each chapter in these textbooks. If you plan to go into pediatrics, I would wait until your residency begins to purchase a full textbook so that you will have the newest edition. However, if you do not plan on going into pediatrics and want to have a textbook that will sit on your shelf for reference, I would recommend purchasing one now. They cost about $100-200 each.

  • Principles and Practice of Pediatrics, Edited by F.A. Oski, Lippincott, (most recent edition).
  • Pediatrics, Edited by A.M. Rudolph, Appleton-Century-Crofts, (most recent edition).
  • Nelson's Textbook of Pediatrics, Edited by V. Vaugh, J. McKay, R. Behram, Saunders, (most recent edition).
    You can get online access to Nelson's via MDConsult for a modest yearly fee.

Abbreviated Textbooks

Abbreviated textbooks are useful if you want to read for 10-15 minutes about the natural history of a disease and its complications. This is very helpful for coming up with questions about pertinent positives and negatives with regard to the illness.

  • Core Textbook of Pediatrics, Edited by R. Kaye, F. Oski and L. Barness, Lippincott, (most recent edition).
  • Essentials of Pediatrics, Edited by R. Berham and R. Kleigman, Sauders, (most recent edition).
  • Rudolph's Fundamentals of Pediatrics. Edited by A. Rudolph and R. Kamei. Appleton & Lange, (most recent edition)
  • Berkowitz, C. Pediatrics: A Primary Care Approach. W.B. Saunders. (most recent edition)

Handbooks

Every student should have a pediatrics handbook that is with him/her at all times during the rotation. It is useful if you need to read quickly about a disease before speaking to a patient and is also a useful review for the Boards.

  • Manual of Clinical Problems in Pediatrics, Edited by KB Roberts, Little, Brown, (most recent edition).
  • The Harriet Lane Handbook, Edited by Mary Grigorian Green, Year Book Medical Publishers, (most recent edition).
  • Schwartz, W. Clinical Handbook of Pediatrics. Lippincott William. (most recent edition)
  • Washington Manual of Medical Therapeutics. Washington University. Lippincott and Williams. (most recent edition) This book is useful for telling you exactly what you should do if a patient has a given condition. It will tell you what labs to draw, what medications to give, and in what dose.

Differential Diagnosis

Pediatrics is the only clerkship where you will do extensive work with differential diagnosis. Differential diagnosis does not change much from year to year, so older editions are ok to use.

  • The Textbook of Pediatric Emergency Medicine, Edited by S. Ludwig, M.D. and G. Fleisher, M.D., (most recent edition).
  • Pediatric Diagnosis, Edited by Morris Green, M.D.
  • MDConsult (Requires an inexpensive subscription)
  • PubMed
  • Medline
  • Cochrane Meta-Analysis Site
  • Micromedex
  • ("Just in Time - in Children's ED")

Not a Text, But Useful Nonetheless

All students will find it very useful to purchase a waterless soap for those times when you don't have time to get to a sink between patients.