Medical School Resource Masterpost

Disclaimer: these are the resources I used and had good experiences with. This is in no way a formula for success! But I spent a lot time searching for good resources, and I hope this post will save you some time. Do keep in mind, though, that different things work for everyone so these are merely my suggestions!

P.S. I rarely bought/buy textbooks new — we have Facebook groups where upperclassmen can sell their books. Trust me, it’s much more affordable this way. Otherwise, PDFs are a really great option as well. Or check your med school’s library; chances are, they’ll have most of them.

P.P.S. Don’t neglect your university’s resources, especially the lectures. The material taught in medical school is massive and there’s no way that one can learn all of it. Use your professor’s lectures (or just the slides, if you don’t attend lectures) to guide you in your studies. Use them to help focus your attention to what the uni think is important, because it’s not always the same as what the rest of the world deems key.

P.P.P.S. A lot of people love the BRS (Board Review Series) books, which are short and to-the-point texts that offer a lot of high-yield information. I’ve tried the BRS series a few times, and I’ve found that my mind simply doesn’t absorb the information that way. I’ll include it at the bottom for the relevant subjects, but in general, I didn’t use them very much.

And finally, none of these are affiliate links, but I do have a list of my favorite textbooks on Amazon, which you can find here.

Let’s begin!

Click on the subject below to jump to that section.

• Biochemistry
• Physiology
• Anatomy
  • Neuroanatomy
• Histology
• Immunology
• Microbiology
• Pathology
  • Histopathology
• Pathophysiology
  • EKG
• Internal Medicine (general)
• Pharmacology
• Cardiology
• Radiology
• Otorhinolaryngology (ENT)
• Pulmonology

[Current work-in-progress subjects; these are coming soon! — Science (Chemistry) / Biophysics / Biology / Pathophysiology (hematology)]

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Biochemistry

• Lippincott Biochemistry (7th ed.):  I loved Lippincott because it really helped me understand the core/basic concepts. Our uni required a lot more detail than what was in Lippincott, but I felt like it gave me an excellent overview of the entire picture, and it really solidified my knowledge. I used the 6th edition and it was more than sufficient.
• BRS Biochemistry: I don’t study that well from concise/short books like the BRS series (amazing as they are), but again, it helped give an overall idea. Biochem was the subject for which I used BRS the most, and it was only for understanding the overall picture in a few key topics. For that, it was great.
• Harper’s Biochemistry (30th ed.): This was the official textbook of my uni and it was really really detailed; some chapters were great, some were really difficult to understand. In the end, I went through all the relevant chapters and printed off their detailed diagrams of the pathways. Once annotated with any additional information, those were incredibly helpful.

• Videos!

  These were KEY in solidifying knowledge. For any topic I wanted to understand better, I’d just type in the title and watch whatever popped up. Finding good videos can take a lot of time, so over time I learned to prioritize my favorites:

  • AK Lectures: watched most of his videos on 1.25x speed and they’re phenomenal. 10/10.

• Moof University: top-notch videos as well.
• Shomu’s Biology (relevant vids): generally makes great videos; probably only watched a few but he’s great for bio topics too.

Physiology:

My uni’s curriculum was heavily based on the lectures, so I used these materials to supplement the lecture material.

• Textbooks:
  • Costanzo Physiology: I used this source the most; I went through and highlighted the cardio, respiratory and other chapters. I had a physical copy of this book and I liked it a lot, but I didn’t read it front-to-back.
  • Guyton and Hall Physiology:  used this to supplement knowledge (looked up stuff I didn’t understand in the index). I didn’t own it — borrowed it from the library or used the PDF.
  • Boron Physiology: they had incredible diagrams — used this a lot to supplement knowledge, in the same way as Guyton (did not have my own copy).
  • BRS Physiology: didn’t use it at all, others loved it. 
• Websites:
  • CV Physiology: loved this website, too bad they only covered cardiovascular physiology. Great resource!
• Videos: as always, search for whatever you don’t understand. Visual learners will benefit a lot from having it explained, and there’s so many amazing resources out there. Some of my favorites:
  • Dr. Najeeb (or his YouTube): saved my butt for renal physiology. I didn’t understand anything until I watched his (rather long) renal videos. Wish I’d watched the rest (cardio, etc.) but I didn’t discover it til it was too late.
    • Receptors: also found his videos on receptors much later, and am now making notes on it (for pharmacology). I’ll link the notes here when they’re done, but keep in mind: the notes won’t make any sense without the videos, so please watch them yourselves and use others’ notes as a neat reference sheet to look back on later.
  • Khan Academy Medicine: awesome videos!
  • Osmosis: they didn’t have physio videos when I was doing it, but their pathology videos are so amazing that I imagine their physio series is just as good!

Anatomy:

It’s important to understand the difference between an anatomy atlas and a textbook. Please check out my in-depth review of examples of each here. I discuss Netter’s, Thieme, Grant’s, Sobotta, Moore, both Gray’s and the Color Atlas, so definitely give it a read!

Other resources:

• Free summary of upper limb muscle innervations, made by me! You can find that here.
• Dr. Najeeb videos – astounding resource for neuroanatomy, could not have done it without him. I recommend getting a lifetime subscription: it’s a one-time payment and you’ll use it for years to come. But first, check out his YouTube videos to see if you like his teaching style. Try 1.5x speed if you find that it’s taking you too long, you’ll thank yourself. (Also, if I had discovered it in time, I would have used it for embryology as well!). I specifically remember finding these very useful, but try them yourself of course:
  • cerebellum
  • basal ganglia
  • descending tracts
  • ascending tracts
• Kenhub – I myself didn’t have an account, but tons of classmates used it and loved it. I watched a few of their videos for neuroanatomy (see later) and it was eye-opening for that. Check out their free samples, maybe consider getting an account?

• Videos:

  • AnatomyZone: animated videos about the muscles, mostly.
  • Dr. Predy’s Vids: these few videos on the upper and lower limb muscles were phenomenal!
  • Robert Acland: strangely narrated videos on muscles. Ask around, your first might have them.
  • Dissection videos on YouTube – any questions about what a specimen looks like? just type in “dissection of upper limb” or “dissection of heart” and watch ‘em all!
• Memorix – a relatively new textbook, a lot of students swore by it. I personally never used it, but it seemed to work for many. For me, it was too based on memorization, not enough background. Go to their website and download the sample and see what you think.

Neuroanatomy:

Doing a separate little section on neuroanatomy because it was really hard to find resources specifically for neuro. I studied mainly from my own notes that I made using the resources below and our lectures. Here’s what I mostly used:

• Thieme Head and Neuroanatomy: this was awesome for the macroscopic images of the brain and nervous system. It’s a hybrid between textbook and atlas, and I used it a lot. However, I didn’t think it covered the pathways that well.
• Dr. Najeeb videos: this was my main resource for all the pathways in neuro. I watched his videos and made my own notes and reviewed those in preparation for the exams. I can’t stress how great the Najeeb neuroanat lectures are.
• Kenhub: only watched a few of the videos, mainly on the cranial nerves, using a friend’s account, and those were great. Maybe if I’d had more time I would’ve watched more.
• Draw-It-to-Know-It: none of us actually used this throughout the course, but I tried it out and liked the concept, so I wanted to share it for those of you that are visual/artistic.
• Neuroanatomy through Clinical Cases: this came highly recommended on forums, but sadly I never got a chance to use it because it wasn’t integrated into our curriculum. From what little I flipped through, though, it seemed like an excellent read, and I hope to use it more for neurology.
• BRS Neuroanatomy: too condensed for my taste, but again, BRS is a great series.
• SUGGESTION FROM A FOLLOWER: Soton Brain Hub, a YouTube channel! Check it out 🙂

Histology:

I’m gonna be honest: I was not a huge histo fan. I struggled with it from the start, and I only really felt like I understood it right at the end of our histology studies, barely in time for the final. My advice for histology is try to understand, not just memorize. It’s tough because a lot of textbooks don’t explain things, just describe them, but I’ll try to do a little “Guide to Histo” in the future. For now, let’s just cover some useful resources:

• Textbooks (our uni provided us with a histology manual with all our slides, so we supplemented the information using the following sources):
  • BRS Cell Biology and Histology: this small book actually came in quite handy for histo, and I ended up using it a lot in the beginning.
  • Ross Histology (with Cell and Molecular Biology): this is an all-in-one textbook, and I definitely didn’t read it cover-to-cover. It was an excellent reference book though, and it had pages at the end of each chapter with a ton of examples of slides. Luckily, the slides often correlated with the slides our uni wanted us to know, so it was a great help.
  • Gray’s Anatomy: I know, that textbook seems like overkill, but I finally understood histo after I read about it in there. They have logical descriptions on many of the classic histology slides, so if you’ve got time, flip through Gray’s and see if it helps you too. [Note: not the Student edition, but the large one.]
• Websites: histo is such a visual class, and my weakness was always in identifying what I was seeing. I wanted to see labeled images of the key structures, and I found these websites incredibly helpful:
  • Medcell @ Yale: my favorite Internet find. I loved this website, it had such great explanations and most importantly: labeled images of the layers of the GI tract, which I struggled with a lot.
    • Website contains “Slides” (labeled images), “Virtual Microscope” (zoomable slides) and Histo and Histopathology quiz questions. Explore and enjoy!
    • P.S. I searched forever to find this old link, because I liked the website that much. I really hope you guys benefit from it too!
  • NYU’s Histology Lab: also with labeled images, didn’t use as much as the other resources but you might like it.
  • Small collection of labeled images:  just a few slides, but it can’t hurt to look at.
  • Histology Guide: used by most of my classmates; organized by tissue types and systems. I liked it a lot, but I felt like it would’ve been more useful to have labels.
  • Blue Histology: an enormous library of slides that’s searchable. I didn’t use it that much, only to find slides that I wanted more examples of. They also have a free MCQ quiz. Again, the images are unlabeled, but it’s great for self-testing.
• Videos:
  • Shotgun Histology: amazing videos of a man presenting digital histo slides while explaining the key structures; I watched many of his videos and they helped a lot. [Just search “shotgun histology” because I can’t find the channel.]

Immunology:

• Textbooks:
  • Lippincott Immunology: Read through a bunch of their chapters and it really helped understand the full picture. Had my own copied that I highlighted and it was great, but it wasn’t the only source.
  • Janeway Immunobiology: really detailed book that seemed to be made for immunologists; I found it too dense to read for our weekly quizzes and used it as an occasional reference textbook, mostly. I really liked their diagrams though!
    • Janeway YouTube Series
• Dr. Najeeb (on YouTube): not to be repetitive but I found select Najeeb videos good, specifically the short series on the complement system.
• Other videos: as always, search for whatever topics you don’t understand that well. These two stood out:
  • Janeway’s videos (above)
  • Handwritten Tutorials

Microbiology:

I loved Micro, and I think a big part of it was because of Sketchy.

• SKETCHY! Sketchy Micro is the single most useful source for micro and an absolute joy to watch. I know some students who decided to forego Sketchy and study without it, and it can be done but it’s not nearly as a. easy and b. fun. Sketchy is a series of videos that discuss key microbes in detail, using mnemonics and visual cues to jog your memory. I used a screenshot of the videos and annotated it on my iPad using Notability, or printed it out.
  • Click here to access and download my free companion map to Sketchy Micro systemic fungi!
  • Our uni had additional information that they wanted us to know; I would draw/annotate extra info from out lectures into the screenshots after watching the Sketchy video, thus transforming it into a hybrid Sketchy-MyUni cheatsheet.
  • Don’t take my word for it: ask your upperclassmen! They’ll tell you how incredible it is.
  • Keep an eye out for our Sketchy Micro Halloween Party this year!
• Clinical Microbiology Made Ridiculously Simple: every textbook should be as amazing as this one. For one, it was printed on printer paper, not glossy paper, in black and white. That means that you can draw/color in the images as you study, like a coloring book. I bought this book and fell in love, but didn’t get a chance to use it as much as I wanted to, because Sketchy+uni material took so much time. But here are the upsides:
  • It’s filled with mnemonics; different ones than in Sketchy, which may be confusing for some, but I felt like it helped me.
  • Excellent guide to antibiotics. That’s what I mostly used this book for — I read through the chapters on Abx and it was phenomenal.
  • Clever, high-yield, cute illustrations… honestly, great book.
• I didn’t need, nor did I have the time to, use any resources other than these two. Micro’s a great subject, enjoy it!

Pathology:

One of my favorites; I loved pathology. Our curriculum followed Robbins Basic Pathology to a T, so that’s what I used mostly.

• Robbins: there are a few different versions of Robbins (Pocketbook, Basics, Pathological Basis of Disease). Here’s a quick explanation:
  • Robbins Pathological Basis of Disease: the largest version of Robbins; it’s the mothership of patho textbooks and very detailed.
  • *Robbins Basic Pathology: this seems to have the same information as the one above, but perhaps in less detail. This is the one we used in our university, and it’s a manageable textbook, meaning it’s not impossible to get through. I read a large portion of it and typed up notes from it, and I absolutely loved the book. It was not only logical and easy to follow, but also enjoyable. It spoke to medical students and not pathologists, and that’s important for a med student textbook.
    • Our professor insisted that this was also a good resource for histopathology; in my eyes, it was not. Here’s what I used for histopath.
  • Robbins Pocket Companion: for me, this book was too concise (and also awkwardly difficult to take notes from), so I didn’t use this, but I had a few classmates who did. We noticed that some information in Robbins Basic wasn’t in there, but that can be expected; the book is pocket-sized, after all.
  • Robbins Atlas of Pathology: it has macro- and microscopic pictures and I used it primarily as a reference for histopath. [See below.]
• Goljan’s Rapid Review Pathology: comes highly recommended by USMLE takers, but I didn’t use it yet. May use it when I prep for the USMLE in a year or so, so stay tuned.
• Videos:
  • Osmosis: My #1 resource. If a topic had an Osmosis video, then I knew I’d be okay. I still don’t quite know how they do it so well, but trust me, Osmosis is incredible. And many of their videos can be found for free on their YouTube.
  • Dr. Najeeb: some of my classmates watched his renal and cardiovascular videos and they liked it a lot. If you have an account, don’t forget to check Najeeb for your patho needs.
  • Sketchy Path: I watched a few of the Sketchy videos, but to be honest, I didn’t find it very helpful. In my mind, pathology is a subject to understand and not to memorize, and so mnemonics and visual cues were much less helpful than in micro. But it’s there if you want to try it out.
• Bonus Resource: PathologyStudent.com is a website that explains some key topics pretty well; I signed up for her newsletters and get interesting factoids to my inbox.

Histopathology:

I struggled with finding resources for histopath, especially because our university didn’t provide a handy manual (as they did for regular histology). Here’s what I combined:

• Wheater’s Basic Pathology: didn’t contain every slide we needed, but had good explanations and photos of many of the key concepts.
• Robbins Atlas of Pathology: a book of just photographs, including both macro- and microscopic specimens. They had excellent pictures of the classic histopathology slides, and I used it as a reference for understanding the slides we were assigned.
• WashingtonDeceit’s YouTube Videos: these helped me a lot.
  • there are many other useful YT videos out there so definitely look around if you’re confused about something.

Pathophysiology: 

To my knowledge, pathophys isn’t considered a separate subject in the many medical schools; a lot of the topics are covered under pathology and they’re discussed in Robbins. At my uni, pathophys is a course that’s focused on the mechanism of a disease (the how), and covered hematology and EKG extensively. I’ll mainly focus on the resources for those:

EKG:

• The Only EKG Book You’ll Ever Need (9th ed.): I used the 8th edition and it was a good read. I used the book to follow along with our weekly EKG topics and made notes. But I didn’t feel like it was enough, so I would of course supplement with lecture material and online information.
• Life In the Fast Lane: my go-to site for getting more information on everything. They explain topics really well and give examples. I would use Google search to find whatever I needed in LITFL.
  • 100 ECG Library (Quiz): a chance to test your knowledge; however, we didn’t cover everything in the same order, so I would work with a friend and we’d “assign” each other ECGs from this list, so as to ensure that we wouldn’t waste time trying to diagnose something we hadn’t yet covered.
• Osmosis: they had surprisingly useful videos for ECG, specifically:
  • WPW Syndrome
  • A-fib
  • AVRT & AVNRT
  • and more

Internal Medicine:

My uni’s internal program is kind of all over the place, and the knowledge they expect us to know is supposed to be in the lectures, so there weren’t many “resources” that we were expected to use.

• Heart murmurs on Khan Academy Medicine: the single most useful video I found for murmurs
• Heart and Lung Sounds Quiz: I’m still terrible at determining the heart sounds, but this website helped
• Clinical Skills (Heart, Lung and EKG): I only used it once or twice to listen to sounds, but it’s got so much awesome info and it’s on my to-do list for next semester!
• Oxford Handbook of Clinical Medicine: a clever, concise book made for students and residents that covers the theory of main clinical concepts. It’s meant to be a pocketbook to be used for reference, and it’s quite quirky and entertaining. We haven’t had the occasion to use it that much because our clinical rotations are a bit different than in the UK/USA, but it came highly recommended and I really like it.
• SUGGESTION FROM A FOLLOWER: Strong Medicine, on YouTube. The ABG Interpretation video especially came highly recommend.

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Pharmacology

I struggled a lot with pharma at first, and I thought it might be helpful to others if I shared my journey. For inspiration and to see how OTHERS have studied for pharma, I asked my audience, so feel free to check out my other blog post (How to Study for Pharma — Your Suggestions!). First off, everyone told me pharma was all about memorization, but I disagree with that wholeheartedly. Memorization is how I approached it for the first midterm and bombed it, so after that I knew I had to change my approach. I did, and ended up doing very well on the final.

Pharma is not pure memorization, at least not for me. I realized I needed to understand why certain things were happening, and there’s one resource that made me realize that: Kaplan Pharmacology videos. One of my best friends showed me one of the videos and the way the concepts were explained was mesmerizing. I finally understood the information that until then I’d just tried to internalized. I took copious notes and asked if she had the rest of the videos, and watch as many as I could. Sadly, it was quite late by the time I discovered them so I couldn’t watch them all, but maybe you’ll read this in time and give them a go yourself. 

There are the other resources I used: 

• Katzung and Trevor’s Pharmacology Examination and Board Review: my school uses the “big” Katzung, called Basic and Clinical Pharmacology, as its official book. I even purchased it, but never once used it. It’s way too dense and the level of detail is often not needed, so I was stuck until the wonderful @abthemd introduced me to this Board Review version. It’s basically like the summary of the KEY POINTS from the Big Katzung, while covering the same topics, and it’s amazing. I can’t recommend it enough! I mostly used it for the pharmacokinetics/dynamics parts, and if I’d had discovered it earlier I definitely would have used it more.
• Sketchy Pharm: I didn’t find Pharm as useful as Sketchy Micro, because our uni wanted us to know wayyy more detail that Sketchy Pharm. It was, however, very useful to place the different drugs into the different scenes and categorize them that way. It also helped remember a few key facts about each one, which was a great starting point. I watched almost all the relevant Sketchies and I’m glad I did, but they took absolutely forever. So settle in for the long haul. 
• Class notes/lectures: every uni is different and so I highly recommend making your own notes and using those as your basis. If they talked about it in class a few times, chances are they’ll want you to know it. 
• Lippincott Pharmacology: excellent little textbook that covers topics in a very digestable way. Again, didn’t necessarily cover the same details as my uni, but it gave really good overall understanding. 

So that about covers my first semester of pharm. Next semester we have part two, where we cover a ton more drugs, and this is how I’ll study (now, knowing what I know): 

• Watch Kaplan. Absolute must — a priority for my studying approach, because that’s how excellent I think certain videos were. 
• Watch Sketchy. I’ll do this as early as possible so I can refer back to it as we cover the drugs in class. 
• Attend classes and take notes! — absolutely crucial.  
  • I will try to format this to fit the topic list ASAP so that I don’t have to spend time reformatting in time for exams.
• Read relevant parts in the textbook, focusing on main concepts. I think I’ll use mainly the baby Katzung, sometimes Lippincott. 

I made a chart for the first part of the semester, for that midterm I bombed. I don’t know if the chart was bad or I just didn’t understand the info, but I’m not sure if I’ll be using a chart next semester.  

I did not use flashcards for all the material, only our second midterm. That was helpful because I could review all that material very easily for the final — I may do that again, but I’m not sure if I’ll have time to transcribe most of my notes into flashcards. 

If you guys want to see snippets of my flashcards and/or chart/notes, let me know! 

Cardiology

Really cool class, but we didn’t have to study too much for it sadly during the semester, so all these resources were mostly used during the exam period only. 

• Oxford Handbook of Cardiology 2nd edition: amazing little book; excellent info with a lot of high yield material. We used mostly this and I think it was a really good resource. 
• Onlinemeded: I discovered OME for this exam and so grateful I did. They have FREE VIDEO LECTURES on key concepts of cardio and Dr. Dusty (my new celebrity crush) explains them in such a way that it’s no longer about memorizing it — you now understand it. I was really hoping to get a topic related to one of his videos so that I could show off my excellent grasp of the material. 
• EKG resources (above)
• Heart murmurs on Khan Academy Medicine: the single most useful video I found for murmurs. I rewatch this every semester because that’s about how long it takes me to forget everything I’ve learned. 

Radiology

I loved this class and spent a ton of time using different textbooks and making my own notes. Here are the ones I used: 

• Clinical Radiology Made Ridiculously Simple: this is a quite old book and only really covers x-ray from the looks of it. I used it for chest and abdomen imaging and it was phenomenal. Wish they had an updated edition
• Critical Observations in Radiology for Medical Students: I flipped through the images in the relevant chapters and took notes on those and made flashcards.
• Radiology at a Glance (there’s a new, 2nd edition, but I used the first one from 2012, whoops): this book explained the basics really well. I then flipped through the images in the relevant chapters and took notes on those, and made flashcards as I went along. 

Radiology websites that I used: 

• Radiopedia: anyone who ever Googled a radio question found this website, so it’s pretty well-known, but I included it here because it does come highly recommended and it’s an excellent resource. 
• Radiology Assistant: when I asked our teacher, a resident, what he’d recommend, this is what he suggested. It has really great cases but also info sections; for example, here is the basics of interpreting an x-ray.

Otorhinolaryngology (ENT)

I used mostly student notes and our uni’s e-book, but there is one useful resource I stumbled across that I wanted to share with you, so don’t laugh, but I watched all of these: 

FreeMedEducation’s series on ENT

Pulmonology

Not my finest subject, and I only used two resources besides our topic list student notes: OnlineMedEd and First Aid Step 2CK – Respiratory section. I wish I’d thought of the Step2CK material idea sooner, and I’ll be doing that for the upcoming clinical classes we have for sure!