Check out some of our useful free resources that we know and love and think you will find helpful. And best of all, they are all free – not a penny to take out of your loan/grant!
1. Medical Protection: The Medical Protection Society
The MPS has a range of online resources and clinical information to help guide medical students and healthcare professionals through their medical training. One thing we like is their magazine for newly qualified junior doctors which are handy for a quick read through relevant junior doctor experiences of life at work. Useful articles can be found here, and Medical Student pages (UK) here.
2. Mnemonics: Medical Mnemonics
We love Mnemonics. Take this one for joint pain.
SOFTER TISSUE:
Sepsis
Osteoarthritis
Fractures
Tendon/muscle
Epiphyseal
Referred
Tumor
Ischaemia
Seropositive arthritides
Seronegative arthritides
Urate
Extra-articular rheumatism (such as polymylagia)
They missed trauma out but hey, nobody’s perfect.
3. Anatomy Guides: Cross sectional Anatomy from anatomy atlases
We think this picture is of a brain. It’s definitely not the glenohumeral joint.
4. Radiology Help: IMIAIOS
We like this sitter from IMAIOS, who provide detailed pictures like the one you can see here of the famous Scottie dog. We thought it looked like a lumbar spine. How wrong we were.
By the way, you won’t see many more lumbar spine radiographs because your local radiologist will probably have a heart attack if you try to request one! This is because they are notoriously useless at picking anything important up, other than fractures.
5. Stats Advice: BMJ Stats Pages
The BMJ weigh in with a great free resource which requires no subscription. The BMJ really are helping doctors make better decisions (we’re aiming to help you as a medical student make the best decision).
6. Phone App: IResus
We love this app from the developers at Imobilemedic.com. You might get a few funny looks from doctors over45 at the next cardiac arrest if you whip this out, and remember not to spill your coffee on your iPhone.
7. For all Smartphones: Md Calc
Thought the Anion Gap was a tourist attraction north of Watford? We’ve got new for you….
If you need to work out a BMI, GCS or Disease Activity score quick? Check out Med Calc… It works on most smart phones. As one contributor said: “I use this most days at work”*
We are fairly certain this is just to show off, but we love this tool.
8. General Information: GP Notebook
Most of the GPs that we deal with from medical educator would be doing well to be dealing with most of the complex stuff listed on here. Need to know the classification system for bone tumours? Look no further.
9. Quick information: Wikipedia
Wikipedia is still top of our list for those obscure things you need to know about. As students you always need to be sure to check your sources, however there comes a time when you need fast reliable information, or when you need to read round a topic. The Journal Nature found that Wikipedia was as good as the Encyclopaedia Britannica across a range of scientific areas. That’s good enough for us, this represents web2.0 in action!
10. Free MCQs: Medical Educator
You didnt think we would leave ourselves out did you? If you don’t know already, access is completely free and gives you access to loads of our sample multi choice questions.