Emergency medicine orals, third edition:

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Emergency Medicine Orals achieves its self-stated primary goal “to serve as a study aid to improve performance on the [emergency medicine] oral board exam” by providing concise summaries of the most common disease processes seen in the emergency medicine field, thus allowing the board candidate to quickly review the symptoms, signs, differential diagnosis, workup, and treatment of each illness. However, by providing such concise summaries, Emergency Medicine Orals falls short of its secondary goal to be “useful to house officers and medical students rotating in the ED” by assuming a senior resident knowledge base. For example, when discussing sickle cell crises, Emergency Medicine Orals provides workup and treatment guidelines for such entities as sequestration crisis and aplastic crisis, but fails to discuss what constitutes a particular type of crisis or differentiate between emergency department (ED) presentations of such crises, as would be necessary for medical students and junior house officers.

Emergency Medicine Orals is divided into 3 sections. The first consists of alphabetically organized chapters corresponding to each clinical category of patients encountered by emergency physicians (eg, cardiovascular, dermatology, endocrine). Each chapter includes a listing of relevant disease processes followed by an outline displaying the expected symptoms, signs, differential diagnosis, workup, and treatment. The second section contains “procedure pearls” and “random pearls” in a question-and-answer format, providing a perfect break from monotonous prose or outline formatted review and an opportunity for interactive study. The final section holds 48 oral board sample cases, including 5 multiple patient encounters (triples), encompassing a wide range of topics, from multisystem trauma to crotalid envenomation. Its convenient format facilitates practice with a colleague playing the role of examiner.

One disappointment is that Emergency Medicine Orals fails to present a strategy or succinct method by which to approach each oral board case. Although a methodology for completion of primary survey and secondary examination is presented, such a methodology for cases in their entirety is not. However, it can certainly be argued that the sample cases not only allow one an opportunity to develop his or her own strategy, but furthermore, provide enough repetition for the candidate to practice that strategy until it becomes second nature. Lastly, there are several important topics Emergency Medicine Orals overlooks, such as conscious sedation and pain management, mass casualty triage and management, and legal and/or transfer issues.

Compared to Rivers,¹ the greatest strengths of Emergency Medicine Orals lie in its concise outline format, which allows for a higher-yield study period, and the amount of cases that accurately simulate the oral examination process. In addition, the book's 3 diverse formats allow emergency physicians, known for our remarkably short attention spans, to change from one section to another and continue learning even when it's far past time for a study break. Finally, perhaps some of the book's most unique content can be found in its 1-page list of “pearls” (eg, “All patients with ‘the flu' have CO, or some other toxic ingestion, or a dangerous infection.”). Overall, I highly recommend this book as a concise and nearly painless way to review for the emergency medicine oral boards.

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References 

1. Rivers C. Preparing for the Oral Board Exam in Emergency Medicine. 7th ed.. Milford, OH: Emergency Medicine Educational Enterprises; 2001;
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