Laboratory medicine is one of the core competencies you must master if you want to become a superstar diagnostician within the span of one lifetime or less.
Here is my proposed “curriculum” for mastery of laboratory medicine:
- Urinalysis and Body Fluids, 5e, by Susan King Strasinger – a great book. Clear, fluid and memorable. I think every medical student should know what’s in this book. It’s core knowledge.
- Clinician’s Guide to Laboratory Medicine: Pocket by Samir P. Desai MD (2009, reviewed here); if you were to get only one book about laboratory medicine, this should be the one. It has the answers to the vast majority of important laboratory medicine questions.
- Acid Base Case Studies by Ira Kurtz MD (2004, reviewed here); this is, in my view, one of the best medical books of all time.
- Clinical Hematology Atlas, 4e by Bernadette F. Rodak MS MLS or Anderson’s Atlas of Hematology, 2e, by Shauna Anderson or Color Atlas of Clinical Hematology, 4e by Dr. A. Victor Hoffbrand. It’s very difficult for me to choose a “best” book among these three. They are all very good. The first is the clearest and most straightforward, while the last is extremely comprehensive and very well-correlated clinically. The middle one is, well, somewhere in the middle. In addition, Essential Haematology, 6e (2011), also by Dr. Hoffbrand, is an excellent choice for those who want to learn hematology from the ground up.
- An Atlas of the Clinical Microbiology of Infectious Diseases, Volumes 1 & 2 by Edward J. Bottone. These are amazing books about laboratory and clinical identification of infectious diseases. I will write fuller review when I’m done reading them.
Wanted: I’m still looking for a good or great laboratory medicine book about immunology and serology. Any suggestions?
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