Medbros, is it possible for a person to teach himself medicine/an understanding of biology from a medical point of view, without going to university?
Obviously the inability to operate and practice on patients is a problem, but can one self teach about human biology and diagnosing problems of the body from textbooks like this?
Does one start with pic related?
If WebMD isn't good enough for you it won't take them long to adapt ChatGPT to chatMD I'm sure. Look, doctors aren't actually as useful as they are portrayed on TV, surgeons are the ones you need to be talking to.
I'm interested in more than just diagnosing myself, rather what I'm looking for is an introductory biology textbook for lets say soon to be student doctors, those that have little prior knowledge on the subject.
I would unironically recommend an organic chemistry textbook and an anatomy textbook.
I see, but are there any specific ones I should look into? There must be thousands of them.
You can pay more for the current editions or less for last year's edition, they are subject to the same racket all the other textbooks are. Advances in either field that happened within the last calender year won't have filtered down to that level anyhow.
You’re a moron.
He’s a moron who could not even get admitted to a Caribbean med school
Are you trying to tell me doctors don't do organic chemistry or anatomy? Are you MDs really so castrated by the bureaucratic layer of nurses the health insurance companies realized were cheaper and just as effective at medicine at?
Show how organic chemistry is going to explain a pulmonary embolism
Anatomy moron, is the standard procedure still prescribing blood thinners? I don't need to tell you how moronic you sound right now bit apparently I do.
So by telling me you have your own system in your mind does this sound like a refutation of my statement? You are confirming what I am saying by clarifying the technological point by which doctors make their decisions.
It doesn't sound like I am talking to actual pre med students or doctors but rather larpers. Sounds about right for 4chinz.
He said
>Show how organic chemistry is going to explain a pulmonary embolism
You reply
>Anatomy moron, is the standard procedure still prescribing blood thinners? I don't need to tell you how moronic you sound right now bit apparently I do.
Total non sequitur. You're the one that's moronic here.
Do you have to know about human anatomy to understand more about options for the clot? The standard procedure is to proscribe blood thinners, those are made up of chemicals which are covered under organic chemistry are they not? I made it easy for you since you're a moron and they are both yes or no answers.
Oi bruvnuh, now u listen ere u cheeky wanker, if'n ur not fixin to use logic to respond then ura roight moron u'n ere me m8? If'n there wasn't a pond between us oi'd give you a right drubbin' betwixt ur ears so good ole queen lizzy'd feel it u ere, God rest er soul where ever it be.
I'm not the guy you're responding to, but I've prescribed more apixaban and warfarin than I can care to remember. I forgot most of the minutiae of its chemistry shortly after 2nd year med school as finals focused on clinical application rather than theory. One can retain important clinical details like interactions, reversibility, onset of action etc without needing to know or remember the basics.
And yes, anatomy will help you differentiate between a saddle pulmonary embolism and standard PE, but both are treated in the same way so if we see the former on a CTPA its more a point of academic interest than management changing information.
I don't think your answer was moronic though, organic chemistry and anatomy is probably where a pre-med aught to start, but in practice if you just want to diagnose and treat its not that crucial. Paradoxically though, the basics do become more important the more specialised the clinician becomes.
Bumping this thread to tear down this midwit soon.
You're an imbecile. The mechanisms of these drugs exist ab extra of their chemical makeup, synthesis and functionality meaning knowledge in organic chemistry is irrelevant to medicine. The biochemical reactions likewise occurring are outside of the scope of organic chemistry. So... are anticoagulants "covered under" organic chemistry? That's like asking if a 747 is covered under metallurgy. The answer is a resounding no. Organic chemistry if exhausted will teach you nothing about anticoagulants, how they work or even how to go about de novo inventing one without any other field to lean on.
Nothing you have said refutes the post you are responding to and I'm not sure why you even wasted the time posting that. The best answer in this thread is
verification not required.
>Nothing you have said refutes the post [fails to counter why] you are responding to and I'm not sure why you even wasted the time posting that [seething]
Translation: nuh-uh. Vacuous post.
You’re a moron, m8. Genuinely.
>he doesnt know
Mate, GPs have been using their own subscription machine learning database for diagnosis for years.
I'm a doctor and as someone else said, we're not actually that useful and are glorified pattern recognition machines. The reason the training is so gruelling is to weed out the morons, but that is not always a guarantee.
To answer your question, yes you can become fairly proficient with diagnosing yourself or others by taking a "problem based learning" approach. Will you be as proficient as someone who has had proper medical training? Probably not unless you have clinical experience. Will you be better able to navigate through medical jargon and deal with clinicians on a more equal footing should you or a loved one fall ill? Yeah probably.
With a problem based approach, I would first start off with a broad clinical textbook that is focused on exams and has questions in it. "A Step by Step guide to Success in USMLE 1" for example, is filled with clinical scenarios that you should study until you've memorised them. Use anatomy and bio/chem textbooks to augment the information if you really need to.
If you learn this well, you should be able to theoretically triage a patient with something common like "Chest pain", be able to come up with a number of reasonable differentials, prioritise them and then know which investigation you need to rule them out. Depending on how much you want to test yourself you can also find books with MCQ's related to these general exams (USMLE, MSRA etc) and go through those to test what you know.
This isn't the perfect method and you will still be ignorant of how the theory is applied, but it's a start if you're interested in LARPing as House.
Also, I got through med school without purchasing a single textbook. Everything you need is on PDF.
The only textbook I owned was Oxford Handbook of Clinical Medicine, which is unironically all you need for final exams (at least in bongland) since it has common presentations, sensible investigations and comprehensive first, second and third line treatment options.
It is also available as a PDF for free. Super useful for reference once you've got the basics down.
These are good to get someone without a strong background in biology started:
Molecular Biology of the Cell (Alberts et al.)
> for the basic biochemistry and an overview of cellular mechanisms which will be fundamental for understanding other texts
Essentials of Human Anatomy & Physiology (Marieb et al.)
> for an overview of anatomy and physiology
These are used at uni to catch non-biomedical bachelor students up during the master's where I'm from. But whenever something doesn't entirely make sense, consulting basic physics and chemistry books may be necessary. The knowledge in those two books should be sufficient to get the ball rolling and to understand a lot of medical literature.
Start with the Krebs Cycle
Assuming that you have medical school prerequisites under your belt (two semesters of essential biology, two semesters of chemistry, two semesters of physics, two semesters of English, and a semester of biophysics), then your reading list is:
Costanzo's Physiology (this one is a genuine pleasure to read, and was the first time I realized that a textbook could be a work of art).
Netter's Atlast of Human Anatomy
USMLE Step 1 First Aid
Pathoma (add Goljan if you have crazy free time and nothing better to do).
Get a subscription to Sketchy and Boards and Beyond
Download the Zanki deck and drive yourself insane completing it.
Voila! You are probably as knowledgeable as ~1/2 of the people completing their second year of medical school. Medicine isn't typically about access to secret or select texts, it's about absurd amounts of study and cramming in lots of experience. But let's say that you want to go further. Unless you're *in* medicine you can't gain that clinical experience. But you could always use the same study resources commonly found on the internet (Emma Holliday lectures for free on youtube, there;s Dustyn at OnlineMedEd [Praise his name], and people tell me that Divine Intervention is good). After that it becomes too specialized to get a broad and comprehensive sense of what medicine is. Each specialty has some cornerstone texts. But for just general medicine, Harrison's Principles of Internal Medicine is foundational.
None of the material in the books you suggested requires the background assumed in your presupposition.
Correct, the prerequisites for medical school are not substantially tied to the practice of medicine.