Emergency medicine in a page
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* Steve Choi

Jeffrey M. Caterino and Scott Kahan

![Figure1](http://www.cmaj.ca/https://www.cmaj.ca/content/cmaj/169/5/447.1/F1.medium.gif)

[Figure1](http://www.cmaj.ca/content/169/5/447.1/F1)

Figure. 

Malden (MA): Blackwell Publishing; 2003. 316 pp. US$29.95 (paper) ISBN 1-4051-0357-4

Rating: \***|

Audience: Final-year medical students and interns

Content: Caterino and Kahan's handbook of emergency medicine targets burgeoning trainees at a particularly difficult stage: the final year of medical school and the intern year. Good information sources that bridge the lecture theatre and clinical world are rare. Therefore, for many, knowledge acquisition occurs in rapid step-wise increments that can be decidedly uncomfortable. This book can help ease this transition.

Handbooks on emergency medicine generally struggle to balance the enormous breadth of the specialty with the need to provide adequate detail on individual topics. Each page in this book summarizes a single problem. The book assumes a certain amount of clinical experience: basic terms are not defined in the text, and there is liberal use of common abbreviations.

Strengths: The breadth of topics covered is excellent. The format is consistent on every page, with headings always located in the same place. This allows readers to access informationquickly, a helpful feature on a busy shift in the emergency department. Caterino is the chief resident in an emergency training program in Pittsburgh; Kahan is a recently graduated MD. The content is concise and up to date.

Limitations: The authors make no exceptions to their rule of devoting a single page to each topic. This rigidity is a failing. The sections on the stabilization of critically ill patients — the ABCs of airway, breathing and circulation — are overly brief. Resuscitation of diverse medical and surgical patients is essential to emergency medicine and often represents the appeal for those who decide to pursue careers in the specialty. Readers will need to look elsewhere for this information.

Unfortunately, there are no pages devoted to the approach to certain symptoms. Also, students who are visual learners should be wary of this book: the text is in point form, and there are no pictures.

Although trainees will outgrow much of this book by the conclusion of their intern year, by then it will have provided a solid foothold in their learning curve. Those who train in emergency medicine may find a secondary use for the book as a guide for ongoing study. The book offers affordable good value to its target audience.

**Steve Choi** Editorial Fellow *CMAJ* Emergency Physician Ottawa, Ont.

This book is available at your local book retailer, or through the publisher at [www.blackwellpublishing.com/](http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/)