Best medicine books according to redditors
We found 1,348 Reddit comments discussing the best medicine books. We ranked the 710 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the top 20.
We found 1,348 Reddit comments discussing the best medicine books. We ranked the 710 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the top 20.
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Don't know what to study for each rotation? Look at the wiki
In regards to how to study: OnlineMedED is now your Pathoma. UWorld is still UWorld. There is no First Aid for Step 1 for Step 2 so it is made up of a couple of books for each rotation you used / general review books (Step UP, First Aid, master the boards etc.)
The Match is really scary? Buy The Successful Match for a decent run down of the entire process etc. and tips of how to build an application
ERAS is still really scary? Check out these example applications.. start at like pg 29 unless a Pritzker student then ^read ^^it ^^^all ^^^^?
Worried about H+Ps? Get the Perfect H+P book(or download and print a bunch of decent looking templates)
Need more templates etc?? Check out Medfools! for more!!
She was hounded by the government.
I encourage everyone to read Johann Hari's book Chasing the Scream about the history of the drug war from the 1920s to the present.
He has an extended piece about Holiday and her place as a scapegoat for Harry Anslinger, head of the Bureau of Narcotics.
Here's an excerpt from the book about Holiday. If you have any interest in the drug war or history thereof, I highly recommend it.
I recommend compiling a document with all interesting patient encounters, presentations you did on the rotation, notable things you accomplished on the rotation. Then when it comes time for your Letter writer to compose your LOR send them that information. Then they can have anecdotes to go off and write in your letter, this will be much more powerful than a generic LOR. This book goes into much more detail about this and I recommend reading the chapter on LORs https://www.amazon.com/Successful-Match-2017-Success-Residency/dp/1937978079/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1522800836&sr=8-1&keywords=residency+match
You should check out the Better not to have been book. The general idea is that it is more beneficial to have never been born. But, suicide is so hard to accomplish - mentally and physically - that it might not be beneficial to kill yourself.
Besides there are costs involved - say I'm 24, I have finally moved out from parents, live on my own. I have never been as free in my life before. All the childhood that sucked, the school are left behind. Im finally my own person. Health wise this is one of the highest point in one's life. From 30 it's going to go on downhill. Basically this and the next decade are going to be the best time of my life. Might as well make use of it if only to compensate for the shitty early part of my life. If/when it gets bad in my 40s+ I might just opt out of this game, and no family would be great in that regard - I would always be able to leave whenever I would want.
Life is essentially about costs and benefits. Most people trudge on because the pleasure shots they get out weight the suffering and the pain of suicide. It is true for me too (for now). But I would still prefer not to have existed.
/r/antinatalism rules
>be born without consent
required reading for depressedcels
Check out David Benatar's Better Never to Have Been . Similar enough to be of interest I am sure.
You are wrong. After the prohibition ended, the mafia did greatly diminish and murders and violent crimes from them almost dissipated entirely overnight.
Of course it will take time for the gangs to greatly diminish, but it will happen.
I recommend reading Chasing the Scream for more in-debth research on this subject.
Marino’s ICU Book - get the real deal and don’t buy pocket reference books.
Marino's The ICU Book: Print + Ebook with Updates (ICU Book (Marino)) https://www.amazon.com/dp/1451121180/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_bWs0DbQ90QXY6
Rapid Interpretation of EKG's
This is what we use in medical school and it is a great, simple resource. Wish I had used it back in my EMT days.
That would be highly unusual and unlikely. I won't say it's literally impossible, but there's absolutely no reason to make such an untenable assumption when a clear and solid motivating factor, such as in this case, the separation from a close partner, exists.
"LSD, which is widely abused, does not appear to be addictive." -source
"In contrast to many other abused drugs, hallucinogens
do not engender drug dependence or addiction and are
not considered to be reinforcing substances (O’Brien,
2001)." -source
"There are no literature reports of successful attempts to
train animals to self-administer classical hallucinogens, an
animal model predictive of abuse liability, indicating that
these substances do not possess the necessary pharmacology to either initiate or maintain dependence. Hoffmeister
(1975) has reported that LSD actually had negative
reinforcing properties in rhesus monkeys trained in an
avoidance task." -source
"Several other classes of drugs are categorized as drugs of abuse but rarely produce compulsive use. These include psychedelic agents, such as lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD)" -source
https://www.amazon.com/Better-Never-Have-Been-Existence/dp/0199549265
http://uglatto.com/David_Benatar_-_Better_Never_to_Have_Been.pdf
Like someone else mentioned earlier, please do check out "Better Never to Have Been", and please try to do so with an open mind. I'm a pretty upbeat and happy dude and I've had a pretty wonderful life, but I do find his conclusions convincing. The argument isn't that "all life is pain and suffering and blackness and emo music wah", but more about the dichotomy of pleasure and pain and the prevention of suffering. Seriously, give it a fair shake.
ANYWAY. More reasons than just that (although that book really lead me into thinking about childfreedom and accepting that it's okay to not have kids):
Especially given the last point, can you explain your thought process on wanting to have kids?
I am a PGY-4 Rad resident. Here are some resources that I think you guys might find helpful.
General
Chest X-ray
If you're serious about it, start with Felson's Principles of Chest Roentgenology, A Programmed Text. Don't let the 288 pages scare you, half of the pages are images and the other half only contain like 100 words of text. It's set up with big pictures on one side, and easy explanations and multiple choice questions on the opposing page. It kind of reminded me of that Dale Dubin EKG book (the orange one).
If you're kind of "meh" about it. Just check out the UVA tutorials above, or this..
All that being said, Chest X-rays can be some of the most challenging and humbling cases to read. You could read 5 books and still suck. I'm probably going to recommend a CT anyways.
Interventional Radiology Gunners
This guy makes some decent youtube videos. Maybe you'll impress someone someday and only have to sell 1 limb to get into IR.
Advanced
Finding good articles
Just google "(What your looking for) + Radiographics. The Radiographics educational journal has some of the best educational articles and modules overall. You might become too smart and lose all your friends.
Hope that helps. If I think of anything else, I'll periodically update this comment
Rapid Interpretation of EKG's by Dr. Dale Dubin. The classic, definitive textbook for understanding EKG's. It's amazingly simple, with loads of pictures and easy to understand explanations regarding cardiac issues. It is not the most detailed text around, but it is something that you could read in a weekend and walk away knowing much more than you did previously. Highly recommended to EMT's who want some sort of understanding of how to interpret 12 leads.
Every part of our system is for-profit industry. The FDA works with Legal Drug Makers; the DEA stops illegal drugs.
There is a union of companies that support the drug war; just as there are other companies and entities that support the war on drugs.
If you like good books; http://www.amazon.com/Chasing-Scream-First-Last-Drugs/dp/1620408910 is pretty good.
Don't forget https://www.viceland.com/en_us/show/weediquette-tv
Do you guys see that small second book from the top? The Oxford Handbook of Clinical Medicine is probably the only book any medical student will open a thousand time before graduating.
Ain't no one going to open Kumar&Clark or Davidson more than a few time a year
Thomas Ligotti - The Conspiracy Against the Human Race is probably the one I can recommend the most.
There's also Better Never to Have Been - David Benatar.
If you think one of them is too expensive tell me.
You could also Studies in Pessimism - Arthur Schopenhauer.
At last I can recommend this article from Richard Dawkins going into why nature pretty much sucks.
You might enjoy this book, the author doesn't suggest we all commit suicide, but I think the topic might be right up your alley. "Better to Never Have Been - The Harm of Coming Into Existence" https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0199549265/ref=ox_sc_sfl_title_13?ie=UTF8&psc=1&smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER
What you are describing isn't so much a mental state as it is a philosophical position. There are quite a few people, myself included, who believe people are better off not being born and that, consequently, bringing new sentient life into existence is a moral wrong. This position is called antinatalism and it is very rigorously argued for in Better Never to Have Been by philosopher David Benatar. (Here's an audio interview with him.) There's even a subreddit for antinatalism.
In antinatalism, it's very important to make the distinction between life that hasn't yet been started and life that has. While I can say it would have been better for me to never have existed, now that I do exist, I very much wish to continue existing. I didn't choose life, I was forced into it, but I try to make the most of the cards I've been dealt.
Edit. Also, the flip side of this is that I don't owe life, God, my parents or the cosmos anything, least of all my gratitude for being alive. I don't have any obligation to feel happy. Any feelings of gratitude or happiness are for my own benefit, and if I choose to leave early, I'm not being a poor guest.
>I want to give my future kids the same opportunity that my parents gave me when they decided to reproduce, I want to bring them out of the void of unbeing and introduce them to all the wonder and the pain of being real.
The issue I have with this is that it's always a selfish act (having children), you cannot have a child for the child's sake. There is no way to gain consent currently from a non-existent person, but that consent is absolutely needed if you're to have any moral ground on having children. Who are you to speak for these people you act to know best for? How can you guarantee they will want to live, and will not suffer? You're essentially stealing the dice from another person and throwing them for them w/o consent and gambling with their life.
I wish my parents had the forethought to think perhaps I might not enjoy this horrible game we're all caught up in, and that bliss of void, which we all hopefully go back to anyways, might be much much much more loving and peaceful.
Cheerful optimism does far more harm than good, especially when it concerns antinatalism. We're still incapable of not forcing life on those that willfully wish to end it with dignity. We're scary with our imposition of life.
>Those who never exist cannot be deprived. However, by coming into existence one does suffer quite serious harms that could not have befallen one had one not come into existence.
Dale Dubin wrote the definitive EKG book before going to prison for child pornography and cocaine possession. It's a REALLY good book, but feel free to buy it used!
Rapid Interpretation of EKG's, Sixth Edition https://www.amazon.com/dp/0912912065/ref=cm_sw_r_other_apa_JbnFxbTFMMBZJ
https://www.amazon.com/Rapid-Interpretation-EKGs-Sixth-Dubin/dp/0912912065
Worth every penny.
Rapid Interpretation of EKG's, Sixth Edition
Edit: Formatting
The ICU Book by Paul Marino is also a great resource. I’ve learned a lot and it’s made me question a lot of practices at my facility.
The previously mentioned icufaqs.org is definitely a good place to start and is free.
Felson’s principles of roentgenology is a great book to get comfortable at reading CXR and chest imaging.
https://www.amazon.com/Felsons-Principles-Roentgenology-Programmed-Goodman/dp/1455774839/ref=nodl_
I use RIP ATMLL (are there many lung lesions)
RIP for quality of the image (rotation, inspiration, penetration)
ATMLL for search pattern (abdomen, thoracic cage, mediastinum, individual lung fields, both lung fields together).
I'm curious how it will compare to David Benatar's "Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming into Existence". This appears to tackle another important issue for me: the right to die. I'll have to give this a read.
And you should check out the companion book, Crucial Interventions, as well: https://www.amazon.com/Crucial-Interventions-Illustrated-Principles-Nineteenth-Century/dp/0500518106/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1511836333&sr=8-1&keywords=Crucial+interventions
It's full of horrifyingly beautiful 19th century surgical illustrations.
Dale Dubin Rapid Interpretation of EKGs
Life In The Fast Lane
Dr. Smith's ECG Blog
It is a punishment, it is punishable by law if you don't take care of the child. Having to deal with a person you don't want to marry for 18 years because of a child is a punishment. Dealing with a child you never wanted for 18 years is a punishment. Knowing that you brought a child into the world that you cannot adequately care for is a punishment.
It is also a punishment to the kid. My parents can't afford me, I'm a burden on my parents. My parents don't love me, because I was an accident. My parents are not married, other kids call me a bastard.
The kids are the ones punished the most.
you should read "better never to have been" by David Benatar
https://www.amazon.com/Better-Never-Have-Been-Existence/dp/0199549265
The idea that life is "inherently good" is bullshit. I think bringing any child into this world is a sin, because you cannot prevent bad things from happening to them. Even if you are well off and love your partner, bad things will happen to your child. They will feel pain, they will suffer at some point, and they will know loss. The child never asked to be brought into this world, you forced them into this world without consent.
Your post reminded me of this book which examines how there is more bad-ness in life than good-ness and how life is full of pain, illness, suffering and death. While there are lovely sunsets m, kisses with cute girls and various other ‘good’ things...the list is much smaller than the list of bad things.
Here is another great book. Emil (who was a fantastic modern day philosopher) examines the issues with being born, how it’s always too late for suicide and takes a sideways look at the world.
It seems that Buddhism and Hinduism have the same basis.
I know that the goal in Hinduism is to escape the cycle as well.
That's why people want to die in Varanasi.
I share your POV.
There is a great book to this topic - Better never to have been: The harm of coming into existence by David Benatar
http://www.amazon.com/Better-Never-Have-Been-Existence/dp/0199549265
If the human species were going to die out for lack of children, one might argue that reproduction is a duty, either because preserving species is important or because preserving humanity specifically is important. Obviously we're not in that situation and because of that I don't think I've ever seen anyone argue that procreation is a duty. Most talk about procreation in philosophy is about the right of people to be parents if they desire to and whether having kids is always wrong because it is better never to have been born.
Since some people can't even have kids for biological reasons, and since others are not in a position to easily raise their kids, it would be weird for philosophers to say that we have to have kids even if we don't want to: some people can't even have kids if they want to! I can't think of any reasons that anyone would be required to have kids against their will.
> This is a much better argument for assisted/legalized suicide than it is for not having kids
Benatar's arguments don't really carry over into that domain at all, as he's primarily concerned with the harm of coming into existence, as opposed to the harm of existing.
If you're interested he gives more detail backed by some empirical studies about his view that people are actually less well-off than they believe in his book Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming into Existence. It's chapter three of that book. I still don't buy it, but if you were looking for a fuller argument that's where you'll find it.
If you want the standard sequence of Neuroscience textbooks, there is a rough ordering of 3 common books. Each are very comprehensive and more than you would likely be able to read cover to cover, but they get more sophisticated and comprehensive as you go. The last one specifically is essentially the bible of neuroscience and you will be hard pressed to find a more comprehensive coverage of any of the topics outside a specialised textbooks or research papers.
These books will cover the general overview of neuroanatomy, physiology, pharmacology and pathology but if you want to go further in depth, there are more advanced books for each of those and dozens of other subfields.
I would specifically recommend Nolte - The human brain: an introduction to its functional anatomy as an exceptional example of a specialised text. Unfortunately, I do not recall the neurpharmacology text that I used, but it was very good too. I shall look it up and get back to you! For a more general introduction to pharmacology, the standard text is Rand and Dale - Pharmacology.
I have a few that I still use after two years in the Emergency Department:
Books
Journals
Blogs/Podcasts
Subreddits
https://www.amazon.com/Rapid-Interpretation-EKGs-Sixth-Dubin/dp/0912912065 this book is amazing and explains it to you like you’re 5 years old. Lol
Rapid Interpretation of EKG's, Sixth Edition https://www.amazon.com/dp/0912912065/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_ED5MAbCN0H9CD
Recommended to me by an amazing seasoned ER nurse. Very easy to follow.
Dubin's is hands down the best introductory book on EKGs.
http://www.amazon.com/Rapid-Interpretation-EKGs-Sixth-Edition/dp/0912912065
Marino's ICU Book is the ICU bible
My two cents:
Realistically at the medical student level the most important study to be able to interpret is going to be a chest x-ray. So, if you’re looking for resources to go past the general anatomy and “approach to a chest x-ray” I would recommend Felson’s Principles of Chest Roentgenology.
It’s a ‘programmed text’ like Dubin’s for EKGs, and goes through pathology topic by topic, with lots of opportunity to practice interpretation and to see if you are right or wrong. It’s a relatively quick read and there are lots of practice cases at the end as well.
I stressed interpretation before because, sure you may have a test question about the difference between an epidural vs. subdural bleed, but it’s not like you are going to be interpreting CTs or MRIs.
Knowing the underlying anatomy and the differential for the pathology would probably be a better use of your time than going through any of the introductory texts like Learning Radiology: Recognizing the Basics or Squire’s Fundamentals of Radiology. (My point here being that you need to know what you are looking at if you are actually going to be able to make sense of a study.) If you were considering radiology, one might be nice to have as a reference, but again, I do not think actually trying to read through the whole thing would be a good use of time.
Without cases to practice with, a lot of that knowledge probably will not stick. Whenever you have the chance, trying to look at a film before reading the radiologist’s report to test yourself can be helpful, as is trying to actively correlate what you see on the film compared to the clinical exam.
After having a good knowledge of chest x-rays, your next most common scenarios that require interpretation would probably be emerg related - again chest x-rays will be super common, but others like abdo series, extremity skeletal trauma, cervical spine, etc. will be useful.
Having said that, there are online resources like “Introduction to Radiology” from the University of Virginia or Radiology Masterclass.
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TL;DR:
This is the only solution. The only way to end the drug war is to end the drug war. For anyone who can’t comprehend this please take some time to really consider the other side of the argument. I suggest starting here with the most eye opening book you’ll ever read on the subject.
For questions 1 and 2, read this book:
About Face: The Odyssey of an American Warrior
by Amazon.com
Learn more: https://smile.amazon.com/dp/0671695347/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_U_kta1DbXWYZZFK
Hackworth goes into extreme detail on the problems with how the Vietnam war was lead including McNamara's obsession with body counts as an indicator of victory.
For question 4, read this book:
Chasing the Scream: The Opposite of Addiction is Connection
by Amazon.com
Learn more: https://smile.amazon.com/dp/1620408910/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_U_-Fa1DbKVVVJEX
Hari goes into detail on why sodiers in Vietnam did drugs and why the majority of them were able to stop once the war was over. There is little connection between Afghanistan and the current opioid crisis at least as far as soldiers working in a region with opium is concerned.
As far as the question about communication equipment vs yelling, there are several good reasons for yelling as opposed to using coms. First, yelling ALWAYS works. Unless you get shot in your airway, you can almost always yell commands. Coms can breakdown or get lost, broadcasts can be jammed. Coms are expensive, yelling is free. Yelling is also localized. Troops 100 meters away do not hear it effectively but close troops can. Coms broadcast to everyone on the frequency regardless of range. Coms also do not distinguish who is speaking unless call signs are used. If every troop had coms, they couldn't all start talking. They would have to wait their turn. In a firefight, waiting may mean death or worse. Special operators do use sophisticated coms as they approach a target, but still fall back on yelling while in a localized fire fight.
I'm not a chemist; I'm currently studying ChemE at university. I'm also the "science mod" over on /r/trees, so I think I can help out a bit with this one.
The science behind cannabis and how it works is extremely interesting, but it won't help you with 99% of Biochemistry.
Everything we know about cannabis can be learned pretty quickly, provided you have the backgrounds in chemistry, biology, and preferably a bit of pharmacology.
What you can is do is study drugs and their functions as a whole to supplement and enhance your studies in biochemistry; I know that it's granted me a new appreciation for the human body and the processes that regulate it. These fields are vast and expanding at an astonishing rate.
The field of pharmacology is huge, but in a nutshell you can break it into pharmacodynamics and pharmacokinetics. They focus on effects and the relations between dosage and response (dose response curves, etc.) as well as the mechanisms through which the drug is processed and how the drug passes through the body, respectively.
In short, pharmacokinetics studies what the body does to a drug, while pharmacodynamics studies what the drug does to your body.
As a Biochemistry major, these topics will likely be right up your alley. You'll still have to do the mundane, but perhaps some background along these lines will provide you with a new perspective on the processes you are studying in class.
If this sounds like your thing, I'd recommend the following text, provided you already have a good grip on molecular biology and a little electrochemistry: Molecular Neuropharmacology: A Foundation for Clinical Neuroscience
If you like this text or you just want something to supplement it, Caltech, easily one of the top research universities for this field, offers a course taught by Dr. Henry Lester via Coursera, here.
It's a highly informative course that pairs very well with the text I linked above. You'll touch on everything from drug addiction to recreational drugs to the different receptors and how they are activated.
It's not active right now and I'm not sure when the next session will be, but you can go onto Coursera and watch Professor Lester's lectures which are, by far, the most integral part of the course. I went through it last session (January - February) and I was very satisfied with both the material and the way it was presented.
Tl;dr: You can supplement your classroom material with all sorts of interesting studies related to drugs, but if you're not interested in the material you're studying in class at all, it may be time to rethink your field. You can't tie everything to drugs, but you can use the study of drugs to enhance your appreciation for the "macro" systems you're studying.
I'm not sure if this will be helpful for you, but I really liked this book when I was completely lost. I have a feeling you may be past this point in trying to pick a specialty, but this may be a good place to get a better understanding of the field. If you don't have access to this book and want it, PM me and I'll send you a copy. Also check out this post with comprehensive spreadsheet that another student put together.. it is pretty amazing
 
One things I often tell underclassmen is that it is better to shoot for the "harder" specialty because you can switch over to the easier one if you change your mind. However, going the other way around is often impossible. So a lot of people start residency in general surgery and change their minds about it and switch to anesthesiology. This is very common and anesthesiology is a very welcoming field to people who've changed their minds after starting residency. I would say if you're really torn and on the fence about general surgery vs anesthesiology know that you could always go for anesthesia later. You probably will not be able to choose where you go location wise, but you won't be locked of out the specialty if you decide to go with gen surg first.
 
I actually matched into anesthesiology (current MS4). Obviously take everything I have to say with a grain of salt... but I think anesthesiology is a great specialty. I'm surprised that you've heard people complaining that their job could be done by midlevels. At my program (and on my interviews) I've honestly never met an anesthesiologist who didn't love their job. Perhaps the rotation site you're at just doesn't have the complexity of cases that are seen at other places. I think the biggest thing about anesthesiology is that you have to be ok with many cases being a standard routine. Everyone agrees that you can teach a monkey to intubate and turn on some gas, but being a physician really matters in those cases where things aren't routine. Being prepared for those critical/scary situations is what the training is really about. Also, the anesthesiologists I work with are always trying to perfect what they are doing in their usual routine. Often they are trying to tweak things so patients are as comfortable as possible when they wake up. Anyways, I will admit that anesthesiology isn't for everyone, but I wouldn't rule out the specialty because a few people you've met are unhappy. Anecdotally, I find that the field has really high job satisfaction compared to other specialties (among residents and attendings).
 
Also not sure if this is going to be a big deciding factor for you, but I know many well regarded MD anesthesiology residency programs are DO friendly. One program I interviewed at that I remember most clearly being very DO friendly is case western. In terms of competitiveness, I would say anesthesiology is relatively easy. You do not need to be top of your class to match into this field. Refer to the spreadsheet above for numbers on competitiveness. My personal experience is that I got interviews from many of the top programs without being very competitive (bottom half of my class for sure and nothing especially impressive on my application to compensate for it).
 
Best of luck to you!
I highly recommend you actually educate yourself about what you are arguing against rather than form a facade of your opponents argument. This book is an excellent source of information about antinatalism. Learn what you are arguing against if you want to form a good argument.
Read this book and explain to them why you think having kids is wrong.
http://www.amazon.com/Better-Never-Have-Been-Existence/dp/0199549265/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1345756081&sr=8-1&keywords=better+never+to+have+been
That would probably help your argument. Most doctors likely assume you just want to engage in risky sexual behavior and will change your mind later.
In fact, I'm finding gay marriage preferable to straight marriage :)
I consider conception of children to be an inherently bad thing: each time a new being is born, the general level of suffering in the universe increases. Giving birth is ultimatly an egoistic thing which is armful to the child, which will endure a life dominated by bad experiences and suffering ( for detail about this, you can read http://www.amazon.com/Better-Never-Have-Been-Existence/dp/0199549265 ).
So, in a world where there are a lot of orphans, I see adoption as the best move to make by a couple which want a child: it doesn't increase the number of suffering beings in the world like conception, and is more likely to reduce the suffering of a child which is currently living in an orphanage.
Of course, my introductory statement was a little bit trollish. There are means for gay couples to conceive, or make conceive for them, which I find immoral. In fact the move I find the most moral is the straight couple which choose to not conceive at all, but to adopt.
I cannot more strongly recommend Steven W. Smith's The Scientist and Engineer's Guide to Digital Signal Processing.
Every chapter is freely available as a PDF on the website.
Everyone who is interested in EEG/ECoG/LFP/single-unit research should absolutely read this book.
Steve Luck's Introduction to the Event Related Potential Technique is great, and will really help you to set up a top-quality ERP lab, but the DSP book really teaches you what happens to the signals you're recording.
If you want to get deeper into the underlying physiology of EEG, I'd recommend Electric Fields of the Brain by Nunez & Srinivasan.
You'd also be happy reading Buzsaki's Rhythms of the Brain.
I think the modern classic on ERPs is considered to be Steve Luck's book. I can vouch that it's an excellent book.
I can't help you with non-event-related EEG, though.
Thank you for the effort! I'll try to do you justice with a thorough response.
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> 1. God says what he needs to say to us through the Bible.
Sure it's the Bible and not Harry Potter? To anyone without your obvious bias, the Bible looks like a collection of fanciful but poorly edited fiction. God's message hasn't reached me and it hasn't reached 5 billion other humans alone among the living. In other words, if this is an omnipotent's idea of effective communication, God sucks as a communicator.
> 2. God is not inert, he sometimes does miracles
Prove this and I'll leave you alone. Has God ever healed an amputee? Has God ever accomplished a miracle that has no natural explanation?
No wait, references to the work of fiction mentioned in #1 don't count. There is not the slightest bit of evidence that your precious Bible is anything more than a stack of useful rolling papers. I've addressed this before. J.K. Rowling has Harry Potter performing scores of miracles in her books, it's really easy to create a miracle with pen and paper.
> 3. The evidence is not inadequate. If you want evidence of his existence, there is evidence everywhere, and in sheer necessity, it is pointed out that God must exist.
So you say. Your following arguments are... sorely lacking. Here we go:
> 3.1 The need of a creator
If you saw a car in the forest, you wouldn't say it randomly came into existence and over time came together by itself, because it is too complex for that to have happened.
Correct. That's easy for me to say because I know exactly what a car is and how it's made.
> In the same way, this universe and everything in it is far too complex to randomly explode into existence and come together by itself, a creator is needed and that creator is God.
Your analogy doesn't hold. The universe is not very complex conceptually, it's been satisfactorily explained how all heavenly bodies resulted from the expansion of space followed by the clumping of clouds of primeval hydrogen. Suns and the nuclear process in them? A natural consequence of packing a lot of hydrogen with gravity. Heavy elements? The ashes of nuclear fusion. Planets circling around suns? That's what happens when heavenly bodies nearly collide in a vacuum, influenced only by each other's gravity. Finally, the complexity of life on earth is neatly explained by evolution from very primitive beginnings from substances that occur -naturally- in the void of lifeless space. No magic is required to explain any of this. But I see we get to talk about this in greater depth in #4.
Still, for your interest, this video refutes Craig's Kalam Cosmological argument and is thoroughly captivating while presenting modern cosmology. Highly recommended!
> 3.2 The need for an original mover/causer
You know nothing moves by itself correct?
No, I don't know this, because I have a solid education in physics. Atomic nuclei spontaneously explode and particles fly from them - movement without a mover. Plato's Prime Mover argument dates back to a time when people didn't know anything about physics and science was done by sitting on your butt, guessing and thinking.
> 3.3 The need of a standard
When you call something, for instance let's say "good", there has to be a standard upon which good is based.
This response of yours -so far- is sounding suspiciously like a copy of a William Lane Craig debate argument. Please note that all of his arguments have been successfully refuted - though not necessarily within one debate or only within debates. But regardless, I can easily address your arguments on my own.
Now then. Basic moral behavior has been shown to emerge naturally as a result of evolution. Yes, this is why theists hate evolution so much. It explains a lot of stuff that used to be attributed to God. Animals in the wild show moral behavior such as altruism, fairness, love, cooperation, justice and so forth. Even robot simulations, given only the most minimal initial instructions, develop "moral" behavior because that turns out to be a successful selection criteria for survival.
If you try to point out that humans display and think about much more complex moral situations than animals, I'll agree. But you know who invented those extensions of purely survival-oriented moral behavior? Humans did, not God. Humans look at the behaviors that promote survival and well-being in animals and humans and call it "good." They see behavior that hurts and kills animals and people and makes them suffer, and they call it "bad." Your five year old kid can grasp this concept - you insult your god when you claim this is so difficult it necessarily requires divine intervention. I recommend Peter Singer's book Practical Ethics, a thoughtful and thorough discussion of morals far more nuanced and acceptable to a modern society than the barbaric postulates of scripture. Rape a virgin, buy her as a wife for 50 shekels, indeed!
> 4.1 About the Origin of Life/Finely tuning a killer cosmos
> Anyway, for life to come together even by accident, you would need matter
Correct.
> now the universe is not infinite and even scientists know that.
I'm not sure that's certain, but it's probably irrelevant. Let's move on.
> that scientists say made the universe would need matter present.
Correct. We certainly observe a helluva lot of matter in the present-day universe (to the extent we can observe it).
> Where do you expect that matter to have come from?
An empty geometry and some very basic laws of physics (including quantum physics). This is very un-intuitive, which is why people restricted to Platonic thinking have trouble with it. But you know that matter and energy are equivalent, via E=mc^2 , right? Given the raw physics of the very early universe, matter could be created from energy and vice versa. OK, that still doesn't explain where the (matter+energy) came from. Here's the fun part: it turns out that the universe contains not just the conventional "positive" energy we're familiar with, but also negative energy. And it turns out that the sum of (matter + positive energy) on one hand and (negative energy) on the other are exactly equal and cancel out. In other words, and this is important, the creation of the universe incurred no net "cost" in matter or energy. This being the case, it becomes similarly plausible for for the entire universe to have spontaneously popped into existence just like those sub-atomic particles that cause the Casimir Effect. Stephen Hawking has explained this eloquently in his book The Grand Design but you may prefer Lawrence Krauss' engaging lecture A Universe From Nothing.
> I know for a fact that people are smarter than an explosion and even they have been unsuccessful in making organic life forms from scratch
Wrong again. It took them 15 years, but Craig Venter and his project recently succeeded in constructing the first self-replicating synthetic bacterial cell.
By way of interest, people making the kind of claims you do were similarly amazed when Friedrich Wöhler, in 1828, synthesized the first chemical compound, urea, that is otherwise only created by living beings. This achievement torpedoed the Vital Force theory dating back to Galen. Yet another job taken off God's hands.
> let alone have them survive the forming of a planet.
Now this is just dumb. First the planet formed, then it cooled down a bit, then life developed.
> Because of that, I doubt an explosion could do it either.
So you're right there: The explosion just created the planet and the raw materials. Life later arose on the planet.
> Chance doesn't make matter pop into existence.
Yes it does. The effect I was mentioning earlier is called quantum fluctuation.
> 4.2 The human brain
(skipping the comparison of man with god. I don't see it contributing anything. All of this postulating doesn't make God plausible in any way)
> 4.3 The Original Christian Cosmos
> 4.3.1. Maybe because we are after the fall, we have already lost that perfect original cosmos Paul imagined.
Wait, this contradicts your next point.
> 4.3.2 You have to give Paul some credit for trying. He didn't have any the information or technology we have today.
Thank you, this confirms my assertion that the Bible and its authors contain no divinely inspired knowledge. The Bible is a collection of writings by people who thought you could cleanse leprosy by killing a couple of pigeons.
Now, about that original cosmos: either Paul was too uneducated to conceive the cosmos as it really exists, or what he imagined is irrelevant. In any case, what you consider the "after loss" cosmos is trillions of times larger than Paul imagined; it would be silly to call this a loss.
The fact remains that the world as described in the Bible is a pitiful caricature of the world as it is known today. And Carrier's main point remains that our cosmos is incredibly hostile to life; and if man were indeed God's favorite creation, the immensity of the cosmos would be a complete waste if it only served as a backdrop for our tiny little planet.
Nonfiction - Atul Gawande's The Checklist Manifesto. It's awesome if you're at all interested in process and how complex things get done.
kandel
bear
purves
martin
Each of these books is aimed at a different audience, but this should get you started.
Dubin
I'm not all the way through it but Rapid Interpretation of EKGs is AMAZING
I’m not sure if you’ve come across this text yet but Rapid Review of EKGs was crucial when I was a medical student. You can read it in one sitting and feel so comfortable reading EKGs.
The worst part for me when I was new was not being sure of myself. Luckily I did have a good orientation and preceptor that forced me to look everything up, I mean everything.
It was really annoying in the beginning because I was like, aren't you supposed to be showing me how to do stuff. Basically she said no I'm supposed to be showing you how to find answers to questions, because after your orientation is over, you're still going to have questions, years from now you will still have questions and you're going to approach a person and ask them but they may not know or they may be wrong. It's my job to show you how to critically think.
She never said any of that but she forced me to look up everything and showed me how to do that.
Know how to find information. Look up your polices and review all of them when you have time: you will not remember them all, but you will remember that they exist.
If I could reccomend two books to help you it would be the AACN procedure manual (your unit should have this reference available to you, if not talk to your admin team), and The ICU Book (you should buy a copy of it for yourself).
Nothing impresses me more than a nurse who has a question and at least tried to look up the answer, right or wrong, and is coming to me just to make sure they are correct or work through the problem.
"Neurology" is a medical discipline, i.e. a department you would find in a hospital, so that would not be appropriate for your case. "Neuroscience", on the other hand, is the name of the scientific study, which is what you should look into, but overall that is too broad of a field.
For what you're trying to learn, I'd just start directly diving into neuropharmacology. Any good resource should give you enough of an overview before things get more complicated; perhaps having a review of high school science might be good, but not necessary.
Here's a recommendation for a good reference textbook: https://www.amazon.com/Molecular-Neuropharmacology-Foundation-Clinical-Neuroscience/dp/0071481273
Not the person you replied to, and myself unlikely to reply, but basically, the logic goes as follows:
There are lives worth starting and lives worth continuing (for me, this is an intuition that I can't really explain, unfortunately): There is a cutoff point for the quality of life where it would not be worth starting. Basically: what is the maximum probability of a child having leukemia to say that the child's life wouldn't be worth starting?
I believe most people would consider it immoral to start the life of a child that has a 99% chance of having leukemia, but people would object to ending a child's life if it had the same chance of having leukemia. Soft anti-natalists follow the same logic, but set the bar a lot higher: a life has to be extremely good to be worth starting, but not that good to be worth continuing, in fact, very few (or no) people have lives that would have been worth starting. Hard anti-natalists hold that under all conditions, even blissful perfect lives, are not worth starting, but I don't understand the logic they follow.
Also, a lot of anti-natalists hold that life tends to be net negative hedonistically, or believe that preventing suffering is ethically more important than creating happiness (some form of negative utilitarianism or suffering focused ethics).
So, what is to be done? Well, there are, like in every other movement, more and less radical approaches. A soft anti-natalist has two answers: First, try to improve the quality of the lives of people already living and the people that will become born no matter what one does. Second, not bring new children (or even other sentient beings) into the world unless you're really sure their lives are worth starting. A hard anti-natalist would argue that it would be ethical for the the human species to go extinct (because bringing new people into existince is always bad).
Practically, anti-natalists advocate for spreading of birth-control (it brings down the birth rate), adopting instead of procreating (and maybe even raising children on anti-natalist memes, but only carefully). More careful anti-natalists like David Pearce propose that anti-natalism fails because it is a genetically self-defeating strand of thought, and attempting to improve the lives of present and future people is a much better strategy.
Wow, I wrote a lot more than I thought. The most well-known book on anti-natalism is by the philosopher David Benatar: “Better to never have been”, but I've only skimmed it. He strikes me as a very careful thinker, but I am of course biased.
>Since I LOVE the son I don't have, I would never do something like that to him.
Do I have a book for you! David Benatar "Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming into Existence."
Here are a few that I've collected over the last couple of years (excluding the ones that have already been mentioned, and the ones that include a discussion of suicide methods):
SUICIDE & EUTHANASIA:
ANTINATALISM:
Somewhat less serious:
"Better to never have been" is something of a slogan for antinatalism ;)
David Benetar wrote a book called: http://www.amazon.com/Better-Never-Have-Been-Existence/dp/0199549265/ref=pd_ybh_1
Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming into Existence
e.g. If you are sure that person is going to have AIDS or live in extreme poverty, so that she will suffer an immensely excruciating pain.
He, then, argues that:
Further conclusions:
In this line of thought, abortion, for instance, in the early stages of pregnancy is not only right, but morally mandatory. In addition, he establishes a very important difference between "lives worth continuing" and "lives worth starting", arguing that we are not morally obliged to kill ourselves. Absolutely not. But since by bringing someone into life I will expose this person to serious harm, it is best not to bring anyone into life.
Let me explain why I brought up dyslexia as a common comorbidity of having problems expressing yourself and adhd, but first lets talk about language. I will get back to dyslexia and ADHD. Do note while my post is long, I provide lots of links to pictures.
I am going to be using a lot of images from a biology textbook called Biological Psychology: An Introduction to Behavorial, Cognitive, and Clinical Neuroscience. Mostly from Chapter 19 which deals with language, while I am going to provide specific images you may find it useful to read the visual summary if you want more info.
http://7e.biopsychology.com/vs19.html
-----
 
 
Put simply to do language you are going to use multiple regions of the brain together as a circuit. See here
http://7e.biopsychology.com/vs/vs19/vs1905.png
You are going to use areas in the back of the brain tied to vision, then you are going to pass that information to a multisensory processing area where your brain combines the senses and figures out what to do (aka you are forming the visual images in your mind before you think of the words that correspond to the visual images). You are then going to pass the information once again to a multisensory processing area but this area is more auditory based, followed by you passing the information to a specific area of the frontal lobe that is very close to the prefrontal areas which is tied to language, but also attention, sequencing of data, and response inhibition (stopping impulsivity) but also activation (aka release the brake and now go). This information is then passed to premotor and supplementary motor areas which is then passed to the motor areas. And during all these steps there are inbetween fine tunning by the subcortical brain areas such as the cerebellum and the basal ganglia.
Now I was trying to explain all of that without using medical terms but here is the names for those brain areas
http://7e.biopsychology.com/vs/vs19/lowres/BIOPSYCHOLOGY7e-Fig-19-07-0.jpg
 
 
And here is a diagram that compares speaking a heard word and speaking a word you read off a piece of paper. When you are composing inside of your head without mental feedback and you are imaging what you are going to say your thought process looks more like speaking a word you read off a piece of paper for you use more of the visual areas to visualize in your mind's eye what you are going to do and say.
http://7e.biopsychology.com/vs/vs19/lowres/BIOPSYCHOLOGY7e-Fig-19-09-0.jpg
 
 
-------
Now we know things like head injuries and lesions to specific brain injuries to specific brain injuries can all disrupt speech but if the area is localized to specific regions you may only have some problems with certain aspects of language. When language problems are caused by some form of trauma we call this aphasia.
http://7e.biopsychology.com/vs/vs19/artWin.html?BIOPSYCHOLOGY7e-Table-19-01-0.jpg
 
 
And people with different types of aphasia may have different problems. Like a person with expressive aphasia may know what they want to say and they can draw what they want to say but they can't find the words for it. While people with receptive aphasia have problems understanding language. Now receptive aphasia can be more than this where people accidentally skip words in their explanations that are crucial in the sentence, or they have anomia where they know what they want to say (the word is on the tip of their tongue) but they can't remember it, or they do an unintentional word subsitution subsituting another word with a similar sound or meaning, sometimes they mess up not the grammar of the sentence but the word tense, or use the wrong pronoun (like her vs she)
 
 
Now all of these issues I described were studied in people with head injuries. That said we see much the same pattern of behavior with many different types of disorders, one of which is autism, but another of which and is completely separate is dyslexia.
Now with dyslexia many brain regions are implicated and some of them are the same areas I have shown above
http://7e.biopsychology.com/vs19.html (go to slide 6)
In many forms of dyslexia you are not using the back of the brain areas tied with the early visual information which is passed to the angular gyrus which is passed to the wernicke area. See picture
http://www.hoperesourcecentre.com/wp-content/uploads/Brain-Illustration-CellfieldCanada.jpg
And you are trying to compensate for all of this information with actually using more of the frontal lobe to compensate for these areas. Well the frontal lobe is not designed to do such a thing its arrangement and types of nerve cells are different.
 
 
Now its not just that picture I showed you, its also some of the subcortical areas such as these areas I am about to post here
http://7e.biopsychology.com/vs/vs18/artWin.html?BIOPSYCHOLOGY7e-Fig-18-15-0.jpg
Involving the thalamus and an area known as the pulvinar, as well as certain areas of the brainstem, and certain areas of the cerebellum mainly vermis 6 and vermis 7 (often labeled VI and VII)
http://www.frontiersin.org/files/Articles/156522/fnins-09-00296-HTML/image_m/fnins-09-00296-g002.jpg
These parts of the cerebellum are used for multiple functions but they are often called the occular motor areas of the cerebellum. They are also involved with the control of attention and shifting smoothing from one object to another for one of the purposes of the cerebellum is to "fill in the blanks" between gaps. Imagine you were watch a film but instead of watching a video you were seeing slide by slide, well the cerebellum along with the thalamus and brain stem regions are used in the predicition of what is going to happen next and smooth movements of the eyes, while other areas in the frontal lobe are more involved with figuring out these things are important so why don't we set this as the new priority of what to look at and the rest of the brain figures out how best to move there.
https://kin450-neurophysiology.wikispaces.com/file/view/SACCCAAADDDEEESSS.jpeg/393831860/480x346/SACCCAAADDDEEESSS.jpeg
 
 
Now if you have not probably figured out there is a connection to all of these brain regions with ADHD. Some ADHD people have these issues, but if you have these issues you are also more likely to have ADHD.
If you look at the previous chapter 18 of Biological Psychology you will see this picture on slide 6
http://7e.biopsychology.com/vs/vs18/artWin.html?BIOPSYCHOLOGY7e-Fig-18-16-0.jpg
There are two attention networks here. The top attention network is known as the frontal parietal control network where it controls and and it also modulates the dorsal attention/perception network. While a second bottom network in orange involves the frontal lobe and connects to areas shared both with the temporal lobe and the parietal lobe where they meet and the surrounding areas, this bottom attention network is more with detecting new things and novel things, while the top network keeps you on track and looks for the goals held within working memory to solve the problems.
If you have not noticed the same areas of the brain that make it hard to express onceself with language, are also the same areas that are common in dyslexia, and are the intersection of two of key networks tied with attention (now there are more than those two networks I just showed you with ADHD but now you understand why there is a connection.)
(Now most of pictures I linked to came from Biological Psychology by Breedlove and Watson, this is an introductory college text meant for undergraduate use. It will not go into all the stuff involving the brain with attention and such, other books made by the same publishing company (Sinaeur) but done by other authors are better if you are mainly wanting to talk about attention instead of language such as
Sensation and Perception
Neuroanatomy through Clinical Cases
Dale Purves Neuroscience 5th Edition
And Principles of Cognitive Neuroscience
Dubin's Rapid Interpretation of EKGs
Best book on the market in my opinion is Rapid Interpretation of EKGs. Its been in print for decades, and its definitely held up over time as the best EKG books out there. It covers everything you need to know to have a solid understanding of the fundamentals of EKGs, and it does so in a way thats easy to understand.
The author is a convicted felon and child pornographer. But don't worry too much about that, its still a great book.
Definitely worth looking into mast cell and histamine issues if Zyrtec helps you. Have a read of this https://www.amazon.com/Never-Bet-Against-Occam-Activation/dp/0997319615 and check out his YT video if you want to learn about MC disorders.
Marino's ICU Book. It was recommended to me for an ICU rotation I'm doing soon (I'm interested in the field). It's really an excellent book, does a great job explaining concepts that I always had trouble with (like shunt vs. dead space, a-A gradient, etc), and they added little snippets like this to keep things interesting.
Fantastic score! As far as getting into an elite IM program, I would definitely start by identifying a mentor at your home IM program; they'll be better able to guide you. And with a 260 Step, I'm sure they'd be more than happy to help you achieve your career goals.
Also, be on the lookout for research projects that you can help out with, be it case reports or systemic reviews.
Otherwise, the usual advice applies: do well on your rotations, study hard for each shelf, and do well with CK.
Also, buy a copy of The Successful Match. It has useful advice for obtaining letters of rec, what to write in your personal statement, etc.
https://www.amazon.com/Successful-Match-2017-Success-Residency/dp/1937978079
It's a random recommendation but I quite liked "Chasing the scream" by Johann Hari
https://www.amazon.com/Chasing-Scream-Opposite-Addiction-Connection/dp/1620408910
How literate is he? For beginner maybe this book, looks cool. It's called Two Cheers for Anarchism: Six Easy Pieces on Autonomy, Dignity, and Meaningful Work and Play
https://www.amazon.com/Two-Cheers-Anarchism-Autonomy-Meaningful-ebook/dp/B0091XBYWK/ref=sr_1_3?keywords=anarchism&qid=1568494157&s=books&sr=1-3
More serious book is like this one (has more history and such) https://www.amazon.com/Anarchism-Theory-Practice-Daniel-Gu%C3%A9rin/dp/0853451753/ref=sr_1_8?keywords=anarchism&qid=1568494157&s=books&sr=1-8
Thank you /u/jamietwells. Here are a couple of links you might find interesting (one of which I've posted elsewhere in this thread):
Yup, I can't disagree with you. I've thought this way for a long time. Others might disagree, but there are other people out there who think this. I came across a whole book about it.
Your comment reminded me of this book. I haven't read it yet, but it's on my list.
I have three: The Stranger made me stop believing in moral absolutes, Letter to a Christian Nation made me an atheist, and The Sexual Politics of Meat was the beginning of me going vegan.
I was looking at Better Never to Have Been and No Logo, and have been curious about socialism, anarchism, and the straight edge philosophy, and I'd like to consume any books that would challenge my current beliefs or ask me to radically change who I am.
Hi there,
Some suggestions for ya!
The Quest for Consciousness by Christof Koch. Minimal neuroscience background required, but the more you know, the more you'll derive from this book. Focused on illustrating how complex networks can manifest behaviour (and consciousness). Outside of Koch's regular pursuits as an electrophysiology, he worked alongside Francis Crick (ya that one), to study arousal and consciousness. It's a fantastic read, and it's quite humbling.
Rhythms of the Brain by Gyorgy Buzsaki. Written for neuroscientists and engineers as an introductory textbook into network dynamics, oscillations, and behaviour. One of my favorite books in the field, but it can also be the most challenging.
Treatise of Man by Rene Descarte. Personal favorite, simply because it highlights how far we've come (e.g. pineal gland, pain, and animal spirits).
Synaptic Self by Joseph LeDoux provides the fantastic realization that "you are your synapse". Great circuit/network book written with a lot of psychological and philosophical considerations.
Finally...
Physical control of the mind--towards of psychocivilized society by the one and only Jose Delgado. (In)Famous for his experiments where he stopped a bull charging at him through amygdala stimulation- along with some similar experiments in people- Delgado skirts the line between good intention and mad science. It's too bad he's not taught more in history of neuroscience.
EEG analysis is a bit of an art form and mastering it just comes with experience, trial and error, and really knowing your particular dataset and aims. I use Matlab with the EEGLAB toolbox for ERPs and FieldTrip for time frequency analysis.
There are so many different steps, it's definitely not just a matter of pushing a button and getting a nice p-value out at the other side. I'd recommend getting your hands on this book in the first instance.
/u/BedsideRounds, I was just going to suggest the same thing, as I have the book and enjoy thumbing through it. I also have Crucial Interventions, which is along the same style.
Which podcast do you host? If you are uncomfortable telling us in public, can you PM me?Never mind I just read it in your starter comment.>A newborn Infant can in no real sense be considered a person. Not only would a painless death not bother them, their brain would never have developed to the point that they ever would have known they were alive. It's the same reason I have no problem eating beef.
If you want a thourough philosophical argument, I recomend:
http://www.amazon.com/Practical-Ethics-Peter-Singer/dp/052143971X
I’m no philosopher, and wouldn’t be able to articulate it as well as others have. If you truly care, there is a wide variety of literature on the subject.
https://fivebooks.com/best-books/kenan-malik-on-morality-without-god/
http://ebooks.bharathuniv.ac.in/gdlc1/gdlc4/Arts_and_Science_Books/arts/philosophy/Books/Elements%20of%20Moral%20Philosophy.pdf
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Morality-Introduction-Ethics-Bernard-Williams/dp/0521457297
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/052143971X/ref=cm_sw_r_tw_dp_U_x_yewmAbY8W8TGR
If you really have to study, learn how to interpret EKGs. http://www.amazon.com/Rapid-Interpretation-EKGs-Sixth-Dubin/dp/0912912065
https://www.amazon.com/Rapid-Interpretation-EKGs-Sixth-Dubin/dp/0912912065
Will edit more resources in a bit..
Here's some of the EKG resources I used in PCP school:
Life in the Fast Lane
Dr. Smith's EKG Blog
Dale Dubin's Rapid Interpretation of EKG's
Dr. Mattu ECG Weekly
Dr. Mattu YouTube Channel (not updated anymore but has 200+ vids)
Well, the good news is that you will get training. They're not just going to throw you to the wolves. So you'll have some time to work closely with a preceptor and ask a bunch of questions. And it's great that you're already brushing up on vent concepts.
Honestly, I think the only way to really gain confidence is to just go out there and do it. Once you have a couple of ICU shifts under your belt, it won't seem so scary anymore. And hopefully you have coworkers that you feel you can go to if you're stumped on a patient.
For mechanical ventilation concepts, I'd suggest this book: http://www.amazon.com/Ventilator-Book-William-Owens-MD/dp/098529650X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1462453163&sr=8-1&keywords=the+ventilator+book. It has very short chapters and is very easy to understand. Chapter 2 or 3 covers exactly what you're worried about: knowing when/why to make vent changes and what to do to solve "x" problem.
I always tell myself that I can ALWAYS bag the patient. If the vent is going crazy and the patient is in some kind of distress and I don't know what to do, I know that I can always bag the patient and call for help. And I have had to do that a few times. In my experience, most RT's are pretty good to each other as far as helping each other out. I hope you will be working with a good team.
Top Knife is a little above your level but is absolute gold if you will be performing any kind of trauma surgery in the future. The Ventilator Book is appropriate for absolutely anyone who will step foot in an ICU for more than fifteen minutes and will take about that long to read.
Supplementing prodrugs is probably better than AChE inhibition in the long term. ACh isn't transported directly back into cell bodies or synaptic vessicles and has to be broken down and reassembled inside the cell. I'd give you a citation, but I read it in Molecular Neuropharmacology: A Foundation for Clinical Neuroscience, Second Edition.
✨INTJ ✨interested in Cardiology or Palliative Care
I knew this sounded familiar. I came across The Ultimate Guide to Choosing a Medical Specialty by Brian Freeman, MD a couple of years ago and found this chart relating personality types and specialties: 1 and 2. Just something fun to look through!
The first holiday my wife was in school, I got her this book on choosing a medical specialty. The year she graduated, I got her a collection of papers that were specific to the specialty she matched into (her idea, not mine haha). When she started rotations, I got her an iPad--they weren't necessary for her rotations, but she got a lot out of it.
This book by David Benatar provides the philosophical base for your perspective. It solidified my thoughts that life is a scam.
Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming into Existence
> Not quite and I want to be careful here. Animal abuse is an unjust action toward an animal. A human being, though he has dominion over an animal would still be wrong to abuse it. However, using an animal for his own legitimate purpose is not abuse (e.g., clothing, travel, nutrition, companionship, etc.) God, as the creator over these beings, has complete authority. God cannot abuse His own creation. To do so would mean that He is not its creator. Abuse is to use in a way contrary to which it was intended. God is the intender.
I disagree on multiple points here and think you'd run afoul in multiple places if you were to present definitions for the words with contentious definitions employed.
>Animal abuse is an unjust action toward an animal.
Without a meaningful definition of the word just (or unjust), this sentence has no content. Justice is not simply whatever something's creator deems to be, and hasn't been since at least the Socratic era.
>A human being, though he has dominion over an animal would still be wrong to abuse it. However, using an animal for his own legitimate purpose is not abuse (e.g., clothing, travel, nutrition, companionship, etc.)
'Legitimate purpose' again requires a definition because you are using it in a context where the meaning of that phrase is what the rest of the statement is contingent upon. Your definition of 'legitimate purpose' is not one that would be agreed by people who do not share your presuppositions. I wouldn't even grant that clothing or nutrition would be appropriate in that list and that's not even the contentious presupposition.
>if you assume that Jesus is God, has power over demons, knows what is best for people, and that this act was in furtherance of what is best for people, then He is not manipulating anyone.
I disagree, even if you assume all that you've stated the manipulation remains you've just deemed it a just manipulation. You are still putting people through harm regardless of what their will is so that Yaweh might arrive at his desired end. I'd also caution that you can justify a hell of a lot if you operate following this sort of logic where you grant huge swaths of assumptions.
>God, as the creator over these beings, has complete authority. God cannot abuse His own creation. To do so would mean that He is not its creator. Abuse is to use in a way contrary to which it was intended. God is the intender.
Ah, and this is the pivotal point of disagreement. No, an agent does not have unlimited authority over anything it creates. This is dangerous, ancient thinking that has been tossed aside in every aspect of human life aside from supernatural consideration.
Even when it comes to children, we recognize that they have rights relative to their agency. Prior to meeting the standards of personhood (of which a crucial one is agency) a human life lacks almost all of the rights it ultimately will acquire as it matures and grows its agency. As agency increases, the parent / creator's control and 'dominion' over the creation wanes.
We're set to also run up against this problem in a very drastic manner as a species soon(ish) when we get AI to a point where it more accurately resembles consciousness.
Right now, AI is basically just a complex command set. If condition X or Y is met, perform task A. It's complicated by algorithms, conditions that change over time, and command sets that are structured into complex hierarchy but currently there's not a Will that exists anywhere in this and thus no true agency, just an extension of their human creator no meaningfully different from a set of dominos.
Maybe Humans never get our creations to a point in which something reasonably resembling will/agency exists. However, if we do Humans won't be fully justified in doing whatever we desire to our creations because our creations will have agency and agency must be recognized as a requisite of Rights.
So, just as Humans would not be justified in doing whatever they desired to a conscious robot or their child, a human-creator would also not be justified in all circumstance in their interactions with humans. There are consequences to action and very serious consequences to creation. David Benatar wrote a great short book on this awhile back called Better Never to Have Been though it was more geared towards the ethics of procreation than our larger topic of conversation. Were we as a species to have a creator that creator would have strong limits on what they were justified in doing. Justice is predicated on harm, before something (or someone) exists it cannot be harmed. Once it has been conjured into existence harm is possible and if harm is done to something with agency that harm requires justification (or it is not just).
Be forewarned, I am going to sketch this out very crudely. Okay, that being said...
I think there are three common answers in philosophy concerning the value of life which is a reflection of the general split in philosophy between three major ethical views -
Consequentialist Utilitarianism - Life isn't valuable, not directly. What is directly valuable is pleasure (or maybe satisfied desire) and what is directly disvaluable is suffering (or maybe unfulfilled desire). Either way, destroying life often leads to more suffering and less pleasure for those left alive. Furthermore, destroying life destroys the only place pleasure (which is valuable) can exist. Alternatively: if desire is really what matters rather than pleasure, destroying life leaves a lot of people's desires unfulfilled as well as destroying the only place where fulfilled desires can exist.
Kantian Deontology - Life isn't valuable, not directly. Free choice is the only thing that is directly valuable. But usually you can't go around destroying life without also violating free choice. If life didn't exist, it wouldn't be a big deal. When the Kantian says free choice is the only thing that is directly valuable, the Kantian doesn't mean we need to maximize the number of free choices or free choosers--rather the Kantian means we have to respect already existing people's choices. So if no one existed, then there wouldn't be anything bad about it because it wouldn't involve violating anyone's choices. BUT life does exist and in order for life to go out of existence you would probably have to act against people's choices to keep living (which is the one wrong according to Kantians like me).
Virtue Ethics - Here is the only position were you might get someone close to saying life is valuable directly. The idea here is that morality concerns being a good instance of the type of thing you are. So good knives are sharp ones that cut well, good wolves can hunt and work well with their pack, etc. Human beings are living beings (reproduce, self-maintain, etc). and human life specifically takes the form of living through the human capacity for abstract reflective judgment (i.e. taking into consideration many conflicting reasons relevant to their situation/decision, and making the right decision). Presumably you are bad at human life if you don't value your own life. Furthermore, you would be pretty immature, childish in the development of you capacity for reflective judgment if you didn't recognize some intrinsic value to life itself. Why is that immature not to recognize? Sorry childish person, you'll need to just grow out of your blindness to the intrinsic value of life. (I am not insulting you, I am only stressing the way in which being able to recognize what is and isn't intrinsically valuable according to the virtue ethics comes with the mature, skilled judgment of a good human being; presumably someone's unwillingness to see the intrinsic value of life would--according to the Virtue Ethicist--be rooted in their childishness in some respect).
____
Myself, I am a Kantian concerning morality. But here is a recent work on the topic by a Utilitarian -
Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming into Existence Paperback – September 15, 2008
by David Benatar (Author)
http://www.amazon.com/Better-Never-Have-Been-Existence/dp/0199549265
You might also look at some of Korsgaard's recent work on animal rights (where she tries to extend the Kantian position so that animal life is valuable in addition to free choice): http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~korsgaar/CMK.FellowCreatures.pdf
This book.
I happen to think that Dr. Benatar is correct in his views on reproduction.
See:
Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming into Existence ~ David Benatar
This excellent book clarified what was once only a vague uneasy feeling about inflicting Life on the innocent and reaffirmed my dedication to refrain from creating new humans to suffer on this miserable mudball. It is always a moral wrong to have children. It then compounds the harm to inflict additional suffering through lack of proper resources for the emotional and physical care of that child.
I'm not sure about single-cell recordings but with EEG experiments (and most other electrophysiological measures i.e. EOG, EMG) the voltage (also known as electrical potential difference) recorded at a place on the scalp is measure of the potential for current to move from one place to another. So you need 2 electrodes to measure this: the one (or more) on the scalp, and the ground electrode which provides a common reference point for all the other electrodes.
As far as I recall the site for this can vary, I know the EEG system we use (Biosemi) has two electrodes that work as grounds that are placed on the scalp (they are slightly more complex than just ground electrodes though but don't ask me to explain how!).
In addition (and slightly confusingly) you have reference electrodes, which can be placed in a variety of places (earlobes, nose, mastoids, etc for EEG). The key property of a site for a reference electrode is that it must be unaffected by the source you are recording. It picks up all the internal and external noise and is then subtracted from the active electrodes to give a cleaner signal. Just like the normal electrodes the reference is measuring the potential difference between itself and the ground electrode.
Luck (2005) puts it like this: Signal = AG voltage - RG voltage
[A = Scalp electrode, R = Reference, & G = Ground electrode]
Hopefully that makes sense and feel free to correct me if I'm wrong!
Source: I'm Cognitive Neuroscience PhD student, & Luck (2005) explains this pretty well.
I don't think anyone thinks abortion is a great thing and every woman should have at least one... which seems to be what you're implying. Abortion is simply the best available option when a child isn't wanted by parents who desire (and can afford) to raise it, or if the fetus is defective in any way.
Take a look at Peter Singer's Practical Ethics, he has a well written chapter on abortion and an even better one on infanticide.
Yeah, this definitely sounds influenced by Malcolm Gladwell's work, from Atul Gawande in The Checklist Manifesto:
> He examines checklists in aviation, construction, and investing, but focuses on medicine, where checklists mandating simple measures like hand washing have dramatically reduced hospital-caused infections and other complications.
From Malcolm Gladwell's Blink:
> A cardiologist named Lee Goldman developed a decision tree that, using only four factors, evaluates the likelihood of heart attacks better than trained cardiologists in the Cook County Hospital emergency room in Chicago
Kandel is a very comprehensive neuroscience textbook with a lot of good figures as well as descriptions of experimental evidence. The most recent version came out just last year, so it is very current.
Purves also contains excellent figures but concepts are delivered on a more basic level, probably better suited for undergraduate/non-research perspective.
Neurobiology with Dr. Xu-Friedman was probably my favorite class, and he is probably my favorite professor. It can be a challenging class, but it's worth it if you enjoy neuroscience.
When I took it, we used Purves - Neuroscience 5th Edition .
The book is definitely needed, as it really helps to reinforce what they lecture on. If you're looking to get ahead before the semester begins, I think he follows the first few chapters tightly. If I recall correctly, he starts with some basic neuroanatomy, and then jumps into electrophysiology (similar to what you did in Bio 213 physiology lab, except in more detail) and receptor kinetics.
If Dr. Medler is also teaching it, she can be somewhat abrasive and difficult, but you can still do well if you go to lecture and pay attention.
Those are really all you'll need; from there you will find things on your own or from professors.
https://www.amazon.com/Rapid-Interpretation-EKGs-Sixth-Dubin/dp/0912912065/ref=mp_s_a_1_1/140-8321072-0767464?ie=UTF8&qid=1524925860&sr=8-1&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_QL65&keywords=dubins+ekg+book&dpPl=1&dpID=51dYWaQomOL&ref=plSrch
This book is the gold standard : Rapid Interpretation of EKG's, Sixth Edition https://www.amazon.com/dp/0912912065/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_TMO6xbXE9W8MB
For simple rhythms just search YouTube. There are a lot of videos that go through the basics.
I recently underwent a similar change, having worked in outpatient orthopedics for 6-ish years (+lots of $$ spent on con-ed including manual therapy certification) and abruptly switching to acute care. My decision was spurred by increasingly high patient volumes (which seems to be a trend in Vegas OP) and an inability to provide what I would consider 1-on-1 patient care in a manner that fit my values. I've been in acute care for about 8 months now and haven't looked back. As a result of this, I do feel like a new graduate at times, but I've been excited to dig into new information and material, while enjoying the pace and exposure to a variety of conditions acute care offers.
Some things I've found useful thus far:
Don't be afraid to ask questions. Most of my fellow co-workers are younger than me, but have more experience in this area. Check your ego at the door.
I've found getting to know the nurses in each unit to be invaluable. Find them prior to seeing your patient, get any further information they may have regarding your patient (outside of your chart review) and discuss with them any pertinent findings of your evaluation.
Chart review! I want to know as much as I can regarding my patient's prior to seeing them. I mostly do evaluations and want to garner as much of a clinical picture as I can including lab values, vital trends, imaging findings / reports, physician notes, nursing notes, surgical reports, pending tests / labs, medications, etc. You can gain a lot of information from the electronic chart.
Vital signs on everyone. This is easier in the ICU where everyone is monitored, but on your ortho and med/surg floors I don't think I can under state this. I've run into countless asymptomatic people who upon assessment have systolic BP > 200, or more recently having a patient who's blood pressure dropped from 85 systolic to 50 systolic following 1 sit<>stand.
Collaboration with your fellow speech, occupational and respiratory therapists. I can be myopic at times, so getting input from findings from your other therapists can be helpful.
Having a good line of communication with your case managers. You are an advocate for your patients and need to have an open line of communication to discuss or challenge d/c recommendations.
Lines. Double check for any lines, tubes or catheters even if nothing stands out. Our electronic chart will tell me what lines are present upon chart review, but it doesn't hurt to double or triple check prior to mobilizing a patient.
Some resources I've found helpful as a new acute PT:
https://physicaltherapyreviewer.wordpress.com/
http://ptthinktank.com/2012/12/18/so-you-think-you-can-walk-acutept/
https://twitter.com/dr_ridge_dpt
https://twitter.com/DrDaleNeedham
www.medbridgeeducation.com ($200/yr with discount code, a number of courses focused on acute care)
http://www.amazon.com/Rapid-Interpretation-EKGs-Sixth-Dubin/dp/0912912065
http://c.ymcdn.com/sites/www.acutept.org/resource/resmgr/imported/labvalues.pdf
It's been a learning process with the transition, but I've been thoroughly enjoying it. Plus, I get the added benefit of seeing anatomy on a deeper level when it comes to wound care. Not to mention, the added benefit when you get your patients who are mechanically ventilated up and moving, while seeing their appreciation that they have for your services / help. Enjoy!
Rapid interpretation of EKG's by Dr. Dale Dubin is excellent. Easy read and a great quick reference. Essentially a dummie's guide to EKG. I took a semester long class in EKG in college and am going through it again in paramedic school. This book is what made it click for me.
http://www.amazon.com/Rapid-Interpretation-EKGs-Sixth-Edition/dp/0912912065/ref=sr_1_sc_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1406594316&amp;sr=8-1-spell&amp;keywords=rapid+interptetation+of+ekg
I recommend Rapid Interpretation of EKG's 6th Edition by Dale Dublin, MD. I bought in when I was in paramedic school and still use it today.
Edit: hopefully I can answer some very basically:
Overall, remember you aren't measuring the conducting fibers with EKG, you are measuring the electrical activity of the myocytes. I think this may be a major sticking point for you - causing some confusion.
There is good discussion (I had a lot of same issues you are having), but as an aside I REALLY recommend you take a look Dubin's Rapid Interpretation (I may have a pdf if you don't have access). My EKG lectures made no sense but I read through the relevant chapter there and felt like I everything made so much more intuitive sense.
http://www.amazon.com/Rapid-Interpretation-EKGs-Sixth-Dubin/dp/0912912065/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1417975470&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=dubin+rapid+interpretation+of+ekg
The Dubin book is the best! My copy is orange and it'll tell you everything you need to know about EKGs for tests :)
http://www.amazon.com/Rapid-Interpretation-EKGs-Sixth-Edition/dp/0912912065
http://www.amazon.com/Rapid-Interpretation-EKGs-Sixth-Edition/dp/0912912065
12 years after academy and I still read mine from time to time.
Also, have confidence. =)
I haven't gotten a chance to do more than skim, but I like what I've read of this book so far.
I would avoid test-prep books then-- those tend to skim the surface of things like pathophys and always seem to be more focused on important facts and associations, etc., and not on the science.
Sadly there is no quick answer for getting better at pathophys (it takes 2 years to cover the basics in med school). Working in an ED you don't have massive amounts of time to read either. As a resident I find myself wanting to review stuff all the time but am pretty busy too, so with that in mind, my recommendations would be:
-UpToDate/Dynamed/Medscape/etc. usually have nice sections in their articles on the pathophysiology of various conditions. The temptation is to skip to the "diagnosis" or "management" sections but there is usually some good stuff in those articles that you can read on the fly
-For critical illness and general physiology, The ICU Book is great and not too dry a read. If you want much more in depth stuff on medical conditions, Harrison's Internal Medicine is a great resource but reads like a phonebook sometimes. If you care about the microscopic level, Robbins & Cotran is basically all the pathology for the non-pathologist you will ever need- can also be a bit dry at times too.
-Look up the mechanism of action of meds you don't know about (Micromedex smart phone app is great for that)
-When you consult someone because you are unsure about something, ask them about what is going on (subspecialists are usually not shy about dropping knowledge if you ask for it); it may also help prevent future un-needed consults which they appreciate
Hope this helps.
If you're looking for a good book, I recommend Marino's The ICU Book 4th Edition. It's geared towards medical students and residents, but I think it would be useful for anyone who is somewhat new to critical care. And the price seems high at first glance, but compared to other recently published texts containing the same info, it's pretty reasonable.
It reads quite smoothly and was published this past October. You certainly won't retain everything you read in the book, but from the start you'll recall where in the book you read something and can refer back.
Also, if you're looking for something cheaper that involves less reading. The Society of Critical Care Medicine offers a self-paced online introductory course called Resident ICU. It is a collection of lectures/ power points which discuss the fundamental principles of critical care. Again, it is designed for physicians/ new residents, but having a solid understanding of your patient's condition is important for critical care nurses and this will only help. Oh, and the course only costs $25.
I know more than just these two, but I can't think of anything else at the moment. Hope this helps!
https://www.amazon.com/Learning-Radiology-Recognizing-Basics-3e/dp/0323328075/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1510081056&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=radiology+books
and this if you like the style of Dubin's EKG book for chest x-rays:
https://www.amazon.com/Felsons-Principles-Roentgenology-Programmed-Goodman/dp/1455774839/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1510081108&amp;sr=1-2&amp;keywords=chest+roentgenology#reader_1455774839
Probably the best is Felsons https://www.amazon.com/Felsons-Principles-Roentgenology-Programmed-Goodman/dp/1455774839/ref=pd_lpo_sbs_14_img_0?_encoding=UTF8&amp;psc=1&amp;refRID=JDCA2381R8J6EBY4BATW
Felson's Principles of Chest Roentgenology
Simple, clear, concise. Will teach you to understand how pathology presents on x-rays.
The Successful Match has some good stuff. Maybe see if you can borrow one from a friend or Amazon prime that shiz.
I wouldn't go through and do the exams over again. It doesn't serve much purpose because you've already seen the questions and know the correct answers somewhere down in your brain.
I would just find some more practice problems to do and do one last in-depth look at the material. I got sick of studying and the last two weeks before the exam, I did like 5-6 passages a dayfrom Exam Krackers VR 101 and looked through a couple of questions and sections in the Berkeley Review (gen chem and physics) and the EK Bio book. I told myself I was going to take all of the AAMC tests, but only ended up taking two (35 and 32) and ended up scoring quite well on the real thing.
If I may add my own recommendations to the list as well:
At the risk of repeating myself ad nauseam in this thread allow me to suggest "Chasing the Scream" by Johann Hari. It is pretty much regarded as the source regarding this topic.
Chasing the Scream by Johann Hari and In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts by Gabor Mate are my suggestions.
It would be a start, but if we really want to reduce deaths and crime, we should be supplying addicts with safe opioids.
I was somewhat impresses that the NS report didn't contain a bunch of 'more enforcement' items though. I guess that's setting the bar pretty low, but there's been a lot of talk in different levels of government on attempting to reduce the supply of opioids, which will just increase costs (and therefore related crime), and increase potency (no one smuggled beer during prohibition).
If anyone would like an interesting read on the topic, I recommend:
Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs
A printed version just for you: Chasing the Scream.
"Most dangerous" might or might not have been a slight exaggeration on my part, but not much. As for how things change when a substance is legalized, Chasing the Scream will tell you all about how and why use of heroin and other drugs has plummeted since becoming legal in Portugal.
"The Successful Match" goes through all of this by specialty plus just general app info.
https://www.amazon.com/Successful-Match-2017-Success-Residency/dp/1937978079
No, it's the Examkrackers 101 Verbal reasoning passages.
http://www.amazon.com/Examkrackers-Passages-MCAT-Verbal-Reasoning/dp/1893858553/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1373476316&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=ek+101+verbal
You should read the book "Chasing the Scream". It's makes a very very good argument against prohibition. You won't look at the drug problem the same again.
https://www.amazon.com/Chasing-Scream-First-Last-Drugs/dp/1620408910
> I know you said you have a book or something - PM me about that, I'm interested!
I've sent you a PM about the book. Glad to hear you're interested!
> What about this theory that floats around on the internet and that celebrities like Joe Rogan talk about that the pineal gland produces DMT, especially during sleep.
There is some evidence of DMT production in the pineal gland, but it's very scant at this stage. One study, last year (2013), showed trace amounts of DMT in the pineal glands of rats. This could mean that DMT is produced there, or somewhere else in the body and then stored/used there; however the amounts were far too limited to have any kind of psychedelic effect.
It's not extremely surprising, as DMT is chemically quite similar to the likes of serotonin and melatonin, so for it to form naturally in the brain isn't a huge jump biochemically speaking... it's also however not terribly interesting or useful until we know more about how much, when, why, and so on.
It could also however simply have been a freak occurrence. I'd like to see more studies being done to confirm it - especially with multiple species and animals of different ages (which may make a very large difference as well given the possible relationship between the pineal gland and the parietal eye that I mentioned).
> How did you learn as much as you know specifically about LSD?
It helps being old ;)
More seriously - I've simply read a lot and studied a lot with a critical mind. I'm a software developer professionally, but I've spent around 15 years of my free time learning and researching psychedelics and associated fields. I have no formal training, but I read university level textbooks on neuroscience, biochemistry, pharmacology and so on for fun.
Mostly, I'm just the kind of person that's both passionately curious about the world as well as being the kind of person that likes to critically analyse things. This helps to steer away from the mystical side of things (all very interesting, but lacking in anything even remotely similar to evidence) and keep me searching in more productive lines of enquiry.
> Any other books or references you'd be willing to share?
Hmmm... quite a lot.
"LSD" by Otto Snow is a good general purpose LSD book, with pretty detailed synthesis information that helps you understand the chemistry even if you're not actually planning on synthesising it yourself.
I'm not sure of your current level of skill, but if you need an intro, or refresher in to the basics of the right kind of chemistry, then Organic Chemistry I for Dummies is a great book according to my wife (who went from "no knowledge" to "able to at least understand what I'm talking about" just from this book).
For a "step-up" from there and getting to looking at the brain specifically, I'd start with (and continually go back to) Molecular Neuropharmacology: A Foundation for Clinical Neuroscience.
Aside from that, every research paper you can find dealing with related material. There's some good review papers as well for "summing up" a lot of others. One I really liked was "The Pharmacology of Lysergic Acid Diethylamide: A Review" by Passie et al.
I also found some online courses to be really good. I recently did "Drugs and the Brain" on Coursera; it was definitely a good refresher for me, and would be excellent for anyone with a basic grounding but wanting to learn more in general. There's another on Coursera called "Medical Neuroscience", which I unfortunately missed, but will catch the next time around; and one coming up really soon titled "Understanding the Brain: The Neurobiology of Everyday Life" which I'll be doing but expect to be a somewhat simpler course than the others (I'll take it anyway - re-covering basics is always good because you do find things you've managed to miss no matter how long you've been learning).
Edit: One additional thing I should have mentioned... here on reddit, check out /r/drugnerds and maybe also /r/rationalpsychonaut
OP this is what you want I promise you.
http://www.amazon.com/Molecular-Neuropharmacology-Foundation-Clinical-Neuroscience/dp/0071481273?tag=coursera-course83-20
This book is not too bad. Has a profile for each specialty, as well as specific advice. I picked up the old version cheap a while ago.
The AAMC Careers in Medicine page is actually pretty good too. You have to sign up and log in to see the material, but they go through lots of stats. A new version of Charting Outcomes from the Match will likely be published by the NRMP/AAMC this year or next, and will have valuable data regarding each specialty's competitiveness.
But as far as "playing the game" goes, it's a much simpler game than the med school admissions process was. You don't have to have extensive lists of extracurriculars, and a lot of it boils down to a few big things you need to do.
Those are really the biggest things, and it applies to virtually every specialty. The more competitive a specialty is, the more you will need to excel in each of those areas.
Oxford handbook of clinical specialities
And the Oxford handbook of Clinical medicine are great quick reference guides.
However the best advice given to me was know you're anatomy, and its helped so far!
> I would suggest that all problems can (at least theoretically) be philosophised away. Problems only exist because ideals exist. And ideals can be changed or discarded.
Exactly, that's what I wanted to say: for ex., the asteroid impacting earth is only a "real" problem because we all just happen to share the same unstated philosophical assumption that "living is better than dying". But one could philosphically argue precisely the opposite: that living is inherently harmful and that mass extinction would be a blessing, not a catastrophe. There's at least one philosophical essay, that I know of, which takes this view (I haven't read it, though): Better Never to Have Been, by David Benatar. Has anyone read it around here, by any chance?
I'm not going to be able to give this argument the clarity it deserves, but I will say just because I lack clarity does not mean that my argument is invalid. I based it off of my memory of this book https://www.amazon.com/Better-Never-Have-Been-Existence/dp/0199549265 that I would suggest to everyone that wants a child. This is just a book, not something that will automatically change your mind or anything, but it changed mine along with Albert Camus' work. I agree with the idea that we should try to enjoy the time we have, but don't bring someone else into it. Enjoy yourself while causing others as little suffering as possible
I haven't read it, but a recent book on this subject is Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming into Existence by David Benatar.
Notre Dame Philosophical Review has a review of it here.
Better Never to Have Been by David Benatar
https://www.amazon.com/Better-Never-Have-Been-Existence/dp/0199549265
The strongest influence on anti-natalism in modern times is a book published in 2006, written by a Cape Town professor of philosophy David Benatar. He explicitly names his philosophy as antinatalism. Its title is:
Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming into Existence: https://www.amazon.com/Better-Never-Have-Been-Existence/dp/0199549265
I think the (difficult) discussion about fetal sentience is mostly besides the point. Even if one is to subscribe to sentience as a sufficient criterion for basic rights’ attribution, most meaningful theories would still maintain, that rights can be overridden by other rights in certain circumstances, particularly if one rights-holder poses a threat to another. Arguably the situation of pregnancy could be understood as such a scenario thus rendering abortions per se as permissible -- even if fetuses had full basic rights qua sentience.
As of the "right to die"-discussions, I never really got the point of them. There might be some obligations that one has towards their community, that are frustrated if someone commits (assisted) suicide, but how well could one live up to these obligations anyways, if one has formed an honest and reflected wish to die?
And I think Singer’s not helpful to further a discussion about rights, because he’s not really interested in rights.
Also one of the more neglected questions, about reproductive ethics is the one raised by David Benatar: Couldn’t coming into existence be a harm to the one who does? You might think this is true, if and only if misanthropy is true, but his argument for the propostion that it’s better never to have been is pretty consistent with simultaneously asserting that most human life is actually worth living.
You might find this book interesting: https://www.amazon.ca/Better-Never-Have-Been-Existence/dp/0199549265
Un bouquin anti-nataliste qui est pas trop mal si t'as le courage. Rien que le titre donne bien le ton.
It is only natural for researchers with vested interests in different levels of analysis - in this case, more abstract computational models that ignore the molecular and subcellular levels of detail, even the cellular level entirely (with point process neuronal models, for example) - to be opposed to so much funding going into the HBP, which inherently is geared towards simulating even the smallest functionally relevant level of analysis (viz., the molecular). This open letter is a window into the general phenomenon of competing visions and paradigms, only amplified because the stakes are so much higher (1.2 Bn Euro higher, to be exact).
On the one hand, I agree that more independent review would be helpful in order to stop some of the more un-scientific moves that the HBP has been taking in terms of letting go of people who do not "toe the line", as outlined here. On the other hand, there would be a downside to independent review as well, in that ideological differences from the reviewers may unnecessarily stifle the project. This is a problem with the reviewing process in most journals, in fact, so in that sense, nothing new there.
From my point of view, I believe that the framing of this debate in terms of the amount of money being "only invested in one person's vision" is misleading and avoids the bigger picture. The fact remains that we do have too much neuroscientific data, and the research & funding structures are geared so as to encourage little bite-sized bits of research that demonstrate some effect of one molecule, or modulation of a synapse, or any similar isolated aspect of the nervous system - i.e., towards "quick returns". True, newer tools like optogenetics are allowing for larger-scale investigations into the nuances of function of entire circuits, but even then, the brain is complex enough that the story of any individual opto paper is inherently narrow and limited. We do need to integrate all of this data, and what better way than to throw it all into one big computational simulation that doubles up as a data repository?
The HBP project aims to be a "service provider" as discussed in the BBC article linked to above. Even in computational neuroscience, where there is fierce debate as to appropriate levels of analysis of study and therefore understanding of brain function - there is no debate as to the fact that neurons do operate on a molecular level. This huge diversity of neurotransmitters, ion channels, cell types, even glial cells (groan, cries almost every neuroscientist who realizes that we can't continue to ignore them) has evolved for a reason, and each one has shown to have some kind of functionally relevant role to a neuron, circuit, and therefore behaviour. So whatever abstract models we use in our pet studies, must necessarily bottom out at the lowest level of detail in order to be relevant to understanding of the actual brain. Otherwise, we are no better than armchair philosophers trying to understand how the brain works. You need to examine the actual product of evolution, the actual tissue itself - the very nuts and bolts - and understand it at that level.
No, the HBP will never be complete, and no, it will probably be grossly incorrect in many, many ways - because important facts about the brain are not known and remain to be discovered. That shouldn't stop us from starting somewhere. As Markram says, sure, we can invest all this money into the usual ecosystem of research. But that will ultimately generate another few hundred isolated and entirely independent papers with more data, but no more integrated understanding of the brain.
The bottom line is that what is at stake is the question of how best to continue doing neuroscience work. Henry Markram believes (as do many others, let's not forget that - it's not just a "single quirky guy's vision") that some kind of integrated approach that starts to put it all together is needed at some point. It won't be perfect, but we have enough data as it is that it is needed now - in fact, it was needed yesterday. Certainly, it won't even provide all the answers, and it's not meant to. For instance, the criticism of the HBP replicating the entire brain and still not providing any answer about its function is correct in a way. It is indeed silly to think that when the "switch is turned on", the simulation will exhibit (rat) cognition. We need input from the environment, not just to provide data but also to entrain the brain and calibrate its endogenously generated rhythms - just think of the unravelling of the mind that occurs when humans are subjected to sensory deprivation. (For a fuller treatment on this issue of the environment serving to entrain or calibrate the brain, see Buzsáki's excellent treatise, Rhythms of the Brain).
What the HBP will provide, however, is a repository for integrating the swathes of data we already have, and a framework for testing any ideas of the brain. No, it will never be complete, but it is badly overdue, and thoughts of continuing to live without an integrating framework that can be tested, prodded, and drawn upon - instead continuing each researcher's narrow pet projects in isolation from one another - is as past folly as it would be to pretend to be studying and understanding genetics without having the entire genome sequenced.
In that sense, the HBP can only help in any and all endeavours in understanding the brain by providing that baseline model with as much cellular and molecular detail incorporated as possible, because any higher levels of analysis will ultimately have to interface with it (or at least with the level of detail the HBP is aiming to capture) in order to show ultimate relevance in terms of the brain. The brain, as a biological system, is inherently different in nature than the phenomena that many computational neuroscientists (coming as they do, mostly from physics and engineering backgrounds) are comfortable dealing with - which is in the framework of physical systems that can be described with a handful of equations that summarize the overall complexity at hand. The brain, sadly, is not such a system and is not amenable to "spherical cow" levels of analysis. That's not to say that it cannot be done, and that no fruitful results will emerge from such studies. On the contrary, we can learn many useful facts about the brain by building and analyzing simplified models. It's just that inherently, any such endeavours will miss the mark in important ways. The "answer", then, is to stop thinking in terms of a zero-sum game (which is the attitude that signatories of this open letter seem to be coming from) and instead consider it as a joint project or venture. Indeed, the more abstract levels of analysis have been too much in the limelight for many years, without paying any dividends. The connectionist paradigm, started in the 80s, hasn't given us any concrete and large-scale understanding of the brain, and has unfortunately (for our knowledge of the brain but not for commercial ventures) and quietly devolved into machine learning tricks for learning Netflix user preferences, etc.
In fact, such an approach that the HBP is embarking on, is badly overdue, and vastly underrepresented. It's not a popular approach because it accepts the messiness of the brain and doesn't shirk away from it by abstracting it away. Sure, it's a double-edged sword, in that by opening the Pandora's box of the molecular level, you risk missing out on what we do not yet know, but that is part and parcel of any scientific approach. Thus, kudos to the HBP project and Henry Markram for managing to get this kind of project off the ground.
I believe it will only help further our understanding of the brain in an integrated way that can evolve over time and with contribution from other levels of analysis. Those who are opposed to it, in my opinion, are doing so unfortunately primarily on personal and ideological grounds -- i.e., on ultimately selfish and jealous grounds -- than on valid scientific rebuttals.
Sadly, I lack Markram's eloquence and diplomacy in addressing the critics, but sometimes you have to grab the bull by the horns and address the real issue rather than skirt around it and be afraid to step on eggshells (meaning other people's egos).
-- PhD candidate in computational neuroscience, whose own biases have been amply revealed, he hopes.
Methodology-wise, Steve Luck has a really nice, clear introductory text to ERP techniques.
Yes, absolutely. http://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Event-Related-Potential-Technique-Neuroscience/dp/0262621967
Also this:
Stephen Luck's book
For medical history, the Morbid Anatomy Anthology has several books that helped fill the void The Knick left. They have Kindle editions but they're useless because they scanned the pages of the hardcover books so the text is tiny and unreadable. Worth getting the hardcovers; the illustrations are gorgeous. I really liked:
Crucial Interventions
The Anatomical Venus: Wax, God, Death & the Ecstatic
I haven't read this book but it's a nice hardcover with beautiful historical illustrations and is not very expensive. I doubt it's comprehensive / definitive but you'll love flipping through it and it'll look great on your bookshelf:
https://www.amazon.com/Crucial-Interventions-Illustrated-Principles-Nineteenth-Century/dp/0500518106?ie=UTF8&amp;*Version*=1&amp;*entries*=0
Another area I've become interested in (in my own field of expertise, not surgery) is actually buying historical texts. Find a specialty used book store in your city and browse through their medical/scientific books. Even a standard (med school-level) text from 70 years ago is fascinating when understood in the context of what has come since. And the <100 year-old books are not expensive (<$100).
abebooks.com is full of cheap old used (and expensive old used) textbooks from many countries and areas of medicine.
When I am thinking about a disease that I encounter in my practice frequently (ex. Hodgkin disease), sometimes it's fun to dip into one of my old textbooks and read something like "Hodgkin's disease is a disease of the hematopoietic organs [...] It is invariably fatal. Whether it is neoplastic or inflammatory in nature remains a matter of dispute." (Boyd, 1947).
These old textbooks are very readable. That edition of Boyd's pathology belonged to my grandfather. Every single page of it is fascinating.
The new Stephen King book, a book full of antique surgical illustations, a book about creepy asylum treatments back in the early 20th century, and some money toward a new laptop. :)
He wrote a great (and controversial) book on utilitarian approaches to ethics:
http://www.amazon.com/Practical-Ethics-Peter-Singer/dp/052143971X
Singer addresses this in his book Practical Ethics. First, most mammals and some birds are not only sentient as well as self-aware. Thus, they can have "goals" for the future (for example, some mammals have life-long partners, and killing them would basically frustrate their preference of always being with them), and thus it becomes wrong to take those from them.
But fishes and bugs are not self-aware, and so as long as we keep the overall "quantity" of happiness, it is acceptable. That means tough, that for each being killed, we need a new one to appear.
If you want to spend some money, https://www.amazon.com/Neuroscience-Fifth-Dale-Purves/dp/0878936955/ref=mt_hardcover?_encoding=UTF8&amp;me= is a perfect resource. This was our textbook for neurobio in college and I still find myself referencing it. It's possible you could find the PDF somewhere online, I haven't looked. If you have a little background in cell bio, this would be a great place to start learning.
Beyond that, I agree with the suggestions of /u/Hypercuboid and /u/Noobsessed.
If you are getting information off of forums (about pathways, interactions, etc.), make sure you do your own research, ask for or check sources, and try to understand the mechanisms. Wikipedia rabbit holes can sometimes help with this in the beginning, and can provide you with reliable sources/resources to follow up on. Keep in mind that the answers are almost always not as simple as people portray them. Many MOAs are not fully understood, especially with nootropics. That's why some refer to these substances as RCs and us as guinea pigs; because, in large part, that is true.
My school typically recommends Bear's textbook for systems-level information and Purves' Neuroscience for cellular stuff. I prefer Purves because it actually covers both subjects and it goes more in-depth on the molecular topics!
Here is the mobile version of your link
we use this book in my neurobiology class and i like it.. covers a lot on how neurons do their thing
also http://www.amazon.com/Neuroscience-Fourth-Edition-Dale-Purves/dp/0878936971 is a link to the textbook used. I will not post a link to a pdf of that version (which i cannot actually find) but there is a third edition pdf readily accessible that looks like a different chapter order.
To start off with, I'd suggest
Dale Dubin's Rapid Interpreation of EKGs
And this article on theEmtSpot
https://www.amazon.com/Rapid-Interpretation-EKGs-Sixth-Dubin/dp/0912912065/ref=mp_s_a_1_3?keywords=ekg+interpretation+book&amp;qid=1568959702&amp;s=gateway&amp;sprefix=ekg+int&amp;sr=8-3
A "BART" (Basic Arrhythmia Recognition Training) course is not common in EMS fields(at least in my area). I've seen a couple in-hospital so "transfer staff" can move patients between floors without escorts.
In EMS its kinda 'black and white' either you 'need to know' or 'don't need to know' ECG rhythms.
As for the class, it's an entry level class so they shouldn't require any prep but check out "life in the fast lane" link below if you want to explore more.
https://lifeinthefastlane.com/ecg-library/
If you wanna go real deep, check out the Dale Dubin book.
https://www.amazon.com/Rapid-Interpretation-EKGs-Sixth-Dubin/dp/0912912065
If I may ask, whats your reason for taking this class?
Rapid Interpretation of EKG's: Dr. Dubin's Classic, Simplified Methodology for Understanding EKG's https://www.amazon.ca/dp/0912912065/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_ncd6Cb75KA2DE
This is the classic introduction to EKG interpretation:
https://www.amazon.com/Rapid-Interpretation-EKGs-Sixth-Dubin/dp/0912912065/
I think Learn Rhythm adult is a good way to get started, but certainly pick up an introduction to EKG type book. People love Dale Dubin's EKG book (albeit he has a pretty sketchy background...) so you'll find a lot of people referring it.
If I recall though the Learn: Rhythm Adult course only covers 3-lead EKGs, and for a tech position you do want to learn a bit about 12 leads. The Physio Control 12 Lead made Easy program was fairly decent if I remember correctly.
Get yourself this book, too. It's helped me a great deal but I still get MDs to interpret EKGs for me.
http://www.amazon.com/Rapid-Interpretation-EKGs-Sixth-Edition/dp/0912912065
Can't go wrong with this book.
I've got two sites...
The best site to tell you what criteria you need for each rhythm is probably ECGpedia.
The next site I would recommend is really just a compilation of all the best ECG websites on the internet...Life in the Fast Lane ECG references
Also, some may disagree, but I think Rapid Interpretation of ECGs by Dale Dubin is the perfect book to start with.
Rapid EKG Interpretation. Easy read and it will help you so much. It's got pictures in every page so it's perfect for us slow people.
Rapid Interpretation of EKG's, Sixth Edition https://www.amazon.com/dp/0912912065/ref=cm_sw_r_awd_IO7LwbFARMW0Z
I have quite a few suggestions.
Specifically for nurses:
The following books are more for med students and MD's but I believe as nurses we need to understand rationales behind what MD's do, so these are good references:
Miscellaneous books:
Also consider subscribing to some journals. I'm subscribed to a few of them.
I'm an ER medicine nerd, so I love reading this stuff but by no means do you need to have all these books. I just enjoy learning as much as I can about EM.
ask a local hospital if you can shadow an ICU RT for a day or two, i work with RT's all the time and have learned loads about vents.
Also this book is really helpful at least for basics "https://www.amazon.com/Ventilator-Book-William-Owens-MD/dp/098529650X"
The Ventilator Book is a solid introduction and is readily accessible to 3rd and 4th year med students.
Hang in there.
I'm not a doctor, just a random stranger on the internet, but I am familiar with some of the symptoms you describe, and I do feel obligated to share a piece of information that may or may not be useful to you.
There is an illness called "Mast Cell Activation Syndrome", which has not been recognized until very recently, though it has probably existed for at least a century, if not longer. Symptoms can be extremely diverse, but are commonly of inflammatory nature. The underlyiing cause is inappropriate activation of mast cells (a type of immune cell present in virtually every organ). Common symptoms include rash, gastrointestinal problems, but also "weird" reactions to medications, supplements or foods. It can also produce neuropsychatric symptoms like generalized anxiety or emotional liability ([source][3]). Treatment is not easy, but usually includes medication that inhibits mast cell mediators, like H1 antagonists (often used for "hay fever") or H2 antagonists (often used for reflux). Low dose benzodiazepines have also been reported to work. Also worth noting is that some classes of medication are knowns to interfere with the body's process for disposing of mast cell mediatiors, in particular [MAO-inhibitors][4], which includes some antidepressants.
For more information on this disease, I highly recommend an [overview article by LB Afrin and GJ Molderings][1], and even more highly recommend [Dr. Afrin's book][2], which collects many case reports.
[1]: http://www.wjgnet.com/2218-6204/full/v3/i1/1.htm
[2]: http://www.amazon.com/Never-Bet-Against-Occam-Activation/dp/0997319615
[3]: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26162709
[4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monoamine_oxidase_inhibitor
Sadly, recognition among currently existing doctors is, ... uh, ... not up to par yet.
Anyway, I just wanted to throw this out here, to make sure that all information is on the table.
I was diagnosed and treated by Dr. Afrin after some of my other doctors learned of and began to suspect MCAS.
Regarding where to start, Afrin would be an excellent choice, but I hear he has a waiting list over a year long for new patients. I have some physicians in my family, and most of the diagnosis-searching was done by them, I was not very involved with the process. My primary symptoms are depression and severe fatigue (though the two can become difficult to separate), and during this time (~1-2 years ago) I was mostly too exhausted to do anything other than lay in bed 24 hours a day listening to audiobooks and sometimes watching netflix when I had the energy. I can try to find out about other doctors that might be able to diagnose it.
The price I see on amazon is $14.99 for the kindle version, so either I'm out of touch with the reality of book prices or it's being sold expensively elsewhere.
If you can't afford it, I'd advise trying to find somewhere to pirate it from, the purpose of the book is to spread awareness of MCAS, profit is probably a secondary objective.
Anywayway I hope what I've written makes sense, I took a bunch of supposedly non-psycoactive industrial hemp extract a while ago from what has just turned out to be one of those less-than-reputable online vendors I talked about in another comment because I ran out of CBD from my usual source today and needed these until I could get some more and they came on while i was writing this and I am now high as fuck. I'll edit my top level comment tomorrow with some additional information and try to get back to everyone over the next few days (my fatigue is better but far from gone, can't say how long this will take), I didn't expect this much of a response!
Hey u/excogito_ergo_sum, you should definitely look into mast cell activation syndrome based on symptoms and what meds have helped you. I highly, HIGHLY recommend reading this book about MCAS. Yes, it's $20 and not available in most libraries, but it is SERIOUSLY life changing. Best book I have read since I've been sick because it explains so. many. things. about mysterious symptoms and why the medications you're on are helping. Quite specifically, H1/H2 receptors are what Dr. Afrin (the author of the book and leading expert on mast cell activation syndrome) uses first in treatment - you are already on Zyrtec which is one of them. Next step is hydroxyzine, which you are already also on.
I like these programmed texts too and know of two:
Sidman's Neuroanatomy: A Programmed Learning Tool
https://www.amazon.com/Sidmans-Neuroanatomy-Programmed-Learning-Lippincott/dp/0781765684
Felson's Principles of Chest Roentgenology, A Programmed Text, 4e
https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1455774839
This is a great list so far, and I'd love to see it added to the sidebar.
I'd suggest adding "Neuroethics" by Martha J Farah under "Other". It gives an interesting perspective on the influence of neuroscience on law and society.
http://www.amazon.com/Neuroethics-Introduction-Readings-Basic-Bioethics/dp/0262514605
"The Human Brain in Photographs and Diagrams" is good for anyone interested in neuroanatomy. I've only used the 3rd edition- there is an updated edition, but I can't speak to how useful it is.
http://www.amazon.com/Human-Brain-Photographs-Diagrams-CD-ROM/dp/0323045731/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1411223019&amp;sr=1-2&amp;keywords=the+human+brain+in+photographs+and+diagrams
"Structure of the Human Brain" is a very comprehensive section-by-section atlas of the brain.
http://www.amazon.com/Structure-Human-Brain-Photographic-Atlas/dp/019504357X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1411223434&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=structure+of+the+human+brain+a+photographic+atlas
"Molecular Neuropharmacology" is a good advanced text for anyone interested in drug development.
http://www.amazon.com/Molecular-Neuropharmacology-Foundation-Clinical-Neuroscience/dp/0071481273/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1411223180&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=molecular+neuropharmacology
I've mentioned these because they seem to fill gaps that are currently in the library. If anybody knows of better anatomical texts, though, I'd be interested to know about them!
I love the Oxford Handbook of Clinical Medicine!
I love to type during lectures, rather than writing with a pen (so slow, and printing, pens and paper are expensive!), so either a tablet with an external keyboard, or a laptop would be important for me, at least. Maybe you find you remember lecture notes more easily if you write them on paper, and some people don't like studying from a computer screen. However, internet access is important anyway, so even if you just have a basic laptop at home it will come in very useful. I use a Lenovo G510, which I really like, but that's more expensive than you need to pay.
A smartphone is also very important for me (calendar, timetable, e-mail, reminders, drug databases, etc. always available). I use a Sony Xperia S (had it for nearly 3 years, no signs of dying yet!)
First Aid for the USMLE (when it comes to it)
These two might be more useful in clinical years, but these are essential for me:
Also,
You don't need to purchase a gym membership, but go for a damn jog!! I find it very easy to be completely sedentary around exams, and it's bad! Yeah. Jogging and regular bedtime (and waking up time) make me wayyy more productive. It makes it easier if you have a great breakfast in mind ;)
You don't need to buy a phenomenal amount, you don't need to buy every book that's recommended or anything, but I think a laptop and a mid-range smartphone (or better) will allow you to study almost everything.
For medicine, I'd vote for the Oxford Handbook of Clinical Medicine, or Kumar and Clarke - depending on what you're trying to achieve by getting this information
No cheese and onion?
Someone wrote a book on that very idea.
Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming into Existence
http://www.amazon.com/Better-Never-Have-Been-Existence/dp/0199296421
Someone asked me about abortions the other day. My response was:
the case of abortion is inherently different to the case of eating meat, in that in the case of eating meat it is the life of the animal at stake, whereas in the case of abortion we have two bodies & lives to consider - that of the mother and that of the embryo/infant. Still, as with all demographics, it is a contentious issue amongst vegans.
I am pro-choice for a number of reasons, including ones that are entirely consistent with my reasons for being vegan - environmental & human health reasons for starters, but also re. better to never exist than to live a life of suffering.
At the same time, I would be against people falling pregnant and having abortions for personal kicks, or e.g. to eat it for healthier looking skin or something like that... and of course, prevention is always better than cure...
>(This could be entirely different but) she mentioned the idea of concluding life isn't worth it because the harms and atrocities it brings outweigh the good.
It is entirely different, but there are two names to look up related to that: Arthur Schopenhauer and David Benatar. Benatar is much more contemporary, here's a link to his book.
Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming into Existence.
Basically makes the argument that life is a poor form of existence and we are done great harm by being born. I'm dying to read the whole thing (only seen a few excerpts), and it's weirdly appropriate considering it's your berfday (have a happy one, by the way, dude).
>From a purely rational perspective, existence is all that you really have. A mind that can perceive suffering is still a mind, and infinitely more valuable than a rock. It would definitely be irrational for me to choose to simply stop existing.
If you actually think that it would be worth it to spend all eternity having a power drill driven into your skull simply so that you could exist, we have nothing more to discuss. Your view of rationality, or existence, or something is apparently so diametrically opposed to mine that we would simply be talking past each other. We'll have to agree to disagree.
By the way, you should check out antinatalism, particularly David Benatar's book Better Never to Have Been. It would probably make your head explode.
>So ethically, we could abort every foetus on the grounds that they would have no frame of reference to object to it? It would certainly ensure nobody had to suffer.
That makes sense to me.
http://www.amazon.com/Better-Never-Have-Been-Existence/dp/0199549265
>Nobody's saying "we need more abortions! Abortions are great!"
Well actually…
This would just reinforce the idea that some people shouldn't be allowed to have kids.
http://www.amazon.com/Better-Never-Have-Been-Existence/dp/0199549265
If you haven't already read it,
'Better Never to Have Been' by David Benatar,
is a very thought provoking book on the subject.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Better-Never-Have-Been-Existence/dp/0199549265
> your determination to catapult this question I had into a debate … Instead of hopping on to assume the worst about mothers who may have a question to ask another
I don't want to catapult this into a debate. I was just interested in the answer to my question. And I don't know why you think I assume the worst, far from it. I'm just wondering why you'd not be interested in a dad's perspective on this question. I don't think it's similar to asking about "how come I have erectile dysfunction?" - and even so, there are plenty of female sexologists that have a 100x better answer than any random dude.
> I do feel asking other mothers about their experiences was warranted due to the hormonal aspects involved
Thanks, I can get that, I guess that could make it more likely for women/moms while men/dads can have the same experience. And...you know, that answer was basically all I was wondering about. Other people have tried to turn this into a debate.
Have you heard of David Benatar's "Better Never to Have Been: The Harm Of Coming Into Existence", I also found it after the fact. Perhaps you might find that interesting.
Believe it or not, there is a fairly well-defended philosophical thesis somewhat similar to your defense of anti-natalism, although the position it takes is possibly even more extreme.
The short version is: Failing to bring a person into existence means that they do not experience certain benefits, but a person who is not brought into existence cannot be said to be deprived of such benefits. However, a person who is brought into existence experiences serious harms that otherwise would not have befallen them at all. Thus, even if beneficial experiences outweigh harmful ones in the end (as you concede they might), the harm incurred in bringing someone into existence is always greater.
The name of the book is Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming into Existence by David Benatar.
edit, since I've apparently violated rule 1: Why would consent be important? In our society, we regularly entrust legal guardians with the power to give consent on behalf of family members or loved ones who cannot legally consent.
David Benatar is pretty well known for explicitly arguing that having children is unethical (see his *Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming into Existence)
Peter Singer is phenomenal for his breadth of topics, he does discuss the ethics of overpopulation and consumption fairly regularly (see this little speech or his book The Life You Can Save: How to Do Your Part to End World Poverty).
Other than that, as TychoCelchuuu suggests, the SEP is a good place to start.
First, join VHEMT (wiki because website is down) and then read this book.
Arguably
A book you might be interested in: Better to Never Have Been
I read Better Never to Have Been (which is not pro-suicide but rather anti-natal, but comes across as bleak if you haven't encountered the argument before) and immediately afterward picked up Dawkins' Unweaving the Rainbow. It was the perfect emotional counterpoint, if not a perfect logical one (to Benatar's argument at least).
David Benetar would argue the exact opposite and makes a very thorough case for it (from a materialist world viewpoint).
If you want to research the different stances yourself, you can look up anti-natalism in general. Personally, I subscribe to David Benatar's idea (taken from summary of this [book] (http://smile.amazon.com/Better-Never-Have-Been-Existence/dp/0199549265/ref=smi_ge_rl_btns4_setch?_encoding=UTF8&amp;%252AVersion%252A=1&amp;%252Aentries%252A=0&amp;%3Fie=UTF8&amp;pldnNew=1)):
>David Benatar argues that coming into existence is always a serious harm. Although the good things in one's life make one's life go better than it otherwise would have gone, one could not have been deprived by their absence if one had not existed. Those who never exist cannot be deprived.
On existence:
One of the premisses for Harris' argument is that existence is preferable to non-existence. The opposite view, that non-existence is preferable in all cases (even though this seems counter intuitive at first glance) is debated at great length in philosophy.
In David Benatar's book Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming into Existence, for instance, he argues that coming into existence is always a serious harm, regardless of the feelings of the existing being once brought into existence. A consequence of this view, is that death in itself is a "positive state" compared to existence.
From Amazon reviews:
> His argument rests on an intuitive asymmetry between the 'good' that is the 'absence of pain', and the 'not bad(ness)' (or neutralness) that is the 'absence of pleasure'. His argument also turns on the distinction between two ways of talking about 'a life worth living'. We can (and ought to) separate our ideas on 'a life worth starting' from 'a life worth continuing'. This is very important. Where as some lives may be worth continuing (he agrees most are) NO life is worth starting. If i come down with a painful condition i may consider my life to still be worth continuing. However if i am faced with the choice whether to create a being who has such a condition it is As all life contains guaranteed harm the interests of a conceivable person are best served by not creating them.His argument rests on an intuitive asymmetry between the 'good' that is the 'absence of pain', and the 'not bad(ness)' (or neutralness) that is the 'absence of pleasure'. His argument also turns on the distinction between two ways of talking about 'a life worth living'. We can (and ought to) separate our ideas on 'a life worth starting' from 'a life worth continuing'. This is very important. Where as some lives may be worth continuing (he agrees most are) NO life is worth starting. If i come down with a painful condition i may consider my life to still be worth continuing. However if i am faced with the choice whether to create a being who has such a condition it is As all life contains guaranteed harm the interests of a conceivable person are best served by not creating them."
On suffering:
A theist's best response to Harris' argument is that we do not know the full scope of things, and sometimes suffering is necessary to allow for good, like a doctor prescribing bad tasting medicine.
Let's assume it is the the case that God offers eternal happiness after we die. You then live in this superorgasmic state for 90 million years. Then a reporter ask you how bad the stuff that happened to you on earth was in the full scope of things.
Even in a case where you were tortured for all your life on earth, the suffering on earth will seem like something equivalent to you looking back now and remembering the suffering you experienced when you fell playing basketball as a kid. If you feel you have a good life now, was the suffering you felt that day in the basketball court worth it?
For some theists the time scope is eternity, so suffering on earth is completely insignificant.
Sure, I'd start with Neuroscience for an overview, some more cognitive related computational systems are described in Cognitive Neuroscience, more advanced ones in Vision and Finally Rhythms of the Brain, you can then branch out further into language and memory.
&#x200B;
https://www.amazon.com/Neuroscience-Dale-Purves/dp/1605353809/ref=sr_1_6?keywords=neuroscience&qid=1563645060&s=gateway&sr=8-6
https://www.amazon.com/Cognitive-Neuroscience-Biology-Mind-Fifth/dp/0393603172/ref=sr_1_2?keywords=cognitive+neuroscience&qid=1563645142&s=gateway&sr=8-2
https://www.amazon.com/Rhythms-Brain-Gyorgy-Buzsaki/dp/0199828237/ref=sr_1_1?crid=813HTOI3332A&keywords=rhythms+of+the+brain&qid=1563645094&s=gateway&sprefix=rhythms+of+the+%2Caps%2C199&sr=8-1
https://www.amazon.com/Vision-Computational-Investigation-Representation-Information/dp/0262514621/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=vision+neuroscience&qid=1563645008&s=gateway&sr=8-1
The diagrams alone were enough to make me wince! I recently ordered Crucial Interventions: An Illustrated Treatise on the Principles & Practice of Nineteenth-Century Surgery and am very much looking forward to reading all about how horrific medical procedures were through the 1800s.
Thanks for sharing another great article.
book recommendation for ya https://www.amazon.com/Checklist-Manifesto-How-Things-Right/dp/0805091742 - it definitely has a bunch of military references too. checklists are amazing
Read The Checklist Manifesto. It talks about the ways that people forget the every day things they are doing and there was actually a specific section related to chefs, it's a quick and interesting read.
I agree completely, Kandel's book is definitely my favorite neuroscience text. For a more undergraduate level introduction Neuroscience: Exploring the Brain by Mark Bear et al. and Neuroscience by Dale Purves et al. are good starting places.
"What are the parts of the brain and what do they do?" is a much better formed question, but now you're getting into unsolved questions and areas of active research. There are hundreds of "identifiable parts" of the brain, and short of writing an entire textbook, there's not much I can do to answer such a broad question!
My recommendation for you would be to keep reading wikipedia (maybe start here ) and if you run into any specific questions come back to reddit and ask them, or try to get your hands on a basic neuroscience text book (the Purves book is good).
I hope I don't sound too discouraging! If you have specific questions I'm happy to answer them and I'm sure other panelists are too, but for me personally, I don't want to spend more than an hour answering any single question, and as it stands, your question would take me hours to answer well.
+1 on the Purves text. I find it pretty accessible even though my background is not neuroscience (or any other type of biological science). Also, you can pick up a used copy of an older edition for less than $20
I used Thomas Garcia's 12-Lead ECG: The Art of Interpretation. It goes above and beyond what you are required to know into stuff that is useful to know. It also breaks it down and gives tons of real world examples. This is how I learned EKGs. It might be better to start with something simpler, like Dale Dubin's Rapid Interpretation of EKG's, but I would make sure you know more than the simplistic version presented there.
I really liked this book. I found the reading to be much more easier and enjoyable than a textbook...
Also I'll give a second vote to the Skillstat website posted by /u/JemLover
Nancy Caroline's Emergency Care in the Streets is the "national registry" text book. And it's fairly decent. If you read it cover to cover and have half a brain you should pass national registry no problem.
Study whatever your state has published for drug protocols and treatment guidelines.
While I'm sure you saw a lot of EKG's at the hospital you worked at you still need to read Dubin's Rapid Interpretation and should probably get a practice book like Jane Huff's ECG Workout If you actually faithfully do Jane Huffs book cover to cover there is virtually no way you will fail statics or dynamics. And if you faithfully read Dubin's, including all the silly things he makes you do, you'll come out having a good knowledge of EKGs.
Read this before/during shadowing (you can find a PDF if you look hard enough). http://www.amazon.com/Rapid-Interpretation-EKGs-Sixth-Edition/dp/0912912065. None of it may make any sense but at least you may get some sort of idea of what is going on while shadowing a doc.
Go hang out in /r/premed. Avoid SDN forums.
High school grades/scores do not matter for medical school. Shadowing/volunteer work in high school does not count for medical school applications. Major in something you enjoy in college. Don't be a typical pre-med bio major. Be open minded and don't set your heart on cardiology (hah) as it will likely change when you do 3rd and 4th year medical school rotations.
18 months ago I completed a B to P class through Good Fellowship in West Chester. Between class and clinicals it required most of your time, but worth it in the end. PM me if you want to know more. Read through Dubin's Rapid Interpretation Book it helped immensely.
https://www.amazon.com/Rapid-Interpretation-EKGs-Sixth-Dubin/dp/0912912065
This is the book I used the most.
This book is pretty helpful, and I like it in particular because it basically does a "physiology pertaining to EKG's for dummies".
And yes, I know that Dubin turned out to be a sex offender and a creep, but the book is still good.
3 lead or 12 lead?
If only 3 lead buy Rapid Interpretation of EKG's.
https://www.amazon.com/Rapid-Interpretation-EKGs-Sixth-Dubin/dp/0912912065
You be able to read a 3 lead within a day.
Im not a med student (respiratory student) so I'm not sure if this is quite what you are looking for - but I bought this book during my vent class and found it to be quite useful.
Check out Mast Cell Activation Disorder and a book by Dr. Lawrence Afrin:
https://www.amazon.com/Never-Bet-Against-Occam-Activation/dp/0997319615
I don't know if that is what you have, but it might be worth a look into this.
https://www.amazon.com/Marinos-ICU-Book-Updates-Marino/dp/1451121180/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1483792693&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=marino+icu
I found this book very easy to read. It helped me out the most.
Marino’s ICU Book is great. The latest edition from Amazon comes with an Inkling copy which is convenient on the go. The Washington Manual of Medical Therapeutics and Critical Care are both good quick references, though they have less explanation than Marino’s.
For Anesthesia, Miller’s Anesthesia is the standard Harrison’s-style specialty text. At the medical student level a lot of places recommend “Baby Miller” aka Basics of Anesthesia. I personally preferred Morgan & Mikhail’s Clinical Anesthesiology, but both are good introductory texts. FWIW, my school had both available online so it was easy to pick and choose.
Felson's Principles of Chest Roentgenology. Reasonably priced on Amazon, but I think a quick Google search yields a PDF.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1455774839/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1473217110&amp;sr=8-1&amp;pi=SY200_QL40&amp;keywords=felson%27s+principles+of+chest+roentgenology&amp;dpPl=1&amp;dpID=51U09SiOghL&amp;ref=plSrch
Also important to note that a lot of drug use is caused by mental illness.
I've recently been reading the book Chasing the Scream by Johann Hari, it's a very good look into how the War on Drugs and our demonization of addicts has only caused more pain and suffering than open drug policies would have caused.
Seems like this thread is very full of right-wingers who believe mentally ill people should just be locked up but I commend you for the enormous task you're undertaking. I wish you the best of luck dude
Read Chasing the Scream http://amzn.to/2hzr4nk and Acid Dreams http://amzn.to/2hkDSlm to get a full picture of why we are where we are now.
What others are saying is right. It's a political move to criminalize minorities and rebellious youth cultures.
This is their current edition book for CARS (among other things): http://www.amazon.com/9th-Examkrackers-MCAT-Reasoning-Skills/dp/1893858715/ref=sr_1_8?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1462834094&amp;sr=1-8&amp;keywords=exam+krackers
The other book I bought used is the 101 passages (sorry for the mix-up!): http://www.amazon.com/Examkrackers-Passages-MCAT-Verbal-Reasoning/dp/1893858553/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1462834094&amp;sr=1-2&amp;keywords=exam+krackers
Yes,
https://www.amazon.ca/Examkrackers-Passages-McAt-Verbal-Reasoning/dp/1893858553/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_product_top?ie=UTF8
Pretty good book actually, a lot of really boring and dense humanities passages, with a good portion of questions being "reasoning beyond the text".
Highly recommend reading "Chasing the Scream" for the history of the war on drugs in the US. It offers a few case studies for solutions at the end - pointing to a state by state legalization or a complete legalization like Portugal. Hari is an unbeatable writer, too.
I recommend the book Chasing the Scream for anyone interesting in learning more about this subject, how the war on drugs started, how different countries have dealt with the problem, and stories of individuals who have been deeply affected by the war on all different sides.
If you haven’t read Chasing the Scream, it is fascinating and touches on this topic.
Edit to clean up the link
Not sure how to notify like everyone in this whole comment thread, but if anyone is at all interested by the questions here please read this:
Chasing the Scream by Johann Hari
legalize those too.
Exam Crackers. http://www.amazon.com/Examkrackers-Passages-MCAT-Verbal-Reasoning/dp/1893858553/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;s=books&amp;qid=1303004505&amp;sr=8-1
In my experience, the rest of the exam crackers prep material was worthless. I would also look into the Princeton Review method of reading through passages...that worked for me. Other than that, its just practice, practice, practice.
http://www.amazon.com/Ultimate-Choosing-Medical-Specialty-Edition/dp/0071790276
This book might be helpful
/r/Antinatalism's Wiki presents the basic arguments better than I can. But reading https://www.amazon.com/Better-Never-Have-Been-Existence/dp/0199549265 may be obligatory for more details.
> No need to worry about hypothetical people who never existed.
While I admit that this seems intuitive, this very point is hotly debated among philosophers. On one side is this, and you can easily google responses to that book that argue the other side, if you feel so inclined.
https://www.amazon.com/Better-Never-Have-Been-Existence/dp/0199549265/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8
This book is for you.
>Hoping for a car to run you over is not going to help you or your family.
No it wont help my family; they'd hate to have to pay my half of the rent.
but it would help me. I bought this book the other day.
https://www.amazon.com/Better-Never-Have-Been-Existence/dp/0199549265
and its all making a lot of sense to me know. it's like its all coming together for the first time in my life.
My only advice would be to work the road as a basic to see what it's like. I worked the road for a little while (wish I woulda waited longer) but when you start learning everything in medic school everything seems to come together from what you saw on the read and what you read in class. But definitely
http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0912912065/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?qid=1397575975&amp;sr=1-1&amp;pi=SY200_QL40
Not sure how to link it differently on mobile but this is a great book. You spend a lot of time on cardiology.
Buzsaki's book is also a good general reference for this:
http://www.amazon.com/Rhythms-Brain-Gyorgy-Buzsaki/dp/0199828237
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Better-Never-Have-Been-Existence/dp/0199549265
Greatest book about parenting, your life will never be the same again.
His utilitarianism is based on his personal, pragmatic, double-entry-bookkeeping values for 'good'. Even Mill had doubts, but not Singer.
Yet: “an ethical judgement that is no good in practice must suffer from a theoretical defect as well, for the whole point of ethical judgement is to guide practice.” (Singer, Practical Ethics, 1993) and he often admits he fails in his own silly standards yet doesn't admit his edifice of morality is fundamentally flawed.
I confess I prefer American pragmatism and some elements of relativism, but still.
I wouldn't tell her parents they made an immoral choice because I have a heart, but in my opinion, it's always morally questionable to have children.
20,000 children starve to death each day. Is it moral that people continue to have children despite such abominations?
Here's a book that espouses my beliefs:
http://www.amazon.com/Better-Never-Have-Been-Existence/dp/0199549265