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The Trainer Group held a "bring a book" meeting and these are various ideas and recommendations. A useful place to have a look if your GPR asks about a book on........

Clinical Books

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Non-Clinical Books

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The Reviews

     Prescribing in Primary Care     

Edited by Richard Hobbs and Colin Bradley         Oxford General Practice Series - 42      
ISBN 0-19-262687-6 

Review by Brett:
This book is actually very readable and interesting. It covers all sorts of topics that Trainers may be a bit vague on, including, The Government's agenda, Drug trial phases, The role of the pharmacist, Homeopathy! 

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     Prescribing in Pregnancy 

Edited by Peter C Rubin         BMJ  Publishing
ISBN 0-7279-0174-5 

Review by Brett:
This is often an area of concern to the registrar. Not a book to read from cover to cover. Rather more informative than the lists in the BNF. It covers areas that are always going to crop up in pregnancy such as constipation, nausea etc.

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Drug Misuse and Dependence
Guidelines on Clinical Management

Department of Health / HMSO

ISBN 0 11 322277 7

Review by Paul
The big orange guide! All practices should have had at least one copy distributed to them. This is a reference work rather than bedtime reading but has established itself as the most authoritative guide in the area. Concentrates on heroin and methadone but also deals with other drugs. It has a very good, brief summary on benzodiazepine prescribing that is of particular relevance to Primary Care.

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     A-Z Pocketbook of Symptom Control

Peter Kaye
ISBN 0951989510

Review by David
Brilliant guide to symptom control in palliative care, eg nebulised lignocaine really does work for intractable cough in end stage bronchial carcinoma! Fits easily in 'black bag'. Helps to impress Macmillan nurses!

            Women's Health

Edited by Ann McPherson & Deborah Waller            Oxford General Practice Series 39
ISBN     0-19-262750-3

Review by Richard
A highly readable and very comprehensive book. Ideal for male Registrars. Problem-orientated approach, like subfertility, incontinence, vaginal discharge. Covers more than just gynaecology - includes screening programmes, eating disorders, complimentary medicine etc.

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            Contraception - Your Questions Answered

John Guillebaud                            Churchill Livingstone
ISBN        0-443-04070-2

Review by Richard:
The true contraception bible - every doctor's desk should have a copy. Pity about the index - you know that the answer to the question will be in the book. It is just a bit difficult to find it! If your Registrar wants the definitive book, then look no further. Used to be given out on the Margaret Pyke course, may be available from Schering Reps (Liz).

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                Lecture Notes in Dermatology   (new edition March 02)

Robin Graham-Brown                    Churchill Livingstone
ISBN   0-86542-635-X  

Review by Peter
BNF size, sits unobtrusively on the desk, photos as good as any atlas, pleasing text layout and easy to refer to for bolstering knowledge and prodding the memory between consultations. Chapter 1 on skin structure and Chapter 2 on taking a history and diagnosis are excellent for the new registrar to take a methodical approach to all the dermatology of GP - when is a papule a nodule and a vesicle a bulla etc. Both chapters are just 25 easy-to-read pages. I still find it useful occasionally - not a dermatology "atlas" but would complement one well.

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  Colour Atlas of Infectious Diseases

Emond, Rowland and Welsby
ISBN  0723421277  

Review by Mark
A superb colour picture book with sections on bacterial, fungal, viral and protozoal infections plus a miscellaneous section which includes such things as Kawasaki disease and Pityriasis Rosea. There are very concise pages of text to go with the pictures that always seem to provide the answers you are seeking. I have been helped with such conundrums as “Are these shallow palatal ulcers herpetic or due to coxsackie A viruses?”  and “Could this lesion on this child’s finger be hand foot and mouth disease?”
This book will appeal to all who prefer to dip into books to solve problems rather than reading them cover-to-cover. However, once opened it is a hard book to put down and I often find myself jumping from section to section to satisfy my curiosity.
I obtained my copy free from Pfizer but I’m not sure if they still provide this service.

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  Churchill's Pocketbook of General Practice

Simon Cartwright                    Churchill Livingstone
ISBN  0443048630

Review by Richard
If your Registrar is looking for a concise, comprehensive, easy reference handbook, then look no further. This is not a book that goes big on consultation skills or on the 25th differential diagnois. However, if you have a simple knowledge gap - like how to treat Polymyalgia, then this is the book for you!

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      Clinical Orthopaedic Examination

Ronald McRae          Churchill Livingstone
ISBN  0443056021

Review by Mark
We all have gaps in our abilities to perform clinical examinations …..as medical students we may have attended excellent teaching sessions on the examination of the hip, but what about the wrist? This book is based around numerous illustrations of clinical examinations with a small section of text at the start of each chapter. The emphasis is very much upon improving the reader’s diagnostic skills and concentrates upon history taking and examination without extending significantly into management issues. Chapters cover subjects by anatomical part from “cervical spine” to “foot”.

New registrars often seem to pick out the management of back pain as a pressing educational need and there is an excellent section on this subject in which the author suggests all the right starter questions and lists the commonest diagnoses in different age brackets in a clear and uncluttered way. There are some less useful illustrations of X-ray findings of little use to most GP’s.

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            Practical Guide to Sports Injuries 

Malcolm T. F. Reid
ISBN 0-7509-3251-8

Review by David
Succint, easy to read. Quick reference to sports injuries of each anatomical area, ie medial knee, anterior knee. Good diagrams. Excellent aid to establishing a 'knowledgeable' working diagnosis in potentially baffling musculo-skeletal problems. Glossary of eponyms is helpful.

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          The Child Surveillance Handbook

Hall,Hill and Elliman                    Radcliffe Medical Press
ISBN 1 870905 24 5

Review by Barry
Don't be mislead by the title - this book contains a lot more than just child surveillance. It includes a host of common pre-school problems and how to manage them, such as infant colic, funny feet, eneuresis and behavioral disorders, to name but a few. There are cute line drawings illustrating normal motor development and many useful summaries in boxes or listed with bullet points. Not a book to read from cover to cover but very readable nonetheless.

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   Child Mental Health in Primary Care

Spender, Salt, Dawkins, Kendrick and Hill      Radcliffe Medical Press 2001
ISBN 1-85775-262-7

Review by Christine
Comprehensive guide to all the common problems in child mental health from a general practice perspective. The first section covers problems that may present at any age, such as disorders of language, behaviour problems, chronic disease, child abuse, parental separation , and bereavement. Subsequent sections deal with age-related problems.  The first few years covers crying and colic, sleep and feeding problems, breath-holding and head-banging. The school-age section includes ADHD, enuresis, encopresis, bullying, phobias and school refusal. The adolescence section features depression, overdoses, eating disorders, chronic fatigue syndrome and substance misuse. Child mental health is a Cinderella area in terms of resources and service provision.  This book will give registrars (and their trainers) the knowledge and skills to manage more children within primary care.

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            The Normal Child

Illingworth
ISBN 0443044554

Review by David
Rather dated book on normal childhood development and behaviour problems. He makes it sound so simple! Good for docs without kids!

        Cognitive Behavioural Therapy in Primary Care

Richard France & Meredith Robson            Jessica Kingsley Publishers
ISBN 1853024104 

Review by Chris
A book written by a retired Frimley trainer based on original research carried out by him in association with  a clinical psychologist at his Yateley Practice. It makes the whole process of Behaviour Therapy seem obvious and easy and covers all the typical problems that present in general practice - from the management of anxiety and panic attacks to weight management and common childhood problems. The book gives an excellent explanation of why these problems may arise and will enable the GP to at least point the patient in the correct direction for treatment. It may even encourage the GP to try behaviour therapy himself! The interventions described are deliberately short in order to be realistic and effective, given the time constraints in practice.

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          The Doctor's Communication Handbook

Peter Tate             Radcliffe Press
ISBN     1-85775-550-2

Review by Colleen
This is an excellent practical guide to doctor-patient communication and the consultation for all doctors, both in hospital and in General Practice. I found it very easy to read, down to earth, entertaining and full of examples, anecdotes and vignettes which we can all easily recognise. It helps the reader by not only telling you what you should achieve in the consultation, but how to go about it, suggesting strategies and skills for doing this.

The first 2 chapters illustrate beautifully how easy it is to assume we know the patient’s agenda, the disastrous communication failures that can occur when we do this, and how relatively easy it can be to find out what the patient’s agenda actually is. They give us strategies and skills to achieve this.

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         Skills for Communicating with Patients

Silverman, Kurtz and Draper        Radcliffe Medical Press
ISBN 1 85775 189 2

Review by Paul
This comprehensive book starts with a consultation model we can all understand and subscribe to.  It builds into this, a coherent set of practical skills which we can all acquire and  use. It makes a compelling case and is very well referenced. 
This is the reference book behind the "Calgary-Cambridge  Consultation Skills", which is rapidly becoming the standard model for teaching consultation skills within General Practice. ( See the download of Bill Bevington's Consultation Handbook)

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            Thinking about Patients

David Misselbrook            Petroc Press 2001

Review by Christine
Written by a Course Organiser in South London, who has worked in a relatively deprived area since 1984. This is a thoughtful, and thought-provoking book about the interaction of Western medicine, with its emphasis on the biomedical disease model, and the experiences of patients, who may have quite different health beliefs. To practice evidence-based,  patient-centred medicine, we have to understand, or at least recognise, the tribalism of doctors, and the spectrum of social, psychological, and anthropological illness models in patients. One to make the registrars (and their trainers ?) think about the role of the GP and the future of general practice.

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                    Notes for the MRCGP

KT Palmer
ISBN   

Review by Albert
A quick general read, suitable for the new GP Registrar or the GPR working towards the MRCGP. Written in a ‘lecture note’ format, it is clear and concise in manner, and is easily referenced. The chapters are short and there are numerous sub-headings, mini-list and bullet points.  Clinical topics and dilemmas are covered, practice administration and legal issues are covered, and there is a chapter on social medicine. This book is a bare bones book, so for the padding you will need to look else- where. It strength lies in it’s comprehensive coverage of essential facts used by the average GP.

Summary : A good initial read for the GP Registrar starting in General Practice.

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Super Seminars, Legendary Lectures and Perfect Posters
The Science of Presenting Well

Ian Wilkinson      AACC Press
ISBN 0-915274-94-9

Review by Paul
Available on American Association of Clinical Chemistry web site  www.aacc.org ,  readily purchased by credit card  for a bargain $12 (Or Amazon for £33.00)
A simple, short and, above all, very practical guide to presenting effectively. Easy and entertaining to read.

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            How to Read a Paper

 Trisha Greenhalgh         BMJ Books 2001
 ISBN 0-7279-1578-9

Review by Christine
Not only how to read a paper (critically!), but also how to search the literature for answers to questions. Readable, accessible, simplified wherever possible, it is the only book on evidence-based medicine that I have really understood.  Appealing chapter headings include: Statistics for the Non-statistician,  Papers that report drug trials, Papers that tell you what to do, Papers that tell you what things cost etc. She also exposes the marketing methods of pharmaceutical companies in “Ten tips to present your product in the best light” – very useful when talking to reps.

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        Teaching Made Easy

Ruth Chambers and David Wall           Radcliffe Medical Press 2000
ISBN  1-85775-373-9

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        Evidence-based Practice in Primary Care

Chris Silagy & Andrew Haines        BMJ Books
ISBN 0-7279-1568-1

Review by Robin
This BMJ book quickly endorses the need for evidence based medicine in General Practice and Primary Care. Its introductory chapters are easy to follow with good definitions (you can quickly pick up the jargon!). I particularly liked the “five step process for using evidence based approach in General Practice”. Each step is straightforward to follow in outline. The text is endorsed with excellent diagrams, tables and figures.

Unfortunately the book then goes into detail about how to apply evidence-based medicine with a more detailed use of statistics. The chapters are written by academic General Practitioners and this may make them a little removed from the practising clinician. I tried hard to follow it, but struggled.

This book would be good to borrow and is useful for understanding the terminology in evidence based medicine. It would particularly useful if you have to prepare a talk on the subject or have a GP Registrar wanting additional material. However it is not a book on “Evidence-based Medicine made simple”. I recommend it for “somebody else’s” library, to which you have access.

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           Tutorials for the GP Registrar

Edward Warren    Butterworth & Heineman
ISBN 07506 53221

Review by Richard
This is the current book by an author recommended by Mark. It is a great source of both structure and material for tutorials. The information is very up-to-date with references and material from 2001.

There are 22 tutorial plans across all aspects of Primary Care. Clinical topics include diabetes, lipids, strokes and headache. Other topics covered include child abuse, chronic fatigue, applying for jobs and making money.

Each topic is approached in a similar way. First, suggestions for tutorial aims and objectives. Then the material itself, with comprehensive, evidence-based references where appropriate. Lastly there is a list of suggested discussion topics. There is also recommended further reading and web-site references for most topics.

Overall, a very comprehensive, and useful book for GPR or Trainer.

           The GP Trainer's Handbook

Radcliffe Medical Press

 ISBN: 1857754816

Review by Kent
This is a very comprehensive reference book written by experienced GP Trainers. It is a comprehensive manual, offering useful advice from peers across the whole spectrum of GP Training.

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