Firstly congratulations on clearing first professional exams! The academics are gonna get harder now but trust me it’ll be 100 times interesting now! 🤩
I have mentioned books, video lectures and approach for each subject.
- Pathology- This subject talks about disease causation, i.e. what goes wrong in your normal physiology to cause a disease, the findings (clinical, gross and histopathological) and briefly about the diagnosis as well.
- First and foremost the books. Robbins is the bible and one book that I highly recommend you to read in your MBBS life! There are 3 variations- father Robbins, medium Robbins and baby Robbins. We read father Robbins here and it is absolutely amazing! You pretty much don’t need anything but some people like Harsh Mohan, Prashant Patel (for exams only) and others.
- Second year subjects also need some video lecture supplementation for a better correlation with future subjects. For pathology I absolutely love Dr. Ranjith Ar (unmatched 🤩). I even like Dr. Vandana’s lectures but I found them a little too exhaustive for my suiting. Dr. Sparsh and Dr. Ila are also pretty decent.
- Now when you read your Robbins, try to make a storyline. It is not an easy book so don’t be too harsh on yourself. General Pathology has beautiful diagrams and you must must give it an honest effort. Systemic is glorious. Lungs and Hematology is a little scattered in Robbins so you can take another source. The trick is to give it multiple readings and try to correlate it with physiology. If you know general pathology, systemic is gonna be an amazing fun ride. 🤗
2. Pharmacology- This is a hard subject so be warned. We talk about the drug treatment for various diseases, how the drugs work, their uses, adverse effects and other details.
- For books, the international standard is Lipincott. This is not something you can read as a textbook so have an alternative. Indian standard is KD Tripathi and it is universally followed in almost all colleges. KDT is a nice book but please don’t go reading all the drugs (you’ll lose your mind kid!).
- For video lectures, GRG is lovely! He teaches in a fluid and collective manner, correlating the various treatment methods with the normal physiology (physiology ain’t leaving you anytime soon 🙈) which will help you make sense of it. He gives nice mnemonics and is frankly the only reason I have hope in this subject. Marrow faculty is also pretty decent. You can try Osmosis as well.
- Now the important thing is how to read it. Firstly read General Pharma and ANS. These two topics will lay the foundation and you can’t survive this subject without it. Next major topics are CNS, CVS, AMA, Endocrine. These should be read disease wise and not chapterwise. So essentially at the end of CNS rather than telling me benzodiazepines and SSRIs, you should be able to tell me the pharmacological management of Insomnia and Depression. This will help you link pharma with path, which will strengthen your basics.
3. Microbiology- This subjects is fun and traumatising at the same time. We talk about the diseases caused by viruses, bacteria, parasites, fungi etc with their lab diagnosis. This subject is isolated and doesn’t need a lot of first year base to build on, so do it whenever you are exhausted with the bulk of other subjects.
- Coming to books we have two standards- Ananthnarayan and Apurba Shastry. The latter is a better book and presents the content in a better way, however Ananth has been the recommend book since decades.
- Video lectures are not super important here I feel. Dr. Sonu and Dr. Shivika both are pretty amazing for this.
- Now this subjects has the following units- general, immunology, parasitology, virology, mycology and bacteriology. I recommend reading general and immuno first so that you know how to write any lab diagnosis question possible. Parasitology is isolated so do that selectively. For mycology and virology read that general myco and viro chapters so that you know how to answer every possible question. Bacteriology is hugeeeee so have patience, make notes and take deep breaths. 😂
4. Clinical Postings- Okay so please do realise that you are still pretty juvenille in this profession and it’s okay to not know everything. You’ll learn. In 2nd year, try to focus on just history taking (it is an art and takes a lot of practice!). In 3rd year focus more on examintion.
- Apart from this try relating whatever case you see with your pathology, microbiology and pharmacology. So let’s say we see a case of TB someday. Go back and read pathogenesis of TB, check the RNTCP regimen of drugs and read Mycobacteria from bacteriology. If we see a case of Meningitis, read up CNS pathology, check AMA in pharma and read Gram Positive diplococci in bacteriology. These three subjects are beautifully entwined so try appreciating it.
- Opting for coachings is an individual decision but it is not compulsary by any means. Take it at your own pace and try enjoying your subjects. Next two years won’t give you a lot of freedom.
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Lastly have fun, attend some fests (if they happen :/) and explore stuff! Your college life won’t come back. Goodluck! 🤗♥️
