[.ca] Lippincott's Illustrated Reviews: Pharmacology (ISBN 0781741181)

great study guide:
i have been using this book even after graduation, all the mechanism of action questions are answered in a very clear way. i have had this book for 4 years and still loving it. great buy!

good:
Bought this one as a supplement for pharmacology. Its intended to be an outline of pharmacology, so don't buy it if you want specifics. The only reason it gets 4 stars is because of the crazy drawings they use for remembering adverse effects (maybe they help students remember?).

Great memory aids for pharm:
Really helped with the buzzwords and memory aids crucial for exams.

Good, but not enough to be your sole Pharm source:
I used this text to prepair for the boards, having already read Katzung's Pharmacology in class. This is a concise book, uniform, with many illustrations (many of them however could easily be omitted, since they simply present drug adverse effects graphically), and does a good job in selecting the prototypical drugs from each class. It could be a lot more complete in the section on CNS pharmacology, and on drugs for heart failure and hypertension (for example, it is stated that beta-blockers are contraindicated in heart failure, whereas it is well-known that this kind of drugs is essential for reducing mortality and hospitalizations in these patients). I particularly liked the section on antimicrobial chemotherapy, another high-yield topic for the boards. I have a positive overall impression of the book, but I found myself consulting Katzung more than often; also, it does not compare to the clearly superior Lippincott title on Biochemistry (keep in mind however than biochemistry lends itself much more easily to illustrated presentations than pharmacology). It will help you, but in order to top the exams, you will need an additional resource.

Excellent, concise resource for pharmacology:
I used this book primarily for my pharmacology course. I really didn't use it much as I prepared for Step 1. If you are going to get this, get it early while you are taking the course. It is too long to use for board prep, so learn it early and learn it well.