Aids to Acute Medicine

This book contains highly informative and easy to understand presentation of selected common topics of acute medicine. It is written mainly for trainee doctors of internal medicine (eg, Interns, Residents and Registrars) to make their learning of efficient care of acute medical problems easier and faster. To provide high-quality care of acute medical conditions, a more comprehensive knowledge of the management of commonly encountered acute medical problems is very important. A single study material where adequate information needed for the high-quality care is available in a highly integrated and easily understandable format is very desirable. But in many areas of acute medicine, available study materials have some obvious limitations in this regard; either they do not have sufficient information required for these doctors or it is time consuming to find the necessary information in them because of their presentation styles. 'Aids to Acute Medicine' is intended to minimize these problems. This volume contains infectious disease, and electrolyte and acid-base disorder related chapters. The topics in this book have been selected considering the potential need of trainee doctors of internal medicine. Target audience: 1) The main target audience is the trainee doctors (eg, Interns, Residents and Registrars) enrolled in Internal Medicine department. This book would also be very useful to non-consultant doctors of other medical disciplines who regularly manage acute medical problems. 2) Other intended audiences include junior doctors of all disciplines; general practitioners/ family physicians; nurses; senior medical students; clinical pharmacists; and physicians' assistants. They will find a lot of useful information on the topics discussed in this book. Also, senior doctors, especially of medical disciplines, will appreciate this book as a very useful material for quick refreshing of their knowledge and teaching juniors. Key features: 1) The content of the book is designed for high-quality care that is going on in hospitals or health systems with adequate facilities. However, in some cases, separate suggestions have been included for health system with limited resources. 2) A vast amount of clinically useful information on the discussed topics is available in an easily understandable format; so users do not need to go through too many sources spending a lot of time for the required information on those topics. 3) Reliable information: The most common sources of information are Medline indexed journal articles and publications of well-known professional bodies (of developed countries) relevant to the topic. During preparation of the manuscript, when any information appeared doubtful, alternative sources were checked for accuracy before including that in this book. The whole content has been revised carefully several times up to this final version. 4) Required information can be found easily. There are enough headings and sub-headings; the presentation is mostly note-type, avoiding long paragraphs; question and answer style has been used in some cases; abundant tables and flow charts have been used; treatment portion of all chapters has an additional 'treatment summary'. 5) Specified references: Each chapter has a reference section at the end. The referencing style that is commonly seen in medical journal articles (numbered citations) has been used in all chapters to specify the information sources. 6) Junior doctors will be less dependent on their seniors for their learning if they go through this book carefully.