The ICU Book by Marino: Comprehensive Guide to Critical Care Medicine - Essential for ICU Nurses, Doctors & Medical Students

Residents and students can be easily scared in the ICU. Your patients are sick, and its up to you to figure out how to manage them. They usually are unstable (that's why they're in the ICU!!!) and tend to have very complex issues. Nowadays, ICU isn't very well taught in medical school and doing an ICU rotation is optional in your 3rd/4th years. Therefore a good text is important in case you need reference to figuring out what is going on. To be honest, I only read maybe 3-4 chapters to this point (you don't have much time when you're taking care of ICU patients) but I really enjoyed the simple way of how everything is written in this book. I've read other critical care texts where it cites a lot of good articles and theories behind things but I think the ICU book puts it in a way that's not overwhelming. That being said, the chapters I've read has left me wanting more. This is a great starter reference book and it does cite all the articles/research that it quotes from so that when you want to do more research on your own, it will be easy for you to find.I definitely enjoy the tables and graphs in this book. I never had the older versions of the book so I can't comment what upgrades have been made in this latest edition but I can definitely say that the text is not overwhelming for a medical student (especially 4th years who have had some internal medicine). I will give this book 5 stars because everyone can read this without getting too confused or overwhelmed but if you are a critical care specialist, this book only grazes the top of specific issues. You will definitely need to hit up Uptodate or scan through the new NEJM critical care series. The paper quality is also good (I hate the new medical textbooks which they print on that cheap recycled paper).In summary: Very good book for the fundamentals of ICU but don't expect immense detail.