Principles of Dermatology

I am a family medicine resident. My derm prof at UCSF recommended this when i was a student. It is a great intro to how to think about skin and guides you through a systematic approach to come up with a diagnosis, and then treatment is included too. Each chapter is based on the main morphological findings (erythematous rash vs. scaling vs. papules vs. pigmented lesions etc) to help you learn to THINK derm instead of just pattern recognition, which is what a derm atlas does. This is NOT a derm atlas (it is better), and once you master the concepts here a derm atlas is a good second text to have. good luck, derm is my nemesis but this book makes it easier in primary care --

Good over all but not indepth enough for what I really wanted, however for the boards it has all of the necessary info.

Today I finished the 2nd week of a four week rotation in derm, and I have read about 2/3 of the book. Our derm dept lends the book to us during the rotation, and recommends that we buy it for our own referrence afterwards. In my opinion the book is a well written overview of the common presenting derm complaints. The format is clear, and well thought out. The presentation of each condition includes brief sections on incidence, PE, DDx, Tx, and pathology. The pictures are good. The one weakness is that it could have more pictures. I am very happy with the text, and I am hard to please. I don't give it five stars because I never give anything five stars. It is a great book for med students rotating thru derm, and is even a good reference text for gen'l practitioners. Not sure if I'll shell out the bucks for the book though at this point--I still have to figure out how to pay for tuition, which was just raised by 5% for next (my final!)year.