Goljan, Goljan, Goljan

If you haven’t heard about Dr. Goljan yet you are probably not ready for your boards. Dr. Goljan’s Rapid Review for Pathology is probably the best single resource you can use for pathology. As well as the book, there are also Goljan audio lectures available. The audio lectures provide an invaluable service to your preparation. There are many times when you are preparing for your boards when you get sick and tired of reading. Goljan is the solution! Listen and learn your way to success using Goljan’s audio lectures when you are tired, working out, or on a long car ride.

Here are what students who used Goljan have to say:

Review 1:
After reading BRS and most of Robbins, this remains the strongest resource. Concise for its subject, it covers the important aspects of path while digging for those little, annoying details and disorders that only show up on board exams. Goljan is a true pro at teaching this, with several years at Kaplan and Oklahoma Osteopathic, and he has constantly been grilling students for more information after they have taken their exam. Master this book, and you will not only do well in path, but also have a good foothold in other subjects like pharm, micro, and biochem due to Goljan's ability to integrate several fields into path. His work has continued to help me in third year rotations, as he also discusses diagnostic tests and treatments. The accompanying Q&A CD is unfortunately poorly made, but the quality of questions is very strong. I generally read Robbins or lecture material along with this text to lay a foundation for knowledge, but come test time, you want to cut the fat, and every word here is money. Try to get the accompanying audio CDs off Ebay for reinforcement. I largely credit Goljan's materials along with Robbins Review of Path (question book) for a 98 percentile on the path shelf and a 258 on Step I. This man may have taught me more academic medicine than anyone else. I truly hope you can benefit from this text as well.

Review 2:
This is the single most useful and board relevant book on the market. I had the pleasure of using this text in accompaniment with Dr. Goljan's audio lectures from a review course. The two resources, audio and text, proved to be invaluable in both building my confidence and ability to disect the USMLE Step I exam. Additionally, the images used in the text and referenced in the audio lectures were in fact the very same pictures I saw on my test. I must clarify, however, the audio lectures are not sold with the text. They can, however, be found on the web for those who are really interested.

The text organizes and describes in a few sentences salient points that seem to be wholly absent from the much larger and more daunting Robbins. Furthermore, the text comes equiped with a rapid review CD-ROM full of about 300 questions. They are excellent questions with explanations that are more thorough and thought provoking than Kaplan's Qbank. I felt as though this text was better than the BRS-Pathology though some may disagree. In my own opinion, Goljan is more concise and emphasizes the board relavent material more so than BRS. Although it is not and should not be used as a stand alone text, in conjunction with Robbins, First Aid, and Kaplan Qbank, you should feel very well prepared to tackle the pathology, pathophysiology, and even microbio-pathology questions.

Review 3:
This book is the best review book for pathology. For over 25 years, Dr. Goljan has accumlated "insight" from students after taking their step 1. He knows what the boards people want medical students to know and everything that could be asked on step 1 is in this book...and as pathology accounts for the majority of the test, mastering all the facts in this book will definitely help you score high.
Rapid Review Pathology reads like First Aid and is loaded with high-yield facts, BUT like First Aid it is sometimes hard to read. It is written in outline format and is more like a list of facts (like all books in the Rapid Review series). In comparison, the BRS series books are also in outline format, but the bulleted points are in complete sentences making for an easier read. Therefore, students with a weaker background in pathology will have a more difficult time getting through this book than BRS.
That being said, if there were to read any book in addition to First Aid, this would be the book. It is very clinically-based, it integrates info from many other subject areas, has many high-yield illustrations, and has very good clinical vignettes. The book also has wide margins where you can take notes into, which is what I'd suggest. This way you can sort of "complete" the sentences and customize the book to you're own study/reading style (this is, by the way, how you should use your First Aid).
I read many reviewers talking about the Goljan audio, but I have a feeling many readers may not know what that is. It is the audio files taken from one of Dr. Goljan's lecture series. It follows his Rapid Review book 90% of the time and is great in understanding many of the facts he has listed in the book. You can find the audio from online med student forums, however they maybe copyrighted...in any case, if you can get your hands on them and listen to them using this rapid review book as "lecture notes" you'd definitely do well on the step. He has a way of explaining pathology (and all clinical medicine) like no other.
So again, if you memorize and "understand" EVERY point in this book, and every point in First Aid, you will do well on step 1.

To find Goljan audio lectures, go to the Board Aid forum.
To find more information on this book, click the links below.