Traditionally useful Resources

These are some of the courses available as well as the books we used in our prep. Or at least the ones that were most exam focused.

For stuff we actually like that’s not necessarily an exam resource, check our appropriately named stuff we like page.

Courses

There are a growing number of courses around Australia and NZ dedicated to Primary ICU Exam Preparation. It’s worth a look at those as you get close to sitting. If you go too early, it’s at least $1000 you could have used another way.

Course (Click to Open)	Provider
The PrimaryClinic	St. Vincent’s Hospital, Sydney
VPECC	The Victorian Primary Examination Course
Finnis Course	The South Australian CICM Primary Exam Course (this is the gold, get in quick when applications open as places are gone in a week or two at most)
Mater Primary Short Course	Mater Hospital Brisbane
Struggling candidates course	Struggling candidates course (you have to fail once to be eligible, it’s better if you don’t, but it’s great if you do.). Email the college if you are interested.
Gold PERC	Gold Coast University Hospital, QLD
Waikato	Part 1 Course (this is ANZCA stuff, but still mostly relevant)

Of course (no pun intended), if you know of or a running a course in your area and you’d like us to put it here, just send me an email.

Textbooks

Favourite book is a bit if a personal thing, I enjoyed Ender’s game, but it’s not related to the syllabus.
Here are ours which are:

Physiology

BOOK (Click to Open)	DETAILS
Berne & Levy Physiology, 6th Updated Edition	This used to be a book about a heart, now it covers just about everything physiologically speaking, at an excellent level of detail in a really logical way with excellent diagrams.
Guyton and Hall, Textbook of Medical Physiology	The guy has a curve named after him, and it’s related to the heart. Probably worth a read.
Power and Kam, Principles of Physiology for the Anaesthetist	This is the book they take their questions from. It’s short and sweet and if you know it cover to cover then you’ll have a few internal inconsistencies, but you’ll be able to give the examiners exactly what they want.

Pharmacology

BOOK (Click to Open)	DETAILS
Stoelting’s Pharmacology & Physiology in Anesthetic Practice	This book has an excellent level of detail and a heap of great tables. There are bits and pieces of drug details spread throughout the text and sometime this can be a bit frustrating. It’s still the go to book for pharmacology.
Peck and Hill, Pharmacology for Anaesthesia and Intensive Care	“Learn Peck and Hill first, then go to Stoelting”. This advice was repeatedly ignored and resulted in a huge amount of detriment. Many of the details are not in Peck and Hill (complete pharmacokinetics of particular drugs, details on some of the mechanisms etc…) but if it’s not in there, it’s probably <0.5 marks worth on the exam. Use your time wisely, learn Peck and Hill, then move on.
Smith and Sasada, Drugs in Anaesthesia and Intensive Care (Oxford Medical Publications)	This little handbook is the gold. It has all of the details of pretty much every drug on the syllabus. It is laid out in alphabetical order and each drug is given 2 pages. They are all set out in Pharmaceutics, Pharmacodynamics, Pharmacokinetics structure, which is exactly what you need.
Goodman and Gilman’s The Pharmacological Basis of Therapeutics	This is the book you save if there was a fire and you wanted to save pharmacology, but it will chew your eyesight and your time.

Measurement

BOOK (Click to Open)	DETAILS
Miller’s Anesthesia	This is the anaesthetic version of a one stop book. The sections covering measurement and monitoring are great. All the gory detail is there, but it is clinically focused enough to keep you interested.
Davis and Kenny, Basic Physics & Measurement in Anaesthesia	This is the recommended book for measurement for the exam. We recommend you check it out… for the exam.

Statistics (Not in Current Primary Syllabus)

BOOK (Click to Open)	DETAILS
Miles and Gin, Statistical Methods for Anaesthesia and Intensive Care	This is the book the college recommends. It’s chapters are laid out one or two per syllabus point. Coincidence? I think the probability of that is low.