Dear Young Doctor, You are nearing the end of your formalized test-taking after so many years of education. We want to help you pass your boards and these books were written for that end. This review of internal medicine is not an exhaustive treatise, but serves as an example of learning points considered important throughout the years. You will run into the same patients on this examination, the internal medi cine specialty boards, and the medicine sub-specialty boards should you choose to take them. Our US healthcare delivery system is undergoing major transformation, which has become frenetic since the first edition of this series was published three years ago. This creates anxiety in physicians and physicians-to-be, as we are unsure of the very foundations which have supported medicine as we knew it. The chal lenge is to carryon the duties of our noble profession while adapting to and helping to shape the marketplace. Medical information is too expansive to be mastered by the individual alone, and we must learn to rely on automated inform atics systems to access current data. Yet with all the changes, traditions of medical education are remembered, honored, and still practiced. You will see evidence of this history contained herein.
