Bates' Guide to Physical Examination and History Taking, Ninth Edition with E-Book (Guide to Physical Exam & History Taking (Bates))

I used this book along with Mosby's Physical Examination book and easily passed my Physical Diagnosis class in chiropractic college. These two book also served as excellent references for Parts II, III and IV of the national chiropractic boards. I also found Dr. Leonardi's National Board of Chiropractic Part II Study Guide: Key Review Questions and Answers, to be an excellent source for the boards. I also found Leonardi's Part III Study Guide and Part IV study guides to be right on the mark. These books helped me with passing the boards. Bates Book is needed as a great building block for learning Physical Examination--Heart, head and Neck, Chest and lungs, abdomen etc.

This is an excellent and thorough text on the physical exam. The only problem is that its based on "the way things have always been done" instead of emerging controlled trials evaluating H+P techniques objectively. You might consider purchasing one of the new evidence-based medicine physical exam texts that are beginning to pop up (Ask your docs about recommendations). Preview them first, because not all of them teach the actual techniques or present the differential diagnosis of findings as well as Bates. They do, however, actually include numbers (percentages, Likelihood ratios, etc) to tell you how sensitive and specific (read how useful) these methods really are. These numbers will be critical to you later in evidence-based practice (which is not what all physicians now practice) in order to determine the pre- and post-test (lab, X-ray, etc.) probabilities of your differential diagnoses.
Buying an evidence-based text now would save you from having to buy both like I did.

This book was written for no one in mind. It reads as a single run-on sentence from page one to the end. You cannot learn physical exam from it (or from any other book -- you simply have to practice) and Bates is a rather mediocre reference if you need to find out how to examine this or that.

Physical exam is a dying art and I'm yet to find a semi-decent modern text on the subject.

I am a first year medical student and use this book in our physical diagnosis course. I found this book easy to read with good illustrations. Diagrams were useful in understanding the text. I found the heart sounds CD to be extremely useful in understanding the cardiac cycle and how it relates to heart murmurs. I haven't seen other physical diagnosis textbooks but I can say that this one is very user friendly.

This book at one time was good I am told, but the 8th edition (2002) is now outdated with many errors. The CD on heart sounds which is included is insulting to medical students. The book has terrible photographs which make the patients look jaundiced or cyanotic. I am sorry I bought it. There is no question that Swartz's book on physical diagnosis is the best. Swartz has a great free CD on the complete physical exam which is included with the book.