The idea for the book was conceived after problem based learning was introduced to the medical school curriculum to integrate basic sciences with clinical sciences. Teaching of the basic sciences, however, still appeared to be separate from the clinical sciences, and the PBL scenarios covered only limited aspects of basic science relevant to particular clinical conditions. There was clearly a need for a textbook that integrated clinical sciences with the basic sciences that underpinned the clinical phenomena.
The challenge was to help students to understand how clinical phenomena could be explained by basic physiological processes, and disordered physiology results in disease. It was also necessary to include all the systems in one book, to avoid the tedium of sourcing information from a variety of texts. A further important aim was that the explanations should be simple, but thorough, with the balance of detail to breadth appropriate to the medial student. The text also had to be clear and easy to ready.
Many of the chapters were authored by SMD academics. In addition to the co-editors, these contributions came from Paola Domizio, Joy Hinson, Adrian Newland, David Kelsell, Drew Provan, Armine Sefton and Lesley Robson. Walter Wieczorek, Mark Holness, Mary Sugden, Andrew Archbold (Consultant Cardiologist, Barts Health NHS Trust, Alistair Chesser and Girish Namagondlul (Consultant Nephrologists, Royal London).
The book has been adopted as core text in a number of medical schools across the UK, in Australia and New Zealand. It also recommended reading for courses other than medicine, such as dentistry, podiatry, biomedical sciences and pharmacy.
The BMA Medical Book Awards take place annually and award prizes in 21 categories to recognise outstanding contributions to medical literature.
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