Working Through Mccurnins in Practice
The 10th edition shifted a few things from the 9th, and honestly some of those changes create more confusion than they solve. The biggest one is how they handle dosage calculations in the pharmacology chapters. They moved away from the straightforward formula presentations and started embedding calculations inside case studies without clearly separating the math from the clinical reasoning. I spent three hours last semester trying to figure out why a student kept getting the wrong dose on a fentanyl CRI question. Turns out the problem wasn't her math. It was that the book changed the patient weight in the case study mid-problem from 4.2 kilograms to 4.5 kilograms without updating the answer key. That kind of thing happens a handful of times across the entire text. You just have to catch it. It covers the same core curriculum as every other VTNE review text on the market. Pharmacology, restraint, laboratory procedures, anesthesia, nursing care, small animal medicine, surgery, dentistry, emergency care, and practice management. The difference with this edition is that they tried to make it more clinical from page one. Instead of dry definitions followed by examples, each chapter opens with a case that runs through the whole thing. It works reasonably well for retention but it makes lookups slower if you just need to find a reference value or a drug dosing range quickly. I use it as my primary reference when I'm building lecture slides for a vet tech program. For that purpose the indexing is adequate but not great. The appendix section with normal lab values is useful but it's scattered across multiple chapters rather than collected in one place. I ended up making my own compiled sheet of reference ranges because flipping between chapters costs about two minutes per lookup and in a timed exam situation those minutes add up fast.
The downloadable resources that come with the 10th edition are minimal compared to the 9th. The test bank got trimmed. The image library lost several high-quality radiograph examples. If you're relying on supplementary materials for study purposes you'll want to pair this with a separate question bank or flashcard set. The textbook itself doesn't include enough practice questions to stand alone for VTNE prep. One thing beginners consistently miss is how the text handles drug classifications. They organize many drugs by therapeutic use rather than by chemical class. A student looking up acepromazine under sedatives will find it immediately. But if they're searching for phenothiazine derivatives they won't find a dedicated section for that. The cross-referencing exists in the index but it's easy to overlook. I had a student fail a quiz question because she couldn't locate acepromazine's entry under the classification she expected. I told her to stop trusting the chapter order and start using the index and the appendices as her primary navigation tools instead. That cut her study time roughly in half. Another counter-intuitive thing about this book is the anesthesia section. The 10th edition puts a heavier emphasis on monitoring parameters and equipment setups than the previous version did, which is good for the VTNE. But the wiring diagrams for vaporizers and circle absorbers are still simplified to the point where they don't match actual clinical equipment in most teaching hospitals. The diagrams show idealized systems. In practice you'll deal with variable bypass vaporizers that behave differently depending on temperature and flow rate. The textbook doesn't cover that nuance at all. I supplement that section with videos from our equipment vendor and hands-on time with the actual machines before the students take their practical exams.
The textbook does have real weaknesses. The nursing care chapters are padded with content that doesn't appear on the VTNE. Sections on client communication and practice management sometimes run five to seven pages for topics that could be covered in two. The editing is inconsistent. Some chapters have recent references from 2023 and 2024 while adjacent chapters cite sources from 2018. That matters less for general concepts but it matters a lot in infectious disease and zoonosis sections where guidelines change frequently. If you're studying parvovirus or leptospirosis protocols don't trust every recommendation in the book without cross-checking against current AVMA or AAHA guidelines. The cost is another factor. This edition runs around ninety dollars for the hardcover and roughly seventy for the PDF if you go through the publisher's portal. The spiral-bound version is slightly cheaper at around eighty. The student version without access codes saves you about twenty-five dollars and honestly it's the smarter buy unless you need the online quizzes. The access code content is mostly redundant with what's in the chapters anyway. I've seen too many students pay extra for online materials they never actually use. If you're trying to learn something specific from this book faster, here's what actually works. Read the chapter objective list first. It tells you exactly what they expect you to know. Then go straight to the case study at the beginning of the chapter and work through it before reading the text. When you hit the detailed sections you'll already know what you're looking for. Highlight or flag anything that relates back to the case. The material sticks better that way because you're connecting facts to a clinical scenario instead of memorizing isolated data points. It takes maybe ten extra minutes upfront but it saves you about forty-five minutes during review sessions later.
Get the Full Details
For the dosage calculation sections, work through every example problem manually before you look at the answer. The book includes answers in the back but showing your work on scrap paper forces you to catch unit conversion mistakes. Milligrams to micrograms trips up more students than any other single error type. I see it on nearly every exam I proctor. There's no single download link for the full textbook that's legal, and I'm not going to point you toward anything unauthorized. The publisher sells it directly and so do the major academic resellers. If cost is a real barrier your school's library likely has a copy you can use for the semester. Some programs also keep a department copy that students can access in the lab. It's not ideal for individual study but it's free and it covers everything in the book. The 10th edition is solid for its purpose but it's not flawless. The clinical case format is a genuine improvement for engagement. The organization is functional if a bit messy in places. The reference material is dependable once you learn where to find it. Just don't treat it as the only resource you need. Pair it with current guidelines, practice question banks, and hands-on lab experience and you'll be fine.
