Microbiology Resource overload.

uNiq1 · Apr 10, 2012

Hey all,
I took micro a long time ago and I went to class/took notes when most of my fellow classmates had already stopped. Our lectures weren't very well taught and I don't remember much, if at all. I hung on mainly because I was always a lecture person and it took a while for me to let go.

What I would like to ask of you all is what is a good way to re-learn micro?
My level of understanding = I can recognize the names of bacteria and viruses and remember a few things here and there but I always feel that micro is my weakest subject. No idea about the protozoa/parasites.

Anyway I have access to Kaplan HY lectures (the new stuff) and also to the 2010 Kaplan lectures (much longer ones)
My friend said she'd let me borrow the "MICROCARDs" if I need them.

About me: I'm thorough in what I learn and try to get almost 100% of the source I'm using (sorta compulsive in a sense). I feel the 2010 kaplan videos may be too long for me to review because it is very long and detailed.

Does anyone know a good review product that will cover me for the boards in terms of both learning the bugs and understanding the disease process they create (i.e. not just memorizing Staph Aureus's virulence factors but really understanding how it causes the clinical picture it does)

I'm open to anything.

I also have FA general principles and CMMRS however I don't know when I'll have time for any of it. I need to find one or two sources to focus on.

As always thanks for reading and I appreciate your advice.

lookmanohands · Apr 10, 2012

Go with the default. Focus on memorizing First Aid and UWorld will quickly fill in any gaps. At the end of the day, are you really going to remember every last minute details about every bug? No, so just use your time on the absolute most high yield information unless you have more time to spare which does not sound like your case. If you were thorough the first time, things should come back as you review. CMMRS is something you read at a leisurely pace during the year to learn the bugs for the first time so that some mnemonics and pictures stick in your head. I would not review with that book and their charts are overkill IMO. Kaplan takes too long listening to the woman tell stories about catching or knowing someone who has caught every bug imaginable. I did not like DIT for micro and stopped Kaplan High Yield a few minutes in because it was not time effective at all. If anything, borrow your friend's microcards, read the front of the card to see how the bugs are presented clinically, then go into first aid and memorize those facts, then hit up UWorld

shan564 · Apr 10, 2012

Microcards have a great reputation (mine should be arriving tomorrow), but if you're a 100% type of person, then First Aid will have everything you need. If you try to learn everything in the Microcards, you'll end up investing more time than you need to invest.

uNiq1 · Apr 10, 2012

shan564 said:
Microcards have a great reputation (mine should be arriving tomorrow), but if you're a 100% type of person, then First Aid will have everything you need. If you try to learn everything in the Microcards, you'll end up investing more time than you need to invest.

I feel that FA may have everything but I'm more of a I need to understand it via concept than blindly memorize kind of person.

dr seuss · Apr 10, 2012

uNiq1 said:
I feel that FA may have everything but I'm more of a I need to understand it via concept than blindly memorize kind of person.

That's how I am too and micro is my worst subject because it seems like all straight memorization.

shan564 · Apr 10, 2012

Yeah, that's the problem with micro. The concepts are all fairly basic, but you can't be conceptual when the question is asking you to identify a particular virus based on its shape, symmetry, etc. You just have to memorize it.

And that's why I suck at micro too.

lookmanohands · Apr 10, 2012

uNiq1 said:
I feel that FA may have everything but I'm more of a I need to understand it via concept than blindly memorize kind of person.

I thought you were trying to give the impression that you were short on time. If you have plenty of time and want to understand concepts, then use Lange Review of Microbiology. You will not retain the majority of that information, but for a brief moment you'll understand why something is going on.

Munchen · Apr 10, 2012

lookmanohands said:
I thought you were trying to give the impression that you were short on time. If you have plenty of time and want to understand concepts, then use Lange Review of Microbiology. You will not retain the majority of that information, but for a brief moment you'll understand why something is going on.

I second this. Lange Review of Mircobiology is really good but it can be time consuming.

uNiq1 · Apr 10, 2012

lookmanohands said:
I thought you were trying to give the impression that you were short on time. If you have plenty of time and want to understand concepts, then use Lange Review of Microbiology. You will not retain the majority of that information, but for a brief moment you'll understand why something is going on.

Is there not a happy medium where explanations are given for just the HY things but not for literally everything?

shan564 · Apr 10, 2012

uNiq1 said:
Is there not a happy medium where explanations are given for just the HY things but not for literally everything?

You could try Clinical Microbiology Made Ridiculously Simple. Or Microcards.

uNiq1 · Apr 11, 2012

Looked at first 4 kaplan HY lectures. They're barebones but not bad. I'm supplementing the bug details a little bc I find them lacking. I guess I was hoping for something like Baby gets botulinum from honey. Adults can get it from spoiled canned good. But I also wanted the reason i.e. babies ingest the organism and since their GI tracts aren't fully developed in terms of flora the organism can flourish, make toxins, enter blood -- floppy baby. For adults the organism grows in the canned food, makes the toxin under the anaerobic conditions (get the deformed can from gas production), and finally you ingest the preformed toxin in adults to get the sx of dystonia, dysphonia, diplopia progressing to respiratory failure etc. I find I remember it better with the background like that.

AndyRSC · Apr 11, 2012

I was right there in the same boat as you, uNiq, when I was starting board prep. My school has no lectures at all, so it fell to me to teach it to myself. I overcompensated by investing much more time in it than I should have, but it went from being my weakest subject to my strongest. Here's what I can tell you of the sources out there:

FA is, of course, the highest-yield compilation of facts. The downside is the one you've already mentioned - without a firm foundation, those facts are fodder for rote memorization. If you don't remember much of micro, I would start with a book that paints a good, broad picture of the general principles. Once you have the foundation down, you could abandon it and use FA to learn high-yield facts about individual bacteria, but since you have a tendency to get 100% of the story, you could continue using it as a cohesive that fills in the gaps and holds the isolated FA facts together.

The candidates for that secondary source could be a textbook or review book. I know it's not feasible to read a textbook at this point, but if you already have a decent one purchased, I'd consider using it just for the general principles. I used Schaecter's, which is lengthy, but very good. As far as review books, CMMRS probably tops the list. If you've opened yours, you probably already know whether you like it or not. It's rather aloof and its menmonics are geared towards visual learners, but it covers the subject fairly well, especially in combination with FA. It took me about 5 days to read it cover-to-cover. As for books I haven't read, I've heard good and bad things about BRS and RR Micro, but uniformly great things about Levinson's Review of Medical Microbiology and Immunology. It's supposed to be lengthy but excellent, and provides top-notch practice questions reflective of the Step.

You've already mentioned that Kaplan videos are too much, and I second that. The material is rather muddled, slow-paced, and, as someone already mentioned, laced with personal stories and irrelevance. I tried to get through them once and gave up rather quickly.

As far as questions go, UW is the equivalent of FA, hitting the high-yields but lacking the quantity of questions for full coverage of the subject. Kaplan has some overlap with UW, but also asks many questions on esoteric and exotic bugs (which may be a good thing, since those are the questions USMLE loves). I haven't used USMLERx, but it should reinforce the FA high-yields. Another question book I used is Lippincott's Illustrated Q&A Review of Microbiology and Immunology. Like Kaplan, it has a tendency to test the exotic, but it's laden with images and asks tough second- and third-order questions; if you can get through it and score halfway decent, you know your ****.

Microcards are good, but as others have already mentioned they're very dense. Appropriately named, they're written in a microscopic font, contain choke-full of information you'll never be required to know, are at times poorly organized, and don't contain all the high-yield facts that appear in FA/UW. Moreover, the clinical cases they present give away the answer on top of the card rather than test you. They serve more as a review book without general principles rather than a reinforcement tool.

Lastly, I've put up a study guide sometime ago, which you can find here:
http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showthread.php?t=885861
It's an abbreviated compilation of bug facts. Not something I'd spend time on until you're done with your primary sources, but could be a good late-night skim, since I've highlighted all the high-yield facts that have appeared in qbanks, school exams, and on boards.

uNiq1 · Apr 11, 2012

AndyRSC said:
I was right there in the same boat as you, uNiq, when I was starting board prep. My school has no lectures at all, so it fell to me to teach it to myself. I overcompensated by investing much more time in it than I should have, but it went from being my weakest subject to my strongest. Here's what I can tell you of the sources out there:

FA is, of course, the highest-yield compilation of facts. The downside is the one you've already mentioned - without a firm foundation, those facts are fodder for rote memorization. If you don't remember much of micro, I would start with a book that paints a good, broad picture of the general principles. Once you have the foundation down, you could abandon it and use FA to learn high-yield facts about individual bacteria, but since you have a tendency to get 100% of the story, you could continue using it as a cohesive that fills in the gaps and holds the isolated FA facts together.

The candidates for that secondary source could be a textbook or review book. I know it's not feasible to read a textbook at this point, but if you already have a decent one purchased, I'd consider using it just for the general principles. I used Schaecter's, which is lengthy, but very good. As far as review books, CMMRS probably tops the list. If you've opened yours, you probably already know whether you like it or not. It's rather aloof and its menmonics are geared towards visual learners, but it covers the subject fairly well, especially in combination with FA. It took me about 5 days to read it cover-to-cover. As for books I haven't read, I've heard good and bad things about BRS and RR Micro, but uniformly great things about Levinson's Review of Medical Microbiology and Immunology. It's supposed to be lengthy but excellent, and provides top-notch practice questions reflective of the Step.

You've already mentioned that Kaplan videos are too much, and I second that. The material is rather muddled, slow-paced, and, as someone already mentioned, laced with personal stories and irrelevance. I tried to get through them once and gave up rather quickly.

As far as questions go, UW is the equivalent of FA, hitting the high-yields but lacking the quantity of questions for full coverage of the subject. Kaplan has some overlap with UW, but also asks many questions on esoteric and exotic bugs (which may be a good thing, since those are the questions USMLE loves). I haven't used USMLERx, but it should reinforce the FA high-yields. Another question book I used is Lippincott's Illustrated Q&A Review of Microbiology and Immunology. Like Kaplan, it has a tendency to test the exotic, but it's laden with images and asks tough second- and third-order questions; if you can get through it and score halfway decent, you know your ****.

Microcards are good, but as others have already mentioned they're very dense. Appropriately named, they're written in a microscopic font, contain choke-full of information you'll never be required to know, are at times poorly organized, and don't contain all the high-yield facts that appear in FA/UW. Moreover, the clinical cases they present give away the answer on top of the card rather than test you. They serve more as a review book without general principles rather than a reinforcement tool.

Lastly, I've put up a study guide sometime ago, which you can find here:
http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showthread.php?t=885861
It's an abbreviated compilation of bug facts. Not something I'd spend time on until you're done with your primary sources, but could be a good late-night skim, since I've highlighted all the high-yield facts that have appeared in qbanks, school exams, and on boards.

Hey Andy,
Thanks for your awesome reply. I've already found your notes (SDN search pops them up right away). For now I've settled on damage control which means the kaplan HY for a very light and basic framework and then I'll be using medfools.com's notes to fill in details of every bug as I hit it. I'll end it with your notes while all the time trying to look for some helpful info that explains things along the way. I'll look at FA too but that's probably the final pick up any pieces left over pass. I type notes for everything into onenote so FA will serve to add in the holes.

On a side note your document (or one of you "update" posts) says moraxella catarrhalis is a G-ive rod. Wikipedia says: the Moraxella Family is made of G-ive coccobacilli and an exception is Catarrhalis which is actually a G-ive diplocci (like neisseria).

Thanks again,
-Ghazi

AndyRSC · Apr 11, 2012

Yep, a bit later in the thread I posted a follow-up:

AndyRSC said:
Also a quick update to the notes: Moraxella catarrhalis is a Gram-negative coccus (sometimes diplococci), so be careful not to confuse it with Neisseria, especially if pneumonia, otitis media, or exacerbation of COPD is being talked about. I'm pretty sure it made an appearance on one of my boards.

Microbiology Resource overload.

uNiq1

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lookmanohands

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shan564

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dr seuss

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lookmanohands

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