First Aid book now or later

[btuck]

Hi everyone!

I will be starting medical school in a few weeks and am wondering - should I get the First Aid USMLE prep book now, or wait until the 2019 version comes out. Is it helpful to have during M1 or is it better to wait until M2 when I can get the newer version.

Any advice is much appreciated.

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[trobinsonmd]

FA is a review book, so it is kind of useless to have right now, as you will not know most of the stuff that is in the book. I personally would not get it right now. Some of my classmates would disagree... they would use it as a way to supplement their studying for exams because it does a good job of summarizing topics... I didn't like using it because it did not go in depth enough for exams.

 

[Isoval]

I’ve picked up a cheap 5$ old edition in case I want to thumb through alongside courses and will pick up a new, current version before I take my boards.

 

[getdown]

I think this actually is a very reasonable thing to do. Get the FA book and follow along with your classes and make annotations and notes along side it. Do this for both years and you'll have a single reference book to study for STEP1. Like someone mentioned above, the FA is a review book and isn't supposed to go into detail so you add your own notes to it. It assumes that you have the background material needed to understand its lists. It's also useful since FA will have mnemonics and easy to understand charts and tables of the stuff you'll see in class.

One thing to note is that FA is not that useful in MS1 year since STEP1 is heavily geared towards MS2 material (pathology, pathophys, pharm, micro, etc). The only thing worth remembering from first year is physiology, anatomy and some biochem. Everything else is pretty much useless.

 

[MerYangBey]

I bought 2. One at the beginning of 1st year and one in January of second year. There were definitely some updates.

In first year I found it helpful to just see what was included in FA. As in if we were covering glycogen storage diseases in class then I would glance at the corresponding page in FA to see if we covered all that they had there.
Additionally used it as a quick review or reference.

 

[AnatomyGrey12]

Our curriculum is systems based and we did 4 systems this last semester. I bought a FA 2017 at the beginning of first year and it came in handy during my systems courses as it’s a solid place to review material. The book is cheap, I’d buy one to peruse MS1, and then buy 2019 when you start looking at board studying in MS2

 

[Dagrimsta1]

Don’t need it, buy it mid/end of MS1. You’ll have enough to do as is.

 

[The Knife & Gun Club]

First aids a nice resource if your schools curriculum matches what’s in it (most do).

I’d get an old one then buy the new one the year you take step.

It has some great stuff for biochem, Immunology, and microbiology so it’s useful for first year. It’s kind of useless for anatomy though

 

[Lannister]

I bought First Aid right away when I started M1. It's helpful if your school has NBME exams.

As I was prepping for step I mostly used a PDF of the 2017 version, until the very last two weeks of dedicated when I read through the 2018 version in its entirety. They were more or less the same, they just moved things around and added a few new pieces of information. So I really don't think it matters if you get the current version vs waiting for 2019.