Is First Aid Biochemistry enough for Step One: Please comment

[GreekPre-Med]

So biochemistry for me was difficult in my first year of medical school.
I picked up a few board biochem books, but as I was paging through them I wanted to ask you who have taken the boards to help me out by answering a few questions:

Was first aid enough?
Were questions more about specific enzymes in a pathway or more about pathology?
Do you wish you would have studied more or less for biochemistry?



Thank you
GreekPre-Med

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[lord_jeebus]

Enough if you're not shooting for a very high score.

 

[Law2Doc]

So biochemistry for me was difficult in my first year of medical school.
I picked up a few board biochem books, but as I was paging through them I wanted to ask you who have taken the boards to help me out by answering a few questions:

Was first aid enough?
Were questions more about specific enzymes in a pathway or more about pathology?
Do you wish you would have studied more or less for biochemistry?



Thank you
GreekPre-Med

Biochem is one of the most heavilly tested of the first year courses. FA is fine to review from if you already have a good handle on biochem, but because it is really just outline form with a few enzymatic cycle diagrams, it isn't something you can sit down and learn the subject from if you are weak in it. In many cases, FA is a more useful a resource if you use it as a place to jot down notes from other resources. I would devote a couple of days of working through a good biochem board resource. As lord_jebus indicates, biochem (along with micro, path, pathophys and pharm) is a course that should probably be deemed high yield in terms of scoring well.

 

[hinduluv]

FA biochem is a good outline, I used lippincotts illustrated review to fill in the gaps and made my own study sheets. IMO fa does the worst with biochem. First thing first, there were a lot of biochem mistakes in 2007 so make sure you get online and find the official mistake page.

hluv.

 

[drblueshades]

I actually attend a medical school (Columbia) that DOESN'T TEACH BIOCHEM. At all. Guess they needed to free up a few more hours for Eric Kandel or something. They just assume we know all of the material coming in, which is not true, and offer a few optional metabolism workshops. Is there a good resource out there for learning biochem independently? I have a decent background in biochem from classes back at my undergrad school, but probably not to the level of the USMLE. If there's a book you'd recommend, I'd love to hear about it!!!

 

[Mantis05753]

Lippincott's Biochem book is very good, explains things very clearly

 

[DragonWell]

I would also recommend Rapid Review Biochem - co-authored by everyone's favorite pathologist.

 

[Phallacious]

DON'T LISTEN TO THESE OVERACHIEVERS!


First Aid is the way to go for Biochem. They don't care about every single reaction, just the key steps and the BIG PICTURE and DISEASES caused by them.

some examples:

i.e. what reactions require biotin, B12, folate.

what drugs interfere w/ ox phos?

20 y.o. w/ degenerative joint disease? Homocysteinuria




bla bla bla.

First aid is ABSOLUTELY The way to go for Biochem. Just learn the reaction they tell you to know.

Otherwise, you can waste a lot of time worrying about anomeric carbons and stupid crap like that.

 

[drblueshades]

Thanks for the helpful comments. I'll definitely look at the online errata for First Aid 2007 (probably won't buy the '08) and focus on those reactions and diseases. Maybe Rapid Review would help as well; we'll see.

 

[DreamRavyn]

If you need something for school and have the luxury of time Lippincott's is supposed to be very good (everyone around here used it to supplement our class). However, when push came to shove and it was studying time for StepI, I used Rapid Review - it had everything that I needed and I don't regret it for a second.

Regarding getting a good score, highest yield is definitely pathology as described in FA - so if you only had 1 day of biochem to study (which I have no idea why anyone would only schedule one day - but let's pretend), definitely go after that to know those things down cold. If you have 4 days, go after all that is in FA. If you're a genius, memorize Lippincott's - the rest of us will chill with Goljan ...

 

[Terpskins99]

DON'T LISTEN TO THESE OVERACHIEVERS!

First Aid is the way to go for Biochem. They don't care about every single reaction, just the key steps and the BIG PICTURE and DISEASES caused by them.

some examples:
i.e. what reactions require biotin, B12, folate.

what drugs interfere w/ ox phos?
20 y.o. w/ degenerative joint disease? Homocysteinuria

bla bla bla.

First aid is ABSOLUTELY The way to go for Biochem. Just learn the reaction they tell you to know.

Otherwise, you can waste a lot of time worrying about anomeric carbons and stupid crap like that.

Phallacious' advice is coming from someone that clearly didn't use any of the textbooks listed by previous posters. "Anomeric carbon"? I personally used Lippincotts, Rapid Review ( <-- coauthored by stupid crap writer Edward Goljan) and Kaplan Biochem... and I can vouch that all of them were very useful (and practical) for board prep. Keep in mind, I didn't read them all cover to cover though (except for Kaplan Biochem) nor do I recommend doing so. Use them to iron out particular topics in biochemistry you have trouble with. For example: I always got confused with the porphyrias... I went ahead and used Lippincotts to clear that up. Topics like glycolysis and kreb cycle, Kaplan Biochem was sufficient.

You want to know key enzymes, intermediates, cofactors (very few of them actually) and major substrates. And of course, you need to identify the presentation of the disease should anything go wrong along with appropriate medical intervention. For a lot of people, it helps to draw out the pathway to understand how everything works. Yes, this can take time... but imo, it is worthwhile to do so and helps make all the information stick.