Is it useful to go through First Aid as an MS1?

[KLycos]

As I'm going through biochem and pharm now, would it be of any use to glance at those sections in First Aid and use it as a study guide? My roommates have a few older copies lying around from when they were studying for Step 1.

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[Etorphine]

Not even worth it at this stage.

 

[sylvanthus]

No absolutely not. What you should be doing at this point is learning everything you can that your school gives you. If you start doing FA now you run the risk of assuming things are not important unless they are in FA and then your overall knowledge will be lacking.

FA is a review book, learn the material first and THEN review it.

 

[SpecterGT260]

I think FA is good for summing up systems pharm. I use it each test after I'm done reviewing. Lots of good mnemonics

 

[Charles_Carmichael]

I found it useful for biochem (lots of mnemonics and quick summaries). I didn't use it for anything else. YMMV.

Edit: Wanted to add that I didn't use it as a primary source. I used it mainly to quickly review stuff a few days before the exams.

 

[thepoopologist]

It's not that useful for anything but review. I had a ton of ****ty lecturers, what I really wish I'd done is get the Kaplan videos earlier than I did and skip all those classes. Oh well.

 

[coreytayloris]

It's not that useful for anything but review. I had a ton of ****ty lecturers, what I really wish I'd done is get the Kaplan videos earlier than I did and skip all those classes. Oh well.

this.

Kaplan is all you need to get through Medical school.

As Cnrad Fischer says, medical schools have lost the edge and are no longer at the forefront of delivering medical education. Kaplan is ahead of the medical schools when it comes to education.

all you need to know is in those 8 kaplan step 1 books, and 6 kaplan step 2 books.

 

[sylvanthus]

Hell, they could get rid of the first two years of medical school and replace it with something like kaplan videos and books (not necessarily all kaplan) and the vast majority of us would be totally fine. Tuition would drop significantly as wed be paying kaplan a couple grand a year and buying books on our own instead of spending 40k to an actual medical school.

 

[sylvanthus]

Also, we would all be on equal footing, no more "you went to this crappy medical school so you're at the bottom of our list" or "omg omg Haaarrvaarrrdddd". Could also take subject exams from time to time and have it be on our "transcript." I just can't see paying this much money to a medical school when we do nearly everything on our own.

 

[SpecterGT260]

Nobody cares about pre clinical anyways. Doing that on your own doesbt really mean anything.

 

[viper930]

Surprised at the number of people saying it's not worth it to look at FA as an M1. I think you should be annotating your FA throughout your M1-M2 years so that when the time comes to study, your FA is ready and you're not going through it for the first (or hopefully even second) time.

 

[Fox800]

My school seems to hit on a lot of the stuff that First Aid emphasizes. I'll use it in the last days leading up to a test to be sure I have the really high yield stuff down cold. Worked great for the last neuro test, and worked decently for biochem. I have a feeling it will be really good for cardiopulm when we start that in a few weeks.

 

[sylvanthus]

Surprised at the number of people saying it's not worth it to look at FA as an M1. I think you should be annotating your FA throughout your M1-M2 years so that when the time comes to study, your FA is ready and you're not going through it for the first (or hopefully even second) time.

I don't think an M1 would know what to annotate into it. Itd be filled with a bunch of useless minutiae.

 

[Planes2Doc]

I heard that if a certain class in your pre-clinicals is "lacking" in terms of preparing you for the USMLE, then the supplemental books might be helpful. I have quite a few hand-me-down books, but given the amount of work I have already, I haven't had time to crack them open yet! I did, however, look at the Histology-World website which is technically supposed to be used for USMLE preparation, and it directly paralleled what we were doing in class. So if you have the time, check out these resources, it can't hurt.

 

[Dr McSexy]

I used FA during M1 and M2 to review mnemonics or quick details before exams. I also used FA to review material before the NBME shelf exams.

I think annotating it at such an early time would be pretty pointless as far giving you the edge for step 1. On the other-hand, I suppose if it helps you remember the minutiae you'll be tested on your classes and you've got the time to waste...

Classes tend to delve much deeper into details than what you really need. I essentially ended up only annotating some of the explanations or facts from qbanks and maybe a few other selecting things. That was mostly during dedicated study time or during the spring of M2.

 

[evilbooyaa]

There is no point of annotating FA as a first year. You will put way too much detail and be unable to come back in 2nd year and put things that you should actually know for Step 1. If you asked me specific enzyme names for the Krebs Cycle during Step 1, I would've just laughed and moved on. If I had FA as a M1, I'd have annotated FA full of all that worthless crap.

 

[SpecterGT260]

There is no point of annotating FA as a first year. You will put way too much detail and be unable to come back in 2nd year and put things that you should actually know for Step 1. If you asked me specific enzyme names for the Krebs Cycle during Step 1, I would've just laughed and moved on. If I had FA as a M1, I'd have annotated FA full of all that worthless crap.

This I would agree with. At most use FA to add to your own notes. It has nice tips, tricks, mnemonics, whatever which can be helpful at crunchtime when there are too many factoids and too few neurons to hold them

Annotating during M1 or even early M2 means only you have more time to forget what it means by the time you really need to start studying and then won't have the benefit of actually annotating then.

 

[D elegans]

I think it depends on your school's curriculum. I used FA quite a bit for review during M1 and found it to be very helpful for the exams. It certainly wasn't the primary resource though.

 

[cbrons]

I really wish I'd done is get the Kaplan videos earlier than I did and skip all those classes. Oh well.

yes but for what classes? so far as I understood, pharm and path were the only kaplan videos people are buying? or are there more?

 

[NickNaylor]

I think it depends on your school's curriculum. I used FA quite a bit for review during M1 and found it to be very helpful for the exams. It certainly wasn't the primary resource though.

Definitely depends. FA was pretty much useless with the exception of microbio (kind of). It wasn't covered in nearly enough detail for us to have passed our exams using FA exclusively.

OP, even if FA is too general, I used it as a guide for what is very important to remember and what was info that is ultimately not that important. In that respect it was helpful and focused my studying to the important stuff (often at the expense of my actual exam grades).

 

[Dr McSexy]

yes but for what classes? so far as I understood, pharm and path were the only kaplan videos people are buying? or are there more?

There's pretty much a set of kaplan videos for every basic science subject. I used the biochem, neuro, and anatomy ones for review for step 1.

 

[cbrons]

There's pretty much a set of kaplan videos for every basic science subject. I used the biochem, neuro, and anatomy ones for review for step 1.

Thx

 

[cbrons]

There's pretty much a set of kaplan videos for every basic science subject. I used the biochem, neuro, and anatomy ones for review for step 1.

... where does on get these videos? does Kaplan sell them directly?

 

[terriers]

Don't forget that the edition of First Aid changes every year. I annotated mine from the beginning of 2nd year by using questions from USMLE World to compliment each of my second year courses, so by my intensive study period I had already annotated First Aid and gone through UWorld once (did like 5-10 questions a day).

 

[PikminOC]

I can't believe how fat the First Aid has gotten. I saved it until 6 months before step 1, but by then it did not help me much. The advice to use it early and add your notes and mnemonics is a good one. FA isn't for everyone. It seemed very disjointed to me.

 

[evilbooyaa]

I can't believe how fat the First Aid has gotten. I saved it until 6 months before step 1, but by then it did not help me much. The advice to use it early and add your notes and mnemonics is a good one. FA isn't for everyone. It seemed very disjointed to me.

Agree with this. FA is a review book. I would never recommend someone sit down and pre-read first aid to prepare for this 1st or 2nd year of medical school. It will give you a huge headache as it is organized poorly for primary teaching. Also, it is not nearly in-depth enough to pass exams during the year, even as review source. Stick to the more detailed books, and more importantly, your school's notes/readings! I almost never had an exam question that I could not go back and find the answer to, either in the powerpoint slides of some lecture, or a reading that was assigned (for classes like bioethics/psychopathology).

Unfortunately, this ended up with us not learning some pretty basic things, especially in pharmacology (We never learned metoclopramide or octreotide, and I was going WTF when I saw it in FA and in UWorld questions for the first time. I have already mentioned it to the pharmacology director and he has since told me that they realized they had a gap in their teaching plan).

 

[Wordead]

I'll go ahead and disagree with the others...I think it's a decent idea to take the biochem and pharm sections (nothing in the organ systems, though) and annotate as you go along. I wouldn't necessarily go by what your school teaches, but annotating while you go through a review book (Lippincott's) isn't a bad idea. It'll save some time next year.

In the end this is what most people have to do anyway 2nd year, since FA is really just bare bones that you have to expand and make sure you understand. The point is that since you're a first year you have no idea what is actually useful information, but making sure you completely understand what's in the biochem section of FA is a good foundation for some aspects of 2nd year.

 

[Dr McSexy]

... where does on get these videos? does Kaplan sell them directly?

Interwebs, or ask in your class, someone might have them. Kaplan probably does sell them for thousands of dollars.

 

[ArcGurren]

I thought FA was great as a review source for some of the preclinical shelf exams, particularly for Microbiology and Biochemistry (though I still had to supplement with UW for Micro and Rapid Review for Biochem).

 

[tallman24]

I have been using fa since i started school. I annotate and take notes while i study. I find it helps as a quick refresh when exam time comes up.

 

[cbrons]

I can't believe how fat the First Aid has gotten. I saved it until 6 months before step 1, but by then it did not help me much. The advice to use it early and add your notes and mnemonics is a good one. FA isn't for everyone. It seemed very disjointed to me.

Not to mention the amount of errors. Do the publishers even edit prior to release?

 

[NickNaylor]

Not to mention the amount of errors. Do the publishers even edit prior to release?

For real... it's amazing how long the errata for the 2012 edition is. It's not like this stuff changes. You would think correcting errata as they are noted + copy/paste an constantly updated Google Doc-equivalent would prevent this from happening. It's not like things are being rephrased or explanations are being updated to be more useful. There's nothing to rephrase, and there certainly aren't any explanations.

 

[JJMrK]

Go for it. I wouldn't spend a ton of time, and a subject-specific book (BRS, etc) would probably be more useful. If you annotate now plan on buying a new copy sometime during MS2. The stuff you'll be scribbling away in there as an MS1 is not going to be helpful when studying for step 1.

 

[flodhi1]

this.

Kaplan is all you need to get through Medical school.

As Cnrad Fischer says, medical schools have lost the edge and are no longer at the forefront of delivering medical education. Kaplan is ahead of the medical schools when it comes to education.

all you need to know is in those 8 kaplan step 1 books, and 6 kaplan step 2 books.

Where can I get these Kaplan books?

 

[SpecterGT260]

stuff that has nothing to do with why specter is laughing.

I may hit you up to help me make a personalized license plate some day.

 

[PikminOC]

For real... it's amazing how long the errata for the 2012 edition is. It's not like this stuff changes. You would think correcting errata as they are noted + copy/paste an constantly updated Google Doc-equivalent would prevent this from happening. It's not like things are being rephrased or explanations are being updated to be more useful. There's nothing to rephrase, and there certainly aren't any explanations.

Those FA guys are smart. They have us write the whole book with no editing. They give us a small credit. Then they sell the book and reap the rewards off a book WE wrote.

GENIUS.