Micro

[DireWolf]

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Our school did not spend any time going over Micro diagnoses (i.e. which agar plate is used to grow this bug).

I did see a fair number of these questions on some question banks. Anyone know if this is high yield information for COMLEX and/or USMLE?

I would have to spend a decent chunk of time learning it since we never had to learn it for class. 😡

 

[DrSmiles]

Here is the info I received from administration at my school regarding board breakdown for subjects:

For the COMLEX:
15% pharm
15% OMM
15% MICRO
13% path
10% physio
10% anatomy
and the rest of the subjects were about evenly distributed in the remaining 22%

For the USMLE:
15% biochem
15% pharm
11% MICRO
11% path
11% physio
and the rest of the subjects were about evenly distributed in the remaining percentage

 

[Stinger86]

I really don't think you're going to be given a plate and asked what organism is grown on it, or vice versa. However, some questions might include plating (or other diagnostic techniques) in addition to other key information to help you answer the question, so any general knowledge you might have about it can only help you.

 

[Kosmo]

I concur with Stinger on this one. I'm not sure if I'd define learning the different agar types as 'high yield' but there are a few questions on the real deal where you'd know the answer right off the bat if you knew that stuff. But if you otherwise know micro inside and out you can usually deduce the answer w/o knowing what kind of agar the culture grew on.

 

[12R34Y]

Our school's breakdown is that 50% is path and path-related stuff.

our school has used the grade on path shelf every year to correlate to step 1 success and it is the only shelf that does that.

just fyi.

we have a prof who remediates folks for the usmle step 1 and they ONLY study micro, pharm, path and physio and do NOT study biochem, anatomy, embryo etc....and they usually all pass.

later