Microbiology

[NRAI2001]

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Is First Aid enough? FA is really short and doesnt have a huge amount of detail to it... is it really enough? Should we supplement FA micro with something else?? My gut feeling is telling me FA falls just barely short of what we should know.. like if it had an extra layer of details/info it would be suffice??

 

[IMGUSMLEStep1]

I would have to agree with you. For the most part, First Aid covers Micro well, but sometimes I felt that a bit more detail would have made it complete. You could skim CMMRS, especially the mnemonics and pictures.

 

[mongrel]

I thought FA micro was definitely enough my exam. But you know the corollary that always comes with that statement-- you have to know it word for word COLD.

 

[PokerDoc]

add in UW and it should be enough..

CMMRS is good if you got a lot of time for your exam.. it takes a few days to read that book

 

[Tourterm]

While the FA micro section has most everything, it doesn't really explain much of it. I tend to view FA micro as more of a loose framework to be filled in by other sources. The algorithms, various culture requirements, special staining, cAMP inducers, and all the other general stuff they cover before they get into the specifics of the bugs themselves is great though.

CMMRS and plenty of UW and Kaplan questions are what will help the most though. Also, one resources I really liked was Microcards. It lists almost everything you need to know, and has a classic clinical presentation of the bug. This helped so much during the exam and practice questions. Rather then annotate FA, I annotated the cards instead.

This is also great for remembering the various RNA viruses.

 

[badasshairday]

FA micro section is very good. Supplemented with RRpath's bug lists and UWORLD, you should be money.

Make sure you read FA micro section a few times to pretty much memorize it. It is very high yield. I read it like 3 or 4 times. The last time I read it was the day before my exam, just because there is a lot of small things to remember, definitely think it was very helpful.