I was in the same boat as the OP not really knowing the structures of the viruses very well. I just took my test yesterday and I'd say that if you do what I did, that should be ample for virology on Step 1. As is common knowledge, virology isn't overly emphasized, so studying it requires prioritizing the most impt viruses and if not for the boards, at least for what we'll see on the wards/practice. So anyway, in 4 steps here is what I did:
1. Getting down the positive stranded RNA viruses is what I took to be the main priority as it has the most viruses that I remembered studying in school.
2. then the most important negative stranded viruses are either orthomyxo or paramyxo. Orthomyxo is easy (only flu), and PaRaMyxo is easy once you have that "PRM" mnemonic down. Both have the word "mix" which I took to mean "mixed" up RNA, therefore negative stranded.
3. Then slowly I added to it, such as Reovirus being the major dsRNA viruses, and then taking the most major viruses and working down from there adding to it trying to fit some dumb mnemonic to help me remember as I saw the viruses come up in kaplan Q's. Just FYI, those random encephalitis viruses were the last thing I even attempted to fit in to my scheme.
4. I also wrote down all of the microbio mnemonics in 1st Aid on a sheet of paper as I was studying, that way I could do a quick reference anytime I was studying, like if a bug/virus came up during path study, I would take 30sec to try to remember as much as I could about it.
Hope this helps, good luck!
