Resources

Books

First Aid

First Aid is the go-to book for Step 1. As far as a “one resource to cover them all”, First Aid is your resource. But to say that it is your “be all, end all” is false.

Pros –

  • It hits almost all the major high yield topics and points
  • Once you go through it once, then going through it twice and thrice is very quick and efficient
  • Good book for reference and a lot of space to write down extra details

Cons / Things to be aware of –

  • While FA may cover all the high yield topics, I believe that they do not go into as much detail as Step 1 will demand of you (eg. Everyone knows that acanthosis nigricans is linked to Insulin resistance, obesity etc. and everyone can identify it but would you be able to tell which layer of the skin exactly that was affected? Well this is what I mean, FA does not specify that it is the stratum spinosum and a similar questions appeared on my step 1 exam)
    • How to combat this? – well this is where uworld comes into play, which will be discussed later.
  • FA uses a lot of buzz words without necessarily describing them
    • Step 1 exam will never give you a buzz word, they will always describe it. (eg. They will never say Schiller-duvall bodies, they might say instead, eosinophilic cells around a glomerular like structure etc)
    • So if you come across a buzz word, try to write next to it, what it would look like if described (use google or anything else)
  • FA does not cover all the weird disease In great details (eg. Tuberous sclerosis, osler-weber-rendu) and these can appear on the exam
  • Genetics section is poor
  • Micro section lacks a ton of information (better to use this section as a quick run through)
    • Alternative – take notes from sketchy videos/uworld
  • Pharm sections are good, but lack some of the drugs you may see in uworld

Even though the cons list is long, the book is still pretty good as a foundation and you will often find yourself going back to it a lot. SO I would recommend you get yourself a copy and make notes in it from anything you come across.

Pathoma

Didn’t read it entirely but I watched the videos a ton and made notes straight into FA. It contains a lot of information that may not be in FA so be sure to either import them over or unbind them and add them to your FA.

It’s a good review book and summarizes things pretty well.

Especially the first couple chapters. It does it a ton better than first aid.

I mainly used it as a book I would carry around while I had errands to run or to wait for doctor’s appointment and I would read it.

Kaplan

A lot of information and a lot of pages

You can use this to elaborate on topics or to reference to other things.

High yield Embryo

If you didn’t learn embryo well in term 1 like me, then I would recommend you read this during term 5 so you can have a better understanding of it.

I thought I would read it over during my dedicated time, but that didn’t happen so I would recommend you just peruse this book and understand from it

Rapid Review Pathology

A good book (I didn’t use it but I heard good things about it)

Maham’s notes

Great for the initial stage of coming out of term 4. You are familiar with these notes, so you can easily reference them and you probably made notes on them. So keep it around when you really need to refresh your memory on a particular point.

It isn’t the best thing for step 1, but it certainly helps you with recall and the familiarity is great.

 

Uworld

The best resource by far for Step 1

Imagine having a both a textbook and a source of testing your knowledge while asking it in a way that makes you think and integrate concepts instead of just asking “what is…”

I guess it is like making flashcards of a textbook except asking you it in a way that you would be asked on the exam. So treat Uworld as a learning tool than an assessment tool.

Questions here are similar to Step 1 but that’s not the point here. They appear similar but I do not believe that it tests the same way that step 1 does, so if you find that you are scoring 50-60% on your first pass, then don’t be daunted by that.

Uworld is by all means, a source of information, especially for telling you why one answer is right and why the other is wrong. It is crucial to get into that mindset because previously, all we had to do was to memorize content and answer questions from just one particular field of study.

This time, you have to incorporate path with physio with pharm and then answer in biochemical terms. There is no course at school that we had to do this, so our method of learning material in the past cannot be the same. And for this reason, Uworld is your primary resource so that you learn to pull information from their respective fields.

Questions are constantly being added to the Qbank, so completing it twice will become more of a task than past generations who have recommended to do so. I only realized that after taking step 1 but it is by no means, undoable.

Videos

SketchyMedical

  • My “highly recommended” supplemental resource
  • I used both Micro and Pharm coupled with the annotations I made
  • Disclaimer: just because it covers everything, doesn’t always mean that you will get all the questions right. Knowing is only half the battle.
  • Even if you don’t use sketchy for the sketches to memorize the information, I would still recommend you listen to them like a lecture and make notes in your first aid since FA leaves out a lot of important micro information and some newer  information.
  • Again, Uworld will give you mostly all the information that you need to know, so always refer to that.

SketchyMicro

  • The shorter of the two versions and covers almost all of what you need to know for micro
  • SketchyMicro does a good job of taking a boring topic, or rather a tedious topic where you have to differentiate organisms based on random qualities
  • However it does take some effort since you have to watch the videos over and over again. I have probably watched some of them 10x times and still felt like I missed some of the smaller memory hooks.
  • Nevertheless in terms of its usefulness, it scores very high up there since it beats reading over the same information when you maybe tired

SketchyPharm

  • You have probably had your shock already when you realized that videos in this section are twice or even three times as long as micro section.
  • Unfortunately this section is riddled with difficulties. Sometimes sketches are too small to cover the wide array of characteristics and because multiple drugs are included, it can sometime blur the differentiating qualities of each. Sometimes you may be confused about which symbol is for which drug. Additionally, the memory hooks here range from good to mediocre at best, especially the ones that hook to a person’s name (*cough* cephalosporins *cough*) since remembering a name is the same as remembering a random drug, there is no intrinsic meaning to it. This section isn’t as cohesive as micro section since I feel as though they didn’t put much effort or had the same drive as for Micro.
  • Now for the pros. While it could be better, it still improves on some aspects that sketchy micro could have done with. Also learning so many drugs are much harder to do by reading a book than by watching videos. In addition, they include a lot of information that FA doesn’t include and which we may have learnt in pharm class. So I would still recommend using it because it makes things a lot easier for you.
  • What really took the cake for me was that some sketches included a lot of physio and that made remembering small details a lot easier, thus helping with the bridge between pharm and physio.
  • But be warned, that you must be able to invest a lot of time in watching them over and over. Luckily for you all, you can watch them during term 5 and reviewing them won’t be as difficult as compared to our term.

Pathoma Videos

  • The best way to learn pathology in my opinion.
  • I don’t need to write much on this resource because 90% of you have already used it during term 4 and can attest to how good it is.
  • My recommendation here is that you look it over during term 5 but in my experience, I didn’t really use it after term 5.
  • By then I had already made my notes and didn’t need for something to be explained again since I understood the concept and mostly just needed to remember the small details. But feel free to work it into your schedule again.
  • I did however use it numerous times for the heme section because I felt as though that section always kept slipping away from me. So you can follow suit by making a list of the topics that always slip by you and you can always watch those videos again

 

Kaplan Videos (On Demand videos from 2010)

  • Order of most useful in my opinion
    • Physio > Biochem (Turco) > Some specific anatomy/embryo > Epidemiology > Immuno > the rest (Micro, Path, Pharm unnecessary)
  • I have used some of these videos throughout my time at SGU and they proved to be very useful
  • Never mind that they are becoming somewhat old, some of them are incredibly useful in explaining topics to you so you feel like you can make connections and not memorize things wholesale.
  • In my personal experience, I tried memorizing biochem a lot since in term 1 I never put in the time to learn it, so after trying various methods and mnemonics to memorize the material, I decided to try these out 2 weeks before my exam. Looking back, my only regret was not doing it sooner, and making notes in my FA. Nevertheless, I at least completed Turco’s section and I felt 100% more prepared for biochem than before. I finally understood the roles of the important enzymes and vitamins and co-factors.
  • This further proves my point that understanding trumps memorizing any day.
  • At the time of using biochem videos, I was extremely uneasy since I was mere days away from my exam and only now learning this material. But trust in yourself and remember the golden rule (understanding trumps memorizing) since the questions can come at you any possible way and not only in the linear way that you memorize things.
  • So my advice here is to use the videos in areas that you are weak in. Try to do them early and space them out instead of doing them all at once. You want to have a good balance between learning content, memorizing details, watching videos and doing questions.

DIT videos

  • Some of you may have decided to take the course, others may have the videos, whatever the case, this is what I think of DIT
  • In the case that you purchased the entire course, then there would be elements that you have and a particular schedule that they want you to follow. I can’t comment on that much since for all I know, it can work in your favour but only if you follow down to the T such as answering their pre and post videos questions and using their workbook etc.
  • On the other hand, this section will apply to those who use the videos as a supplement to their studies.
  • My thoughts here are that using the videos for the purpose of review is bogus at best. They do not teach topics, nor do they help you come up with clever ways to help you memorize things (yes they sometimes have good mnemonics). The thing is that they simply read the book to you, and for those of you have gone over it already, then using the videos is just wasting your time.
  • The videos try to be light and entertaining but I don’t feel like it adds to your ability to answer questions nor does it cement much into your head. Furthermore they seldom add anything that isn’t already in your FA.
  • Maybe to those who have purchased the entire course, may have been instructed to use it in a different way but im still sceptical and would not recommend using them at all in your dedicated time period. In term 5, yes you can, but after that, there is no reason to open them .

Sites that I used

These are sites that I had specifically bookmarked because they either provided me with information on how to prep for step 1, they had a lot of information or used as my references for this guide that I’m writing, so I advise you to go through them once.

http://clinicalreview.com/ClinicalReview/resources/usmle-score-calculator.html

https://rumorsweretrue.wordpress.com/usmle-step-1/

https://stream.sgu.edu/TB/Play/452943d7a4034c1c9d8fc7d96b1874581d

http://medpathway.wustl.edu/interior.htm?self-assessment.htm

http://grenadaguide.blogspot.com/search/label/Brian%27s%20USMLE%20Step%201%20Experience

http://aslackersguide.com/

http://www.usmlestudentdoctor.com/search/label/USMLE%20Step%201

http://www.medbullets.com/user/dashboard?id=all&SubCategoryID=1

http://waelalsagban.blogspot.com/

http://armandoh.org/