so a couple of days ago I finished study for microbiology for step 1 and then I
decided to finish all the questions of microbiology in Uworld
luckily I've got a score ranging from 80 to 90 percent per block
so in this video I'll show you how I prepared for microbiology and what benefited me the most
for sources I exclusively focused on first aid for microbiology and a lot of people
complain about microbiology in first aid because it doesn't have any explanations
it just basically plain facts but microbiology in general doesn't have
anything to explain in the first place just facts about microbes that you need
to organize and memorize in your head and my only source for microbiology was first aid
secondly you need to cover everything in first aid for microbiology
it's about 80 pages which is very long for first aid but it's very
important to go through all of it before you actually start studying for microbiology
and by going through it I don't mean that you should stick in each page for 30 minutes
and I also don't mean that you should skim through the whole thing
but you'll need to read all the text and all the topics and see all the pictures
it should take you about five minutes per page
after you've read the entire microbiology section and first-aid now it's time to actually study microbiology
so you're going to go back to the first page and start
memorizing and organizing the topics one by one in your head
and as you're studying make sure that you focus on the unique features of the diseases and the
organisms and I can tell you that every disease and every organism in
microbiology have that one unique feature that differentiates it from others
it's very crucial to know that one unique detail without one unique world
linked to this disease because as you're reading the question and you see
that word it's going to light up in your head and you're gonna know that this is
talking about this disease or talking about the other bacteria
but somebody would ask how would I know if this feature is unique or not
and that's the benefit of reading everything in the first place from A to Z
because when you've read everything before you've seen multiple symptoms or
multiple feature that keep occurring over and over again
in multiple diseases but there's always that one feature that stands out
virulence factors are very, very important
you'll really be surprised about the number of questions written about the bacterial virulence factors
and sadly the majority of these questions have low answer rate
I've made a video before about the bacterial balance factors and in this channel when you're
going through first stage you're gonna find some very inspectors in this
bacteria and some others in other pages and some others far head so
in this video I've collected everything in just one place so I highly recommend
watching after you finish this video I'm gonna put the card at the end you also
you'll also need to know the general features of bacteria and viruses so you'll have to
get yourself familiar with these terms transformation conjugation
transportation and transduction for bacteria and for viruses you need to
know these terms recombination reassortment
complementation and phenotypic mixing you'll have to truly understand what we
mean by each one of these terms if you guys find these features difficult to
understand also your friendship between them make sure you tell me down in the
comment section below and if enough of you want a video about them I will make a video explaining them
stains and others are also messy because they're
all over first aid and you need to know all stains and all agars for all bacteria
I know it's very long. it's very tedious, but it's very, very important
also you need to know the special tests that are mentioned in first aid
what I did is I've got a piece of paper and I've written down all the tests that I've came across
there's about ten or fifteen special tests that you'll need to know
the transmission of diseases is very, very important.
I guarantee that you will be asked about the transmission of disease either directly
or indirectly so you'll need to know how each and every disease transmits
the ridiculous part about it is that a lot of diseases share a common vector or
common way of transmission so what i did is that I've got a piece of paper and
I've written down all the transmissions for all organisms all ones so I have
them all in one paper and I can just revise them very easily
then there comes the question about fungi, protozoa and worms do you study them or not? are they important?
fortunately I've seen very few questions about fungi, protozoa are and worms
but fungi seems to have the upper hand so I wouldn't really recommend focusing on
them and studying them first, but just leave them till the very end
when you've finished everything. so don't ignore them just keep them last
and finally this is very, very important you'll need to know the treatment of all
organisms and all diseases for some reason they focus so much on the
treatment for organisms and diseases
honestly the majority of the questions just asked about the name of the drug that would treat this disease
without going into further details about the mechanism of action or the side effects
so again like fungi, protozoa and worms I would recommend you that you know all
the treatment first and then at the very end you go back to study the side effects and what not
but you'll have to know how we treat each and every disease
but finally into this done so now I can move on to another subject and hopefully