Customer Reviews

First Aid Q&A for the USMLE Step 1, Second Edition (First Aid USMLE)

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

The bottom line with this book is that it contains one block of 50 questions per organ system. So if you are doing an organ systme approach to studying for the Board then this could be helpful. However, if you are studying in a subject based format, this would be a completely waste of your money. Furthemore the questions in this book are selected from the First Aid Rx question bank, which means why buy the book if the 1 month subscription for the question bank is worth the same. besides the question bank has much better explanations than the book- as they correlate with the current version of the First Aid Step i book.

The questions are well-written and thought provoking, but there are so many errors in the answers & explanations that I had to stop using it for my step 1 preparations-- I was simply spending too much time double checking answers that turned out to be incorrect.

questions are wayyyyy too easy and not an accurate reflection of the difficulty of the questions on the step one. by the end of my studies I was getting like 95-100% of these questions right which I feel like should never happen. Good for early on, but don't do what I did and study it the day before the exam and wonder why the step one questions are 3x as difficult for the first 2 sections. Questions are the way to go though so it is useful for that purpose. I'd recommend during coursework/after studying a section to test completion of understanding.

This book feels very solid. The questions are at least 2nd order, if not 3rd order, and thus most require significantly more than just surface understanding to get correct. I actually managed to lose this book, but have immediately ordered another copy because I feel that it is so valuable. It follows the First Aid Review book, which I really dón't care that much about as I find First Aid to be annoyingly shallow. Nonetheless, I believe this could be useful for a number of people.

As of this review, I'm almost done with the USMLE world qBank and have taken 3 NBME full length exams. The questions in this book are a bit spotty, some pretty unrealistic. If you buy it, the first thing you have to do it get the "errata" to update your book. The answer explanations aren't as informative as one might like. I agree with the other reviewer that the author rushed the publication of this book. I have to ask why there are so many errors and bizarre wording of questions if 30 medical students and faculty edited this book.

So, it's not a terrible book, but with so many 5 star resources out there (and limited time), I would NOT get this book again.

Before reading this review, it should be noted that I have not yet taken my examination, so I am speaking on how much information and knowledge I gain from each source, rather than its exam pay-out (which is obviously the most important).

With that disclaimer, this book is a good way to reinforce some topics from the First Aid for Step 1, especially when the monotonous reading of that text becomes boring and your brain gets saturated. I am a huge believer, in that as medical students instead of diversifying our portfolio (which we don't have since all of our money went to medical school :)), we should be diversifying our methods of studying and to reinforce topics in FIRST AID, this would be the way to do it. However, from my understanding the information in First Aid is not enough to score well on your boards, although it may be sufficient to pass. This book, provides very little extra information outside of the First Aid for Step 1, although a few percentage of questions do an excellent job of integrating concepts from different clinical sciences and forcing you to apply what you learned from FA rather than just memorizing it.

As other people have mentioned, and I will reiterate here, it is in no way a substitute for Kaplan QBank, USMLE world, etc. and in my opinion primarily serves a reinforcement of topics and facts presented in First Aid. In addition, there are a few minor mistakes and some direct contradictions with other texts.

Hope this helpful, good luck to everyone taking the Step 1.

I started using this book to reinforce the sections of First Aid that I recently studied. After going through multiple chapters I found that IT TESTS MATERIAL NOT FOUND IN FIRST AID. Why would the authors of first aid do this is beyond me. If you're looking for realistic questions and a reinforcing question bank, look to other books such as robbins review of pathology and free material such as webpath.

The book is overall very amazing. It coincides with the Frist Aid for USMLE step 1 and also the First Aid for Basic Sciences. It's an excellent review of questions...and lots of them!

This book is just a must have, I don't know any med student who studies without using this book. I also had a chance to compare it to the 2011 version, not much difference. They seem to have removed some things rather than adding.

The seller shipped this item FAST and it is exactly as described...will definitely do business again.