Clinical Microbiology Made Ridiculously Simple

This book was my sole source for microbiology portion of USMLE step 1 and I was fully satisfied with it and scored well in micro on the Step 1 exam . The virology portion is equally excellent and the parasitology portion is better than Jawets examination and board review microbiology ( another good book of microbiology ) . It has been many years since my step 1 exam and honestly I didnt need this book but I liked it so much that I wanted to keep the current edition just for occasional reference or revising any new bug or virus or any new antibiotic . This book does not have immunology in it because that would have made it bigger and the author has kept it specific for bacteriology , virology , parasitology , All the antimicrobial drugs , including anti-fungal, antibacterial , antiviral , anti-helmenthic and antituberculous etc. I am confident that the antimicrobial drugs given in this book are explained in a very beautiful way which other pharmacology books e.g Lippincot , short katzung etc cannot compete with . The beauty of this book is that the author has used funny cartoons and diagrams which makes it easy to remember the difficult names and concepts and mechanisms very easy to remember . Once again the Antimicrobial drugs portion is simply excellent . Befor ebuying this book i had studied short Jawetz as well which was a good book but after reading this book I sticked to it and I didnt find any deficiency in it . In this new edition the summary tables after each chapter have been updated and their size made bigger for easy reading . In very old editions the text of the tables was small but in this edition the author has eliminated that problem . The print is clear and the paper quality is good . I have read this book many times and when I compare it with other microbiology books for USMLE purposes , then I think this is the best one . Many of my friends taking step 1 exam have rated this book as equal or better than Jawetz . I cannot give it less than five star .

At first glance I was not a fan of the cheesy cartoons included in the book, but after using it for USMLE Step 1 Micro review have found the combination of cartoons + very well written text to be a good combination and an excellent addition to the concise First Aid and the micro flash cards I'm using. My only knock against this book is that the index is far too brief and sometimes it is difficult to find the bug or drug you are looking for (just one example: no index entry for trimethoprim or sulfamethoxazole but there is a whole page on these drugs. Authors/editors, what are you thinking?). I took off a star as this is not a book you will read cover to cover, but to elaborate a certain section/disease/bug from First Aid, which requires a good index. Hunting for material (after not finding it indexed) is a pain when you have to do it more than a few times in a day.There are errors in grammar, but the reviewer who gave the book two stars for poor grammar is being excessively harsh. The errors do not take away from the text's utility.Me: prep'ing for Step 1, entering 3rd year med, micro was one of my LEAST favorite subjects during pre-clinical years.7/25 -- Have to up this to Five stars after reading the antibiotics section. Very clearly presented. Index remains annoying, but it's still a great text.

So don't get me wrong the book is well written and has good information. But I didnt find it as helpful as BRS micro or Microcards. Clinical micro bio made simple is good, but its also kind of long and wordy. So it's a great read and will teach you microbio, but doesn't condense the information into an easy to study format. At my med school we have pretty good class notes for micro, so I read those, and then used microcards and BRS micro afterwards and that worked. IF I didn't have good class notes, then I WOULD recommend this book to read first, then use microcards and BRS micro afterwards.

I have a lot of trouble remembering drug names and different features of various pathogens. The illustrations in this book are incredibly cheesy, which is what makes it work. The mnemonics do not require a lot of extra studying. I have friends who don't like mnemonics because they say they'd rather just learn the material than have to learn a mnemonic instead. I find that these are helpful because they are dorky but easy to remember just based on the name. For example, azTREEonam only has one ring in its structure, not two, because it's like a tree fell through the other part of the house. This would let a lot of air in through the giant hole in the house, so it's active against aerobic bacteria. Also, because having a giant hole in your house is a bad thing, it's active against Gram negative bacteria.I find that it is easy to read and I keep it by my bed to read through at night before I sleep. It's an excellent supplement to classroom material and it is a fast book to get through when you don't have a whole lot of time in second year.For people like me who have a hard time memorizing things and would rather have everything "make sense," I think this book is invaluable. If you are very good at memorizing facts and tables, it may not be as useful to you.

PA student here. I own several books in this series, and let me tell you- this is one of my favorites. The pathophys and physiology books in this series absolutely saved my behind last quarter, and this book is going to join that hall of fame. Beautiful layout and attention to detail- it starts out with the basics, without going too basic, but the material builds on itself in a way that LITERALLY I have never seen with any other textbook. It's great. Not only does it cover gram staining, different bugs based on stain/shape etc., but then it goes into the treatment for EACH of the topics covered. Staph. gets its own chapter in the gram positive bugs unit, and likewise, each antimicrobial gets its own unit and subsequent chapter as well! Seriously has been saving my but, and is the only thing I've used this quarter for adult med. Get it!