The course is called Foundations of Infection, Disease, and Therapeutics. I would argue that it is one of the most important classes of medical school. While you are taking the course, you might think that some of the topics will never show up again in your life, similar to the thoughts you may have had during Organic Chemistry in undergrad, but I will promise you that a topic from this course will be seen in all of your subsequent courses. Not to mention, USMLE Step 1 and Step 2 love to test you on these topics. This course is 11 weeks long. It focuses on biochemistry, genetics, infection, immune mechanisms of disease, inflammation, neoplasia, and the treatments for organ specific diseases. It sounds like a lot, but it is important not to look at the course as a whole, or you will become very overwhelmed. Take it a week at a time. I promise that if you can remember and understand the concepts in this course, you will do better on your USMLE Step 1. To pass, you need a 70% in the class, and you need to score at least a 50% on all 5 exams. This rule was not put into place to scare us. It was added so that students do not get high scores on the first exams, and then skip out on studying for the last exam. For our class, the last exam covered antibiotics, so learning this material was pertinent for the rest of our medical careers.

Before COVID-19, most of our class attended in-person classes during first year. I found this very helpful. If this is an option for your class, I strongly recommend. Class usually consisted of three, hour long lectures. Try and study the lectures each day and use the weekend to review/catch up on the things you could not get to The lectures consisted of diseases, infections, and therapeutic. Just as the course name implies. All of the questions on the exams come straight from the PowerPoint lectures. My suggestion is to structure your studying based on the following categories.

I thought the diseases were the easiest to study. I am a visual learner, and the lectures always included pictures that help me associate phenotypes to the specific disease. I did not use any outside resources for these lectures. I got all of the information I needed off of the PowerPoint slides. I used the old school approach to studying the diseases, color coded charts on computer paper. I made the first column the name of the disease, the second column the gene mutation and/or chromosome, the third column the disease manifestations, and the fourth column the treatments. Sometimes, the lectures were very unorganized, so I found it helpful to go through the slides and find all the information about one disease and put it all in one organized row. Additionally, the action of going through the slides and making the charts helped me focus on studying.

Again, like the disease lectures, all of the questions on the exams come straight from the PowerPoint lectures. I used the same approach as above for the majority of the infections, but for the bacteria and viruses, I strongly suggest using Sketchy Micro videos. Like I said before, I am a visual learner, and these videos use humor, story telling, and visual tools and characters to make it easier to learn and recall. Sketchy helped me through Foundations and made it easier to refresh my memory while studying for Step 1. Also, if you can find a group of students who are willing to split the account, I would suggest this option. By having an account you have access to short quizzes after the videos that help solidify the most important topics which I found helpful .

Sketchy Pharm! Out of all the Sketchy Medical videos, these are by far the best. The antibiotic videos are the most helpful and have helped me tremendously in my classes and on my clinical rotations. If you only have time during Foundations to watch Sketchy videos for one topic, choose antibiotics.

I hope that these tips are helpful. I know this course consists of a lot of information, but if you push yourself to stay on top of the information each week, you will do great. Sketchy videos are helpful to solidify the knowledge for the future, but if you do not feel like you have time, or you are not a visual learner, do not use them. Outside resources are always helpful to supplement learning, but if you just want to do well on the exams, all you need are the lecture PowerPoints. This class is not only hard because it is long and consists of difficult topics, it is also hard because it is only the second course of medical school. Learning how to balance medical school and the rest of your life is also part of this course. It is easy for me to look back and give advice on things that I thought helped me, but in reality, I was also struggling to balance life. My biggest advice to succeed in this course and the rest of medical school is to surround yourself with peo- ple who are going to help and support you through this journey because it is just the beginning! Study hard and good luck!