Best books and resources for Medical School Microbiology and the Microbiology NBME 2024
We know that getting a consensus on the best books and resources for any given class can be difficult. Asking friends, searching SDN, and consulting seniors can provide a confusing mixed bag of advice.
Turns out, we've done the work for you. Compiled below are comprehensive recommendations on the best books and resources. Click here to find out how we ranked each resource as well as a description of the tiers used. Happy studying!
Highest Yield — The best microbiology book for medical school
Clinical Microbiology made Ridiculously Simple — Gladwin, Trattler & Mahan
A humorous, but complete, review of microbiology written in an easy to read, paragraph based format with lots of illustrations and comics to help solidify memorization. Works great as a primary text and explains information in a cheerful, carefree way. Especially helpful are its tables which quickly break down common drugs into mechanism of action, pharmacokinetics, adverse effects, therapeutic uses, and miscellaneous facts.
Lippincott Microcards — Harpavat & Nissim
Similar to the Lange Pharmacology Cards, Lippincott's Microcards provide a clinical case on the front side of the card (in addition to high yield pictures and diagrams as well as where the microbe fits within the broader scope of its family) and provides all the necessary information to know about a microbe on the back (clinical presentation, mechanism of action, treatment...etc). A great resource to jog your memory on microbes and has some room on the borders to annotate outside information into.
First Aid for USMLE Step 1, Microbiology Chapter — Le et al.
In typical First Aid fashion, high yield but not the most thorough. Remember to continue annotating your book with details from class, UWorld, and your other resources.
Next Steps
Lange Review of Medical Microbiology and Immunology — Levinson
If you feel like you need a standard, paragraph-based microbiology textbook, Lange's Review of Medical Microbiology and Immunology will have you covered. Finishes each chapter with a meaty "Pearls" section of high yield points from the chapter. In addition, it comes with 700+ NBME/USMLE type questions and a number of cases.
Picmonic
Picmonic Microbiology uses a picture to make it easier to remember all of the details about a certain microbe; pictures are usually a random smorgasbord of humorous images that relate to different aspects of a microbe. There is an audio file associated with each picture that goes over the different components of each picture, associating them components into a fantastical story. The idea is that, after reviewing the picture with the audio a few times, a student could just quickly review the image and remember all of the different components of a particular bug. Since they launched, they have since expanded to a number of other medical school courses as well as expanded their program to nursing, physician assistants, undergraduates, and even K12 students.
Sketchy Micro
A newer player on the block, Sketchy Micro takes Picmonic's concept and refines it, creating pictures that fade in the different components of each microbe at different times with an audio track that creates the story and explains the reasoning for each pictorial representation that is brought into the story. Sketchy Micro's pictures and stories are much more believable than Picmonic's and lend themselves to better recall as it does not require as much effort to associate seemingly random images together as opposed to remembering the story and context as a whole.
If you have time
Deja Review Microbiology — Chen & Kasturi
Essentially flashcards in column format: questions and answers and placed into two columns making it easy to go down the page and quiz yourself. Great as a secondary resource to quickly review high yield points over a chapter you've just read.
Microbe Invader
A Flash-based, top-down role-playing game (looks and plays similar to the Gameboy Pokemon game) where you're a medical student on the infectious disease service that runs around diagnosing and treating patients. It has an impressive 89 different bugs and 43 different antibiotics that you encounter and can treat with, respectively. The game saves so you can stop and pick up where you left off. Try it out in your spare time...you may surprise yourself at what you pick up!