HIGH-YIELD PRINCIPLES IN

Microbiology

Basic Bacteriology

Clinical Bacteriology

Mycology

Parasitology

Virology

Systems

Antimicrobials

“Support bacteria. They’re the only culture some people have.”

—Steven Wright

“What lies behind us and what lies ahead of us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.”

—Henry S. Haskins

“Infectious disease is merely a disagreeable instance of a widely prevalent tendency of all living creatures to save themselves the bother of building, by their own efforts, the things they require.”

—Hans Zinsser

Microbiology questions on the Step 1 exam often require two (or more) steps: Given a certain clinical presentation, you will first need to identify the most likely causative organism, and you will then need to provide an answer regarding some feature of that organism. For example, a description of a child with fever and a petechial rash will be followed by a question that reads, “From what site does the responsible organism usually enter the blood?”

This section therefore presents organisms in two major ways: in individual microbial “profiles” and in the context of the systems they infect and the clinical presentations they produce. You should become familiar with both formats. When reviewing the systems approach, remind yourself of the features of each microbe by returning to the individual profiles. Also be sure to memorize the laboratory characteristics that allow you to identify microbes.