6 drug groups.
One video. One method.
Antimicrobials is the block that breaks people — dozens of drugs, overlapping coverage, side effects that all blur together — and most students lose four or five days to it alone. You will not, because the whole block fits in one free video. The method is FWRT.
There is one free 90-minute YouTube video that covers all of antimicrobials. A topic that feels endless, made finite. Watch it twice — same rule as everything else — then read the antimicrobial drugs in the PDF and highlight what didn't stick. If you only take one thing from this page and ignore the rest, take this video. It is the largest single hour-for-hour return in all of Step 1 pharmacology.
If you have only ever used First Aid, you can revise every drug on this page from First Aid and the FA Guide alone, together with the High-Yield Pharmacology PDF. The drug list below is still your list; only the source changes. You will not fail for skipping the videos.
But if you have the time, invest in the resource named against each group — Sketchy, Osmosis or Dirty Medicine, whichever this page specifies. That naming is the product: somebody already worked out which one teaches that group best, so you never sample three videos to find the good one. If you can afford the hours, use both.
PART ONEThe FWRT method
Four steps, in order, for the whole block. You do not move to the next system until all four are done for this one.
Find the resource
Already done for you, for antimicrobials: every group below is Osmosis — and the 90-minute video above covers all six in one sitting. Take the video.
Watch — twice, not once
Open the mapped resource — and nothing else. Not the Sketchy version too. Not a fourth opinion on YouTube. Watch twice, back to back — yes, even the 90-minute video. Three hours for the block that costs most students four or five days is still the best trade on this page.
Read — and highlight what didn't survive
After you have watched the whole block — not after each group, after all of it — go back to the High-Yield Pharmacology PDF and read the antimicrobial drugs. Whatever you could not retain, highlight those lines.
Test yourself
First Aid Guide → Microbiology → the antimicrobial pages. Every drug you just watched is explained there with MCQs attached, page by page, following First Aid.
Antimicrobials is done when the MCQs are done and the highlighted lines have been re-read once. Not when the videos are watched. Watching is the cheapest part of this method and the least predictive of your score.
PART TWOThe 6 antimicrobial drug groups
This is the entire antimicrobials row of the resource map — all six from Osmosis, all six inside the 90-minute video. If a group is not here, it is not in your 48 hours — that is the point of stratification.
- 01Vancomycin — Osmosis
- 02Metronidazole — Osmosis
- 03Fluoroquinolones — Osmosis
- 04Tetracyclines — Osmosis
- 05Anti-tubercular drugs — Osmosis
- 06TMP-SMX — Osmosis
Antimicrobials is the one topic that genuinely feels endless, and the usual response — watching every group from every resource until it "clicks" — is how four or five days vanish. Don't cross-check resources, and don't try to memorize the block before moving on. Completion beats perfection; retention comes from UWorld hitting these drugs in a vignette six weeks from now.
PART THREEOne drug group, worked through
Here is FWRT applied to the first group on the list, in full, so you know exactly what each step looks like before you do it five more times — or before one video does all six at once.
The resource is already chosen — Osmosis
Or the 90-minute video, which covers vancomycin and the other five groups in one sitting — in which case W is already done for the whole block. Either way, the map decided; your job is to watch.
Watch the vancomycin video twice, back to back
Not once today and once tomorrow — twice, now. The second pass is where it stops being a story you recognise and becomes a mechanism you can retrieve.
Read the vancomycin pages of the PDF — after the whole block
Not now. Finish all six groups first, then read the antimicrobial drugs together and highlight only what did not come back. If half the page ends up yellow, you did not watch twice.
Do the MCQs — First Aid Guide → Microbiology → antimicrobials
This group only, in the order First Aid presents it. Getting one wrong here costs you two minutes and fixes the gap permanently; the same gap found on test day costs you the mark.
That is one group. Do the same for metronidazole, the fluoroquinolones, the tetracyclines, the anti-tubercular drugs and TMP-SMX — or let the 90-minute video carry all six and go straight to the PDF and the MCQs — and antimicrobials is finished. The block that breaks people, closed in a day instead of five. Do not start another system's drugs. Close this and move on.