AIM YOUR BRAIN™ at USMLE Step 1
How To Make A F.A.C.T.O.I.D.™ Book? (Study System Supplement)
By Mary K. Miller, Pharm.D., M.D.
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Copyright 2009 by Mary K. Miller, Pharm.D., M.D.
Smashwords Edition
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Original Print Book Cover Design by Michael Brechner of Cypress House (www.cypresshouse.com).
Smashwords ebook cover adaptation by Mary K Miller of Ideas2pen (www.ideas2pen.com).
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Definition of F.A.C.T.O.I.D.™
According to Webster’s New World Dictionary and Thesaurus the word “factoid” means “a single fact or statistic variously regarded as being trivial, useless, unsubstantiated, etc.” Although many of you may feel that the multiple-choice exam questions you’ve seen in the past, which seemed to be based on minutia, fit the literal definition of factoid, the way we’re going to use the word is as an acronym. For this book, the abbreviation F.A.C.T.O.I.D.™ means “Frequently Asked Concepts To Own In Depth.”
Stay with me here. Multiple-choice questions are nothing more than inquiries about how much you know about
a subject and how well you understand key concepts. The idea behind F.A.C.T.O.I.D.™s is that you are actively learning and remembering little facts that are short and to the point so they can readily pass into and out of your brain. By breaking down complex information into shorter sentences or phrases, you’re able to handle the key concepts more efficiently. By having small bits, or “bytes,” of information go in and out of your brain, you’re better prepared to recall and recognize specific F.A.C.T.O.I.D.™ s during your timed multiple-choice exams.
The AIM YOUR BRAIN™ Study System is designed to expose you to important “frequently asked concepts” so that you know them and can recall them quickly and easily. If you really know a key concept then it’s yours to own. Content books give you references that you can use for review. The AIM YOUR BRAIN™ System makes sure that you convert your weak areas into concepts that you can store accurately in your brain’s database for rapid future retrieval.
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How to Make a F.A.C.T.O.I.D.™ Book?
As you may recall, in the fast-start section in chapter 5 (see printed book version), you were told to go to the store and buy a few items if you didn’t already have them. For those of you who skipped the fast-start and mock-schedule sections, here’s what you need to do:
Buy several spiral-bound single subject notebooks. Do not get one of those five-subject doodads (if this sounds a little authoritarian, I apologize—at least you get to choose the color of your F.A.C.T.O.I.D.™ book cover.)
Ditch the highlighters and use one color of ink, black or blue.
Make sure there’s lots of white space: one line of space between similar concepts, two lines of space between new concepts.
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F.A.C.T.O.I.D.™ Format Examples
Let’s take another look at the sample questions from chapter 2 (see printed book version). Each of the three examples is in a multiple-choice format and contains a stem, distracters, and the correct answer. In real life, if you miss any of the questions while using your online question bank, you have an opportunity to review an explanation of the correct answer.
To make the sample questions more real, I’ve added an explanation to each of the three examples. Please take a moment to review the three sample questions, answers, and explanation.
Example 1
A twenty-two-year-old woman has just been diagnosed with HIV. She has heard about a new class of medications called integrase inhibitors. Which of the following drugs is an integrase inhibitor? [STEM]
(A) Lamivudine [DISTRACTER]
(B) Raltegravir [CORRECT ANSWER]
(C) Ribavirin [DISTRACTER]
(D) Rifampin [DISTRACTER]
(E) Ritonovir [DISTRACTER]
Example 1 Explanation
There are currently six classes of antiretroviral drugs. The following table lists them individually.21 Multi-class combination products are listed as well. Raltegravir is the first integrase inhibitor (AKA HIV integrase strand transfer inhibitor) currently available. Lamivudine (3TC) is a nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitor (NRTI). Ribavirin is an antiviral nucleoside analogue used in combination with interferon to treat hepatitis C. Rifampin is an antimycobacterial agent commonly used to treat tuberculosis (TB). Ritonovir (RTV) is a protease inhibitor (PI). Here's the FDA list of drugs used in the treatment of HIV infection.
At this point it's important to make a few notes in your F.A.C.T.O.I.D.™ book (see fig. 7–1 to 7-4 adapted from printed version of the book) that will help you remember the information. If you missed the question, you must correct your misinformation now and jot down a few brief notes so you won’t miss the question again. The notes you write can be in outline form or as single sentences. On occasion you may end up photocopying a chart or graph you have from previous lectures or readings and pasting or taping it into your F.A.C.T.O.I.D.™ book. That’s fine, just don’t spend all your time putting together a “scrapbook” and not getting through your questions for that day. Remember to include lots of white space between your entries. Also please don’t copy the entire question, answer, and explanation word for word from your online question bank. I don’t want you to break any copyright rules. The pages in your F.A.C.T.O.I.D.™ book might look like the following (see fig. 7–1 and 7–2):