All lectures and labs and all/majority of seminars will be held in Collegium Anatomicum.

ViSUS

Prof. Adrianna Mostowska, PhD.

Textbooks

• Lippincott’s Illustrated Reviews: Biochemistry
  • Prof. Mostowska uses this book a lot.
• Harper’s Illustrated Biochemistry
  • Prof. Mostowska uses this book much less than the Lippincott’s
• Kaplan Medical: USMLE Step 1 Biochemistry and Medical Genetics Lecture Notes

 

Practice questions

• Kaplan QBank (you should be provided access before the NBME if you signed up for it; Michał will send an e-mail about this)
• Lippincott’s Illustrated Q&A

Lectures

• There are 1-2 lectures at the end of each module. Lectures and seminars have virtually no differences in how and what the instructors teach.

 

Seminars

• These are the bulk of the course.

 

Practicals

• There are clinical correlations classes in each module, problem-based learning classes in two modules, and labs in two modules. See below for more information.

Internal Tests

• For each module, there are two internal tests: an ‘opening test’ and a ‘closing test’. The opening test is the first class of each module. In other words, there are no lectures, seminars, or labs before an opening test. Its purpose is to assess your background knowledge of the module. The test is composed of 20 multiple choice questions and it will contribute to your final grade for the course.
• The closing test is the last class of each module. It will evaluate your knowledge of the material learned during that module. It is composed of 50 multiple choice questions and the instructors make them in the style of NBME questions. Doing Lippincott’s Q&A is a good way to practise for this test.

 

Clinical Correlations Class (CCC)

• During each module, you will make a 15-minute (approximately) presentation on a topic. In the first seminar of the module, the lecturer will reveal the topics; you may work in teams of two or individually to create a presentation. The topics are usually diseases and you are expected to present the basic (physiological) biochemical pathway(s) affected, the diseased pathway and its consequence(s), and some basic information on the disease (e.g. mode of inheritance, genetics, treatment). Each presentation is worth 10 marks and students usually do well.

 

Problem Based Learning (PBL) or Labs

• For the protein and lipids module, you will have a PBL class where you are given a topic. The presentation for the topic has already been prepared and you are given this presentation. You are required to simply research the topic and present the prepared slides.
• For the nucleic acids and carbohydrates modules, you will instead have one lab for each where you conduct an experiment. You will also answer a few questions on the methods, results, conclusions. There will be an instructor present who will walk you through the experiment.

 

NBME

• This course has an NBME. In order to sit for the NBME, you need to have accumulated enough marks (60%) across the opening and closing tests, presentations, and labs. The NBME is composed of 125 questions and you have 3.5 hours to complete it.

Practise, practise, practise! Use Lippincott’s Q&A, UWorld, and Kaplan to practise questions. In the 2017-2018 year, free access to the Kaplan QBank was provided (if one signed up to the email that Michał sent around December) prior to the biochemistry NBME. Practise questions for each closing module. If you have done enough questions for each module, you can review them for the NBME. You will see there are questions that repeat because there are some diseases that are so common that you must know about them and some biochemical pathways so important that, when defective, lead to the classical/common diseases.