Sometimes Sketchy Micro will mention facts and important commonly tested mechanisms on their videos but they do not fully represent them with visual memory anchors on their drawings. Picmonic on the other hand has these toxins properly identified with two very easy-to-remember visual mnemonic characters. Because of this, they are commonly tested in Qbanks and Boards. There are certain bacteria that have these types of toxins and they are important to know as they are part of their pathogenicity. One of the first things I noticed that were missing were the exotoxins and endotoxins. This led to a lot of anxiety knowing that I didn’t have any memory anchors to remember these important facts. While studying the Sketchy Micro videos, I noticed that there were things mentioned in the First Aid for the USMLE Step 1 book that were nowhere to be found in their drawings. Reason #1: There are a lot of things Sketchy Micro is missing. Picmonic is not only available as a website, but also as a handy mobile app that I still have on my phone to easily access the Picmonic database that is etched into my brain. Thanks to Picmonic’s creator tool I could also create my own visual mnemonic flashcards for any topics I wanted to cover. While other classmates used and created traditional flashcards and struggled to remember them, I was using Picmonic and remembering facts in a much easier and effective way with short, efficient visual mnemonics. Medical school is not easy and there is an incredible amount of information that you need to learn in a short amount of time. Picmonic was the key to my success in medical school.

In my opinion, here is what you’re missing if you use Sketchy Medical. I decided to give it a try and used it, but in hindsight, in addition to Sketchy videos being more time-consuming, there are two main reasons why I wish I would have used the Picmonic for Medicine Microbiology cards instead from the beginning. When I began studying for my microbiology class exams and for USMLE Step 1, some of my classmates were talking about Sketchy Micro. If there’s one thing I regret about my time in medical school it’s that I wish that I would have used Picmonic from day one.

Sketchymicro