In 2015 I put a note on twitter offering to share my FRCPath notes if anyone was interested. No one replied and so I assumed that (understandably) that everyone was focussed on making their own. Just recently however someone responded to ask if I still could. Long and short I’m delighted to share, mostly because they took me forever to put together and so them having a life after FRCPath gives them even more value as far as I’m concerned. These notes were put together for my FRCPath lab folder but the individual components may be useful to anyone interested in organism identification.
Note of caution, these notes are from 2015 and they were made for my personal use. They therefore may need updating and sense checking if being used by other people. The images are taken from publicly available sources and so despite the note saying they belong to me they only do in the sense that they were combined by me into their current form.
I have included a couple of blank templates I used as structure for revision notes and short questions. These are in word. The rest of the documents are in PDF. I know that some people may prefer word versions so they can update and edit. If you’d like these in a different format please DM on twitter @girlymicro.
Again, I make no claims that these are amazing, only that they were useful to me
Antimicrobial therapy
A table listing types of antibiotic, target and interactions
A table of treatment options and durations for infections caused by atypical mycobacteria
A table of typical antimicrobial therapy durations by broad condition type
Table of typical antimicrobial therapies listed by micro-organism
Notes on antiparasitic therapy listed by parasite
Gram negative bacterial identification
Identification notes by organism
Plate appearance, identification and Gram stain info by organism
Plate appearance, identification and Gram stain info by organism
Plate appearance, identification and Gram stain info by organism
Gram positive bacterial identification
Identification notes by organism
Identification notes by organism
Plate appearance, identification and Gram stain info by organism
Plate appearance, identification and Gram stain info by organism
Fungal identification
Plate appearance, identification and Gram stain info by organism
Parasite identification
Vector, identification and common presentation info by organism
Viral identification
Vector, identification and common presentation info by organism
Note templates
Example of note templates and completed organism notes in case helpful in terms of headers for other
All opinions on this blog are my own
girlymicro 
[…] The other thing that makes this particular exam challenging is that it covers EVERYTHING. They can ask about any organism, any presentation, any vaccine, any treatment. Part of the reason it was designed that way I think, was to ensure that come day 4 when you are exhausted you can still make safe clinical decisions and spot pitfalls and risk. Normally when you walk into an exam room you have a syllabus that enables you to have a fairly reasonable chance of targeting some of your learning and determining likely content. This isn’t that exam, and therefore a lot of the exam techniques you’ve previously used are not quite as applicable. This one is more about maintaining your calm, being structured and clear in your responses and making life very easy for your examiners, in terms of finding and making your points. You have so little time for each of the components that clarity of both thought and communication are key, and practice is the only thing that will get you there, that on top of all the revision you can cram into your brain. (If useful the link to some of the content I prepped to help with revision in 2015 is here) […]
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[…] experience (I don’t write or have anything to do with the exam) but for me that is much more FRCPath prep. I think part 1 is much more about understanding the fundamentals of clinical microbiology: whether […]
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Hi, thank you so much for sharing! I was actually planning to take the exam this Spring but missed the application. However after glancing through some of your notes, I am currently suffering a panic attack at the amount of knowledge that I need to pass the exam. But again, thanks for your notes!
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