Every page of the First Aid Guide teaches twice: once in plain English, once as an exam question. Both just got bigger — and the questions now teach you how to eliminate.
The First Aid Guide decodes all 646 pages of First Aid, page by page: Focus On, Concept Walkthrough, “How is this tested?”, Key Takeaways, Test Yourself. That is the page. Two layers are built on it — the ELI5s and the Test Yourself MCQs. See a full page here.
ELI5 means “explain it like I’m 5”. First Aid gives you a disease in 3 compressed lines. An ELI5 gives you the story behind those lines — why it happens, in everyday words — and then walks you back to how the exam asks it.
Every ELI5 is built the same way:
| The big idea | the whole thing in 1 sentence |
| The story | what is actually happening, with a real-life picture |
| Now bridge to USMLE | the turn from story to exam |
| On the exam | how it shows up in a vignette |
| The trap the exam sets | the wrong answer they want you to pick |
| Key terms | the words to own |
| Abbreviations | every acronym on the card, spelled out |
Facts you understand stay. Facts you memorised leave. The story is what makes the 3 lines on the page stick — and the trap line is what stops you losing the mark when you do remember.
Use it when a line in First Aid reads like a list of words. Read the ELI5 for that heading, then go back to the line. It should now read like a sentence.
All 2,849 ELI5s across the 16 systems now follow the page’s own reading order. Before, they could jump between topics. Now the first ELI5 is about the first thing on the page.
At the top of the drawer is a row of topic tabs, named after the page’s headings — “Acne”, “Atopic Dermatitis”, “Psoriasis”. A tab with several ELI5s shows a count. Tap it and every ELI5 for that topic opens at once.
So on a dense page with 8 diseases, you don’t scroll. You tap the 1 you’re stuck on. We also added 649 new ELI5s where pages were thin, and you can change the text size and highlight inside them.
Sometimes the story still doesn’t land. That is what the tutor is for. It is on the same page and already knows which page you’re on — ask it the exact line you don’t get.
It answers in the same shape the ELI5 uses: simple first, then the mechanism, then how the exam tests it. The ELI5 is the page’s explanation; the tutor is the explanation of your confusion.
Every page ends in Test Yourself MCQs on that page. If you can’t answer the page, you didn’t learn the page. We added 398 new MCQs, aimed at the topics NBMEs keep testing.
| Show all questions | on pages with 2 or more topics — open every question at once, or “Collapse all” |
| Rule out | on every option — tap to strike it through, the way UWorld and the real exam let you |
Most Step 1 questions aren’t answered by knowing the right option. They are answered by knowing why 3 of the 4 others are wrong. That is a skill, and like any skill it needs reps.
Rule out gives you those reps on every page. Use it the same way every time:
| 1 · Read the stem | find the 1 clue the question turns on |
| 2 · Predict | say the answer before you look at the options |
| 3 · Rule out | strike each option you can kill — and say why it’s dead |
| 4 · Decide | choose between what’s left; if 2 survive, the clue you skipped is the tiebreaker |
The strike-throughs aren’t saved or scored. They are for you — a habit you build on 1 page so it is automatic on block 7 of test day.
The Mehlman videos are short — about 5 minutes — and they do one thing First Aid doesn’t: they show you how a clue rules an answer in, and how another rules it out. That is elimination, taught.
So the order works: read the page and its ELI5s, watch Mehlman for the system, then practise ruling out on Test Yourself. It is the same 4-angle attack on First Aid from the RPSR method — read it, test it, think with it, recall it — before you ever open UWorld.
| Focus On | the 1 thing that matters |
| Concept Walkthrough + ELI5s | tap the topic tab for whatever didn’t land |
| The tutor | only if it still didn’t land |
| How is this tested? | the trap, before you fall into it |
| Test Yourself + Rule out | answer the page; strike what you can kill, with a reason |
| Later: Foundation Anki | recall it without the page (Timed mode) |
The First Aid Guide — what every page contains
The tutor — when the ELI5 isn’t enough
How to use Mehlman — the videos that teach ruling in and out
Anki: two decks, two modes — recall the page without the page
How to actually complete First Aid — the 4 readings that make it stick