Firecracker MD & DO

Firecracker is a study tool that can truly be used anywhere, even if you only have a few spare seconds. The UI is beautiful, and the team is very quick to respond to questions/comments. I've seen several requests that I made actually implemented in the app (pretty quickly too). Do you like Anki? Firecracker is like a fully-automated, much much smarter Anki (with an active support team). Do you like First Aid? Firecracker provides the page number for every bit of its information that can be found in First Aid. The point is this: Firecracker is an easy to use, comprehensive, regularly-updated step study tool.

Overall, Firecracker is a good resource, but it comes off like someone who just graduated medical school and threw something together. It does have a lot of bugs and the sources aren’t always the best. While the customer service is quick to respond, they always respond with the same advice. They site Wikipedia which is a good resource for students sometimes, but I feel like when studying for a national test, they could and should have better more reliable sources. As a side note, they do put first aid references, but for the flash cards I have found they show Wikipedia/Google more than first aid graphics and diagrams. I do like having access on my phone and iPad, but the bugs are making those difficult. Regarding the flash cards, they often include pictures, but often the pictures included are not entirely related to the answer. Ex) a foreign body is lodged in the piriform recess. This can cause damage to what nerve? A: internal laryngeal nerve. But the diagram shows only muscles of the neck rather than the pathway of the nerve.

I love firecracker and I'm confident that it will help me score at least a 270 on step 1. Pros: The customer support is quick to respond and they give you personalized help. They review material is comprehensive and uses spaced repetition which is proven to facilitate memorization. They have an auto-snooze function which prevents you from spending too much time on questions. There's both quick recall style questions and vignette questions. The interface is BEAUTIFUL and easy to navigate. It is synced to the online version, but the app is actually better (the auto-snooze desktop site is screwy). Cons: The histopathology slides leave a little to be desired - there isn't enough description to guide the user about what the histopath shows and how it came to be. The "additional resources" seem a little disorganized like there were just thrown in there as a gimmick.