Updated and Revised Mnemosyne USMLE Step 1 Deck
Please see the original post for general orientation of the deck:
TLDR: A Q&A cloze deletion format deck based entirely on USMLE First Aid (2023)
My thoughts on the original deck?
Amazing deck. Huge thanks to u/Ayasa. I prefer Q&A cloze style over fill in the blank Anking style as I believe the questions engage your critical thinking more.
Why not just use Anking?
This is the million dollar question. Anking is tried and true. Used by many thousands of medical students successfully. I think the areas it fails are efficiency and clinical relevance. Efficiency? There are so so so many completely irrelevant cards and so many duplicates. The meaningless factoids are abundant and you cannot separate the wheat from the chaff easily. I often hear how students struggle to implement their anki knowledge into the clinical setting. I think that comes from memorizing fill-in-the-blanks and not critically thinking and incorporating illness scripts into long-term memory. As you read below, I am providing 10k cards that are all clinically relevant and will absolutely help you shine on rotations.
How have I changed the original Mnemosyne deck?
Formatting / Misc. changes: Certain UI settings I have changed to expand the First Aid pictures to make them more visible. I have also taken screenshots of the pages and put them higher on the card so they can actually be read easily now. I have fixed typos.
Content changes: This is the biggest area of change. I have added explanations and information from high-yield Amboss articles for difficult to grasp concepts. You can use this deck as a learning tool now. First Aid as we know is brief. The added explanations provide key background information to understand the entire concept.
For anyone interested in radiology, dermatology, or pathology (histology), this deck will give you a very strong foundation in all. I have added nearly every radiological image, dermatology image, and pathology slide from Amboss into this deck (without adding more cards, I incorporated them into current cards). The Amboss overlays are beautiful and so nice to have. I have added a smaller number of images from radiopaedia, dermnet, and pathology outlines as needed to fill in content gaps. I have added Amboss figures and illustrations as well, these are all high-resolution and not blurry like in (old) Anking (before copyright stuff).
What does this deck contain?
Total cards: 14,975* (with a caveat)
I have tagged cards that I believe are bullshit low-yield Step 1 facts with STEP1BS tag. There are just over 3k cards with this tag. I would consider suspending all of these and never worrying about them. Note, do not suspend/unsuspend by tag in general, use the actual deck function in case some cards I created are not tagged but still important.
Vignettes: There are 949 cards that are vignette style, pulled exactly from Amboss or uWorld Step 2 Qbank. For those studying for Step 1, this is what I would do. Make sure your card sort order is set for order of creation. Here's an example, go to GI>Pathology>Achalasia, study the 9 cards from First Aid Achalasia. Then there are 2 vignettes, do them, then suspend them. I believe seeing how you will be tested right after a first pass is a great way to make sure the cards you just did cover what you need.
Total cards that are actually relevant: 14,975 - 3,094 - 949 = 10,932
I am a third-year student currently, I still keep up with the 10k cards as they are so important I believe. I think I probably could've honored IM shelf without even studying this year, this deck prepares you that well.
I have also added a small number of cards for conditions that appeared on NBMEs or my Step 1 exam that were not in First Aid (e.g. hidradenitis suppurativa).
Here are some card examples (apologies, I could not fit all of the card content, there are First Aid images on every single card except for few rare diseases not in First Aid):
Posted Aug 28, 2025, 8:37 PM UTC