What is in a Brick?

Each brick is designed to help you gain a deeper understanding of the core content required to excel through the preclinical stage of medical school and beyond.

We designed them so that they build upon each other to help you master every foundational topic and concept you need to know today to become a successful doctor tomorrow.

Each brick within Rx Bricks has a similar overall structure.  Each brick contains:

• Learning Objectives
• Learning Content
• Summary
• Practice Questions

As you review a brick, you will see that the learning objectives are supported by the content, summary points, and practice questions.  We’ve designed the program so that you won’t be overwhelmed by content that isn’t directly relevant to the learning objectives laid out at the beginning of the brick.

Section Navigation

On the left-hand side of the page, above the thumbs up and thumbs down icons, there is a menu button that will allow you to navigate to particular areas of the brick.  

This will open the side navigation panel:

To close this menu, click on the X button in the upper right-hand corner of the menu.

Illustrations and Photos

The illustrations and photographs used in Rx Bricks are designed to help support the content surrounding it.  

If you want to get a closer look at the image, click on it. This will produce an enlarged pop-up. To close the pop-up, click on the X. Hovering over the brick will display the credit line, if available.

Flash Cards

At the end of many sections, you will see flash cards that are designed to check your understanding of the preceding material.  To reveal the answer, click on the flash card.

Mnemonics

You will find mnemonics in many bricks to help you remember difficult topics.  Each mnemonic card explains how to remember it on the front, and you can flip the card to test yourself.

Special Features

Some of the content is separated into special features, such as Clinical Correlations and In-Training boxes. There is no interaction associated with these elements, although In-Training features include a link to the full article on the In-Training website.

The In-Training boxes are provided from our partners at In-Training, the online peer-reviewed publication for medical students, founded in April 2012 by Aleena Paul and Ajay Major, medical students at Albany Medical College.

Summary

At the end of each brick, you will see a summary of key points from the content.  These key takeaways reflect the material as it was covered in the brick.

Practice Questions

There are 3-5 practice questions at the end of each brick.  These questions are designed to test your understanding of the material but are not at the same level as the kind of board-style question you will see on the USMLE Step 1 exam.  

Choose the answer that you think is correct.  A red X will appear next to any incorrect response. You will be able to continue selecting answer choices until you land on the correct one. The system will not provide the explanation until you’ve correctly answered it.

Review Learning Objectives

Completion of each brick is tied to your self-assessment of each learning objective.  Once you check off each learning objective, the system will mark the brick as being complete.

In this example, the user has checked off 2 of the 4 learning objectives within the Acute Tubular Necrosis brick.  On the Collections page, the progress is indicated by the circle indicator.

You can uncheck any objective and the system will update your progress accordingly.

Go Deeper

For users who also subscribe to other USMLE-Rx products, they will be able to access related content at the end of each brick.  They can review:

• Related First Aid Facts
• Related Qmax Questions
• Related Express Videos
• Related Flash Facts

Note: You will need active subscriptions to Rx360 to access all of this content.  If you only have a subscription to Express Videos, for instance, you'll only be able to view the related videos from this area.