Stressing over using board material to study for preclinical

[Calizboosted76]

So I just started my second year and I am having trouble finding a "flow" of using board material to study for preclinical classes. Last semester I found a way to study for my classes and it was working well however my mentor advised me to only use board prep material and to do the ANKING deck to study for classes and I would be fine in classes as well as for boards.

Does anyone have a solid laid out way to do this? My lecture material doesn't seem to line up with the boards and beyond videos to well despite my mentor saying that they were all he used.

Any suggestions or advice on how to move forward?

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[Goro]

How about talking to the courses professor?

 

[Calizboosted76]

How about talking to the courses professor?

I have reached out to them as well as some other mentors at the school. Professors havent responded yet. But this other mentor said that I should keep studying using my own method (making my own anki cards, it just takes up so much time) and do board prep on the weekends and like an hour a day if I have time.

 

[wellbutrin.girlfriend]

A friend of mine a couple years ahead of me who did really well in both classes and boards said her strategy was: for each class lecture/topic, do pathoma or sketchy first, watch the lecture from school, then do the corresponding anking, and keep up with anking reviews throughout the school year. School starts for me next week and that’s what I’ll be trying. I should also add that I believe my school teaches our clinical medicine didactic course with required reading assignments from First Aid.

 

[deleted1079620]

My workflow last year:

1. Look at lecture ppt for whatever topic we’re covering that day (ex: hypertension)
2. Watch hypertension Pathoma video (Sketchy for micro/pharm)
3. Unsuspend cards related to hypertension Pathoma in preferred deck (I don’t think it matters which one as long as you’re consistent…I liked Lightyear personally)
4. Repeat for each topic
5. After I did anki cards, do 5-10 questions on lecture topics per day.
6. If I get to the weekend and I’m consistently missing the same anki cards or questions, watch the lecture or part of the lecture for clarification.

 

[Calizboosted76]

My workflow last year:

1. Look at lecture ppt for whatever topic we’re covering that day (ex: hypertension)
2. Watch hypertension Pathoma video (Sketchy for micro/pharm)
3. Unsuspend cards related to hypertension Pathoma in preferred deck (I don’t think it matters which one as long as you’re consistent…I liked Lightyear personally)
4. Repeat for each topic
5. After I did anki cards, do 5-10 questions on lecture topics per day.
6. If I get to the weekend and I’m consistently missing the same anki cards or questions, watch the lecture or part of the lecture for clarification.

My only issue is that some of our lectures are super low yield and it will be a full 50 slides on a low yield topic so I have to make my own Anki for that. I feel like it’s a little inconsistent and doesn’t feel like boards videos are teaching me what I need.

 

[deleted1079620]

My only issue is that some of our lectures are super low yield and it will be a full 50 slides on a low yield topic so I have to make my own Anki for that. I feel like it’s a little inconsistent and doesn’t feel like boards videos are teaching me what I need.

Yeah, it can be pretty school specific. My school was largely boards-focused during 2nd year, but every now and then we would have a crazy low-yield lecture that you just had to learn the hard way.

 

[Ho0v-man]

When I was in school, I’d just do Zanki (now Anking) and watch sketchy and pathoma. And watch Boards and Beyond toward the end of the block as a second pass of this stuff. I’d figure out how many new cards/day I’d need to be done about a week before the block exam.

I’d also just pass through the material 3 times. The first time was following along with the lecture and taking notes, pausing and rewinding as needed. The second time was the weekend after the lecture. This was the detailed pass that I really used to synthesize and understand the material. Third pass was a few days before the block exam. On this pass, I’d open up the PowerPoint with all my notes scribbled on it and freak out because I’d forgotten it all. But after a few minutes it would flood back. This third pass usually takes less than 10 minutes. And most of what I’m doing here is making sure I’ve got the dumb minutiae down or at least organized in a way for rapid cramming. I’d wake up at like 4am to cram the minutiae on test day.

The lectures given less than a week prior to the test probably just need two passes.

This method is pretty overwhelming initially as you really front load at the beginning of a block. But when school starts to hammer the class with tons of info a few days before the test, you’ll be chilling because the most important aspects were memorized a week ago.

 

[DO2015CA]

As an acom grad myself, spam board studying that correlates with class material. Of their 3 questions per lecture, you can get 2 of those questions that way. You should do one pass of the ppts prior to the test to try and pick up that third question per lecture in theory.

Barring they haven’t drastically overhauled the format.

 

[DrZoidbergDO]

As an acom grad myself, spam board studying that correlates with class material. Of their 3 questions per lecture, you can get 2 of those questions that way. You should do one pass of the ppts prior to the test to try and pick up that third question per lecture in theory.

Barring they haven’t drastically overhauled the format.

still true

 

[giguerex35]

my pre-clinical routine would go something like this. Watch all the BB (or theommedicine.com for OMM) videos for the topics on my upcoming test and take good notes. Do the anki cards associated with those videos. Look at school powerpoint 2-3 days before the exam to ensure I at least saw some of the low yield nonsense they test you on. Do some questions in Rx on the topic. I used Rx early because it is an easier qbank but thought it was good to use along with school tests for early exposure to questions.