To what extent do doctors actually use the knowledge they collect to perform well on the MCAT each day in their practice?

[manwelio]

Sort of a playful question for the room. Sometimes studying for something that feels overwhelming is grinding. Especially when you feel like you're just teaching yourself a lot of information that you're not really going to use again. So to what extent do practicing doctors actually call upon the biology, biochem, and genetics material they covered during their pre-reqs? Or would you contextualize MCAT content as essentially gatekeeping and not necessarily information you absolutely need to hold onto to be good at your job?

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[Mad Jack]

Sort of a playful question for the room. Sometimes studying for something that feels overwhelming is grinding. Especially when you feel like you're just teaching yourself a lot of information that you're not really going to use again. So to what extent do practicing doctors actually call upon the biology, biochem, and genetics material they covered during their pre-reqs? Or would you contextualize MCAT content as essentially gatekeeping and not necessarily information you absolutely need to hold onto to be good at your job?

It is foundational knowledge. You don't need to know most of it day-to-day, but you need it to successfully learn the large amount of material in medical school quickly and efficiently. Biochem, genetics, and biology also come up a lot when you're reviewing articles, something that we end up doing very frequently.

 

[Splenda88]

I don't use it that much or at all, but I often use knowledge learned in med school. As the above poster says, these are foundational knowledge that help one learn the material in med school. Then again, I did not do great in the MCAT (27 when the scale was from 0 to 45).

 

[sloh]

I get a lot more value out of UpToDate, understanding the importance of RCT’s; interpreting studies.

I don’t want to suggest mechanisms are unimportant but it’s not unusual that bioplausible interventions turn out to be ineffective or harmful. That said, this is something you need to continuously work on as a medical student, resident, AND attending.

Just trying to place everything in context here.

 

[FutureInternist]

Sort of a playful question for the room. Sometimes studying for something that feels overwhelming is grinding. Especially when you feel like you're just teaching yourself a lot of information that you're not really going to use again. So to what extent do practicing doctors actually call upon the biology, biochem, and genetics material they covered during their pre-reqs? Or would you contextualize MCAT content as essentially gatekeeping and not necessarily information you absolutely need to hold onto to be good at your job?

It’s like training for a marathon when you actually are running a quarter one (Is that a thing).

It just helps you deal with large amount of info, categorising it, putting it into “likely never to be opened” files in your brain (WTF do I need to know that Cystic fibrosis is a mess up on chrom 7)

And OFCOURSE the pimping about the minutiae is used by us attendings, to make ourselves feel better and to make students, residents and fellows cry

Same with MCAT.. the amount they teach you in college is huge compared to what is tested... just keep training.

 

[manwelio]

I get a lot more value out of UpToDate, understanding the importance of RCT’s; interpreting studies.

I don’t want to suggest mechanisms are unimportant but it’s not unusual that bioplausible interventions turn out to be ineffective or harmful. That said, this is something you need to continuously work on as a medical student, resident, AND attending.

Just trying to place everything in context here.

I appreciate all the responses. It's a nice reminder that like FutureInternist said, it's training for a marathon and then running much less. I definitely get the sense that the content knowledge is mostly about performance throughout medical school than performance in the role, but I also sense from sloh's comment that what is truly valuable to one's practice is actionable, applicable content knowledge, so trials and medical literature as opposed to textbooks in a vacuum. And to the point of medical school, getting to the clinical rotations and learning how to apply necessary content knowledge to situations that appear in medical literature. So instead of just having wall-to-wall knowledge of enzyme activity, you are just prepared to make actionable decisions about testing or connect symptoms to results of tests, and then relay the information back, etc.

 

[sloh]

I appreciate all the responses. It's a nice reminder that like FutureInternist said, it's training for a marathon and then running much less. I definitely get the sense that the content knowledge is mostly about performance throughout medical school than performance in the role, but I also sense from sloh's comment that what is truly valuable to one's practice is actionable, applicable content knowledge, so trials and medical literature as opposed to textbooks in a vacuum. And to the point of medical school, getting to the clinical rotations and learning how to apply necessary content knowledge to situations that appear in medical literature. So instead of just having wall-to-wall knowledge of enzyme activity, you are just prepared to make actionable decisions about testing or connect symptoms to results of tests, and then relay the information back, etc.

Good response! You've got a bright future ahead of you

 

[Ho0v-man]

Basic reading comprehension

how to look at a graph

very basic concepts that everyone knows like osmotic pressure

That's about it. I certainly use different parts to make it easier. For instance, I think the electron transport chain is biology’s best attempt at an ideal heat engine so I like to conceptualize it that way. But you obviously don’t have to do so.


Now that I’m past all the exam in med school, I now believe more than ever that a 3.0 and a 500 mcat is GTG for medical education. And having metrics beyond this likely doesn’t yield superior performance in med school until you start getting to insane 520+ scores. So yeah, overall it’s just a weed out.

 

[jurassicpark]

What's an MCAT?

 

[FutureInternist]

I appreciate all the responses. It's a nice reminder that like FutureInternist said, it's training for a marathon and then running much less. I definitely get the sense that the content knowledge is mostly about performance throughout medical school than performance in the role, but I also sense from sloh's comment that what is truly valuable to one's practice is actionable, applicable content knowledge, so trials and medical literature as opposed to textbooks in a vacuum. And to the point of medical school, getting to the clinical rotations and learning how to apply necessary content knowledge to situations that appear in medical literature. So instead of just having wall-to-wall knowledge of enzyme activity, you are just prepared to make actionable decisions about testing or connect symptoms to results of tests, and then relay the information back, etc.

Totally out of left field, but see how Hoov and I wrote our responses (paragraphs), and compare it to yours (a diarrhea of content in one fell swoop ),

Try to mimic us when writing notes since that format is much easier to understand.

If I could just get my colleagues to start saying “Next line” when dictating, I would die happy.

Good luck in school.

 

[manwelio]

Totally out of left field, but see how Hoov and I wrote our responses (paragraphs), and compare it to yours (a diarrhea of content in one fell swoop ),

Try to mimic us when writing notes since that format is much easier to understand.

If I could just get my colleagues to start saying “Next line” when dictating, I would die happy.

Good luck in school.

I wouldn't refer to your single sentences with line breaks as "paragraphs" when speaking to a former English teacher and long-time content editor! That's my background for writing "chunkier" comments. I get your point about grabbing attention though. It's more of a marketing style in that way.

Now I see why doctors avoid the humanities. So many words! In a row! And consecutive lines! The horror...

 

[Blueprint Med School]

I think CARS is important for general reading comprehension, but most of the science outside of B/B is pretty irrelevant. People might say it's foundational, but nobody cares if you know how to titrate as a physician, or if you know how to calculate the voltage drop through a resistor. Maybe in some really niche circumstances you'll use that information, but it's unlikely.

However, I will say that the science is incredibly important for getting through preclinical years. Physiology will be way more confusing without a base understanding of physics, molecular bio is hard to understand without understanding how certain elements behave, etc.

Kevin W, MCAT Tutor
Med School Tutors

 

[Eye-eye]

Or would you contextualize MCAT content as essentially gatekeeping and not necessarily information you absolutely need to hold onto to be good at your job?

Mostly this. But many of the basic concepts are things you do need to know to be able to understand M1-M2.

Of course, those M1-M2 concepts are to some extent just gatekeeping for step 1. But many of those basic concepts are things you need to know to be able to understand certain actually clinically relevant topics.

Basically until you're on the wards, I'd say 80% or more of what you learn you don't really need to know, but it's good practice. Of course, then you can go into something like ophtho, like I'm doing, and that percentage gets higher, and includes the stuff I did in clerkships.

 

[southflorida1107]

I tell all my patients that the mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell

 

[sloh]

Kreb’s cycle for the umpteenth time

 

[Blueprint Med School]

Cars actually translates a lot more then people think. All of your clinical vignettes on your board exams require you to parse through nonsense to find clinically important information. Additionally, that's pretty much one of the major skills of being a clinician is being able to take a full history and figure out what actually matters and what is actionable.

David D MD - USMLE and MCAT Tutor
Med School Tutors