Well lord knows I've got
nothing better to do now. I know you asked in more simple terms, but lets break this down since you guys are getting closer and closer to starting. First, I do not have any conflicts of interest with the resources I reference, I simply like them. Second, DO NOT purchase any of these prior to starting school for..........
reasons. Third, I've noticed I like tangents when writing - so to spare all of you, I'm adding cliff notes. If you want the down and dirty, skip em. if you want some context, they're below. Fourth, resources fall into study/learning, review, and testing. And Finally, 5th: Who the hell knows if any of this will be necessary, HOWEVER, you still need to LEARN the material - And I think these resources are the best way to go to do just that. Here goes.
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Learning resources:
The nature of our curriculum, especially for year 1, is to front load your weekends to prepare for your week. To this end, your week will begin on Saturday when you get access to the next weeks study materials. For example lets say week 7 is "Immunizations", you'll have a list of the weeks and you'll
click on it. And you'll come to a list
like this for that week. The "meat" of what you need to prepare for is under Necessary science, and when you un-collapse this list, you'll notice a **** load of "Objectives" for that material, as well as many resources you can use to learn it. The school provides a lot of reading and some very old lectures, which some folks don't mind. If this works for you, then power to ya! Go ahead and skip the next paragraph. For me though, I have a hard time reading and actually learning - my very inattentive mind doesn't do well with this.
What I do, and what MANY of my peers do is take a gander at that list, and then find those topics in First Aid (1) for a quick overview of the subjects totality (2), and then dive into outside videos/lectures to cover that material. I STRONGLY encourage you to watch and take notes on any Pathology topics with
Pathoma, for any objectives you see related (3). For non-pathology topics, there are two primary resources. For micro/pharm,
Sketchy is king (4) Even if you don't like how the memory visuals work, these videos are still an awesome overview series to take notes on and get the basics down. I do NOT recommend their pathology series (5). For everything else, folks really seem to dig
Boards and Beyond (BnB) - I know I did. Its a comprehensive overview of topics with a mix of presentations, pathology, testing, treatment, and prevention. What I did is watch these videos, and annotate the notes into my copy of First Aid (6), but do what works for you. During class and PBLs when going over topics, I'd reference the pages from First Aid. This is KEY, repetition, repetition, repetition (7), the more you do it, the more you remember.
Other LEARNING Resources:
Lecturio - a competitor to BnB. I never used this but have heard positive things. They have more than just medical school stuff too and apparently a lot more in regards to basic physiology. BnB is more of a medicine focused series.
Kaplan - Meh, some like their QBank
Neuroanatomy through Clinical Cases - A dope neuro book with EXCELLENT visuals and easy to read chapters. You will need something for Neuro here if you've had little exposure before. There is a PDF floating around somewhere, but the book is getting cheaper.
VH Dissector - DO NOT BUY THIS GARBAGE, the school recommends it and it was a great waste of money. The app
Complete Anatomy is wayyy cooler, and far more useful to quiz yourself on anatomy stuff. You'll have a packet each anatomy class with key terms and concepts, and some of your very nice M3's may or may not have created some Quizlets for all the terms - Ask for them, or PM me when you guys start.
A white board: Yep, you read this right. Become one with the white board. Draw out some flow diagrams - it will help you.
And Many more than I've forgotten about
Cliff notes:
1. You should buy first aid, and you should use it day 1, I don't care what the faculty says (except for Pags, he'll agree with me)) First aid is NOT a learning tool, it is quick reference guide to #1 jog your memory if you've forgotten something and #2 a place to take additional notes from other resources.
2. CHM doesn't give you a complete look at a subject - it's very piecemeal. I like to have an ordered hierarchy of knowledge filed away in my brain - I can't add turrets to my castle that has no foundation. Find a way to do this that works best for you.
3. In fact, the first 3 chapters are considered so high yield, almost everyone will re watch or reread those chapters the week before step 1. Ill add that the weakest part of our curriculum is our histology course, which is classically where you learn pathology as a medical student. I'd even recommend watching the lectures for the weekly histo class.
4. Sketchy uses pictographs with re-used memory hooks that burn an image in your brain to remember certain key parts of a drug or bug. For example, you're going over a bug, and you see some crows flying in the picture - that means this bug is susceptible to macrolide antibiotics
5. Sketchy is best for short format videos 5-10 minutes. Anything longer and is more of a review series than serving its original purpose. Some of the 30 minute antibiotic lectures start to drag.
6. You don't want to be hauling around a lot of books and notes - it's annoying, its tiresome and tedious to transfer between resources, and if you're like me, you'll never look at your handwritten notes again if its loose leaf. I had all the notes I needed in one book and I actually looked at them again.
7. I swear, there are pages I have memorized.
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Review Resources:
Read this carefully: I do not care WHAT you use to review material, only that you DO review it REGULARLY. With that said, your energy needs to be split between learning and reviewing. YOU ARE NOT just learning things once or twice, reviewing for a test, and moving on. You will NOT do this anymore because it all matters and it all builds on itself. This will become very obvious when you get into your 2nd or 3rd progress testings, and you're not improving anymore. It's because your learning so much new material, and not reviewing the old stuff to the point of forgetting it. You CANNOT undergrad your way through medical school. If you do this, you will REALLY regret it come 2nd year and come dedicated, regardless of if it's pass fail now. An hour a day, go back to a page in First aid that you've covered and review it. Spaced repetition and Active recall are the
BEST ways to learn and review material.
Ok... with that said, my
Anki fills that role perfectly. Sadly folks either love or hate Anki.
What is it: It's flash cards app, some pre-made, with built in
spaced repetition. If you aren't familiar with spaced repetition
, google scholar it. If you "learn a card" day 1, it graduates to tomorrow. Tomorrow when you're reviewing your deck, you see the card again, and get it right, it graduates to "3 days from now", and so on so fourth to 7 days, 15 days, a month etc. If you get it wrong, it goes back to day 1. There is a whole
sub-reddit devoted to questions and decks with this. The Step 1
sub-reddit is also helpful. Also one for step 2.
The folks that Hate it don't seem to understand the purpose of it when I speak with them. Anki is NOT a learning resource, it is a review tool that is excellently paired with Qbanks. With all the pre-made decks out there, it's gold - if you like BnB, someone literally made a 17,000 flash card deck of all his videos. You watch a video, you unlock the cards, and When it's time to review, you'll open the app, and open a deck to review and go through.
Why I liked it: Time is super valuable now. If I can have pre-made flash cards on topics I'm going over that match word for word with my resources, i'm going to save a lot of time using it vs. making my own, or trying to schedule my review time. Its just like hitting any easy button. If you don't want to use flash cards, find some other way to review
, but YOU MUST review.
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Testing/Active learning resources:
So anki alone is not going to get you learning. Where Anki gives you the breadth, it doesn't give you the depth. You need to contextualize and associate all this information into usable form, into how it shows up in medicine. Thats where Q-Banks come into play. UWorld is obviously king, but you won't start this until your 2nd year because doing the questions at an earlier time would be wasteful. Folks really liked
USMLE Rx during 1st year (Or Kaplan), RX of note, is made by the people who make First Aid. Every question will reference a page in first Aid where you can add additional notes as well. Another thing that folks like to do is make personal Anki decks, or flash cards for the questions that they get wrong. Maybe you keep a journal of your wrongs and an explanation of your thinking. IDC, just do something. You've learned all those random facts, you've reviewed them and memorized them to some extent, test that knowledge with a Qbank to contextualize everything. YOu do not need to kill yourself with questions. Try working at 2-3/day, up to 5-10 a day over the course of the year. If you can do 20 or so on the weekend, should also be useful. Pick subjects you've gone over and DO NOT beat yourself up if you get questions wrong. You use it to learn, not to "test" yourself if that makes sense.
Send an Email to
[email protected] with your documents. YOu might get a snippy email about it being unsecure, up to you if you want to send an email for ease vs. Faxing it. You do not need to have everything completed before matriculating - but you need to start the series. Obviously some vaccines are given in series, and the school cannot hold that against you if your between the 3-6 months for your next booster. The school should work wiht you, just send them an email. I think Dr. Brady is the head Imms person.
That all for now folks! Peace!
