Central Note Hub

[soccer98]

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Hey guys:

About to start residency in a few weeks. I'm thinking of making my own set of notes, neatly organized and accumulated over the next four years, hopefully as a study/review tool. I would collect notes during readings, conferences, signouts, etc and I could update on a daily basis. I feel like there is a benefit of reading one's own notes.

Some concerns:
1. I am debating whether to have these notes on Google docs, some other cloud system, or just to have a collection of MS Word docs on my computer? What is easiest to use? I am looking for a format that is easily editable, transferable, and readable.
2. Should I have one big file, or multiple files? Organized by organ system? By rotation? Maybe I should organize it the same way pathoutlines does it.
3. I don't like doing intensive note typing on small mobile devices, so I will likely write notes on paper during conferences and signouts, and then transfer it to my computer later. Is there any efficient way of doing this?
4. I can't imagine pathology notes being useful as text only. Images would be essential. But I can picture this taking a large amount of time and space.
5. In general, is this kind of project worth it? How did you guys organize your notes? Is this kind of thing worth the effort? I feel like I will eventually get behind in these, or they will look so bad it's not worth looking at.

Thanks

 

[deleted314957]

wouldn't your time be better spent reading? sounds like a massive time waster to me.

 

[soccer98]

Obviously, I'm going to read. That's where a lot of the notes would come from.

It might be a waste of time at first, but it could beneficial in the long term if done correctly.

Maybe I should downsize.

 

[Neopath]

Obviously, I'm going to read. That's where a lot of the notes would come from.

It might be a waste of time at first, but it could beneficial in the long term if done correctly.

Maybe I should downsize.

OP, it's not a waste of time. It's essentially what I've done the past few years and it's made organizing BOARD study a little bit more manageable. It really has a lot to do with your learning style.

Some can read and retain. Personally, I have to organize my own notes and do a lot of repetition to retain anything.

What you're talking about is essentially what Sinard did. He "published" his notes and it was a recommended source for some amount of years after that.

You can see his "work" here: http://www.yalepath.org/residency/OIP.htm

Read the preface. It essentially describes what you're describing, here.

 

[ScotchBonnet]

I don't think making notes is a waste of time either provided that is how you learn. I made AOA in med school by making my own notes and have thus ried to continue doing so in residency. On some busy rotations, my note taking takes a back seat so they are anything but comprehensive for any given area, but I like to think that what I have is better than nothing. I keep Word documents and, rather than imbedding pictures, reference the appropriate figure in the book I am reading. Then, when I review the notes, I have the book open and just look at the figure.

 

[soccer98]

Thanks all. I like the Sinard notes. Are there notes from anyone else floating around? Perhaps some members here can upload their own if they are so inclined.

It seems like this is the right thing to do in principle, and I hope I can get it to work out correctly.

Referencing the images from a book is a good idea.

 

[Ombret]

I used a set of Google Docs files (organized by organ) to keep track of all the random pearls that were thrown my way at signout. I actually got the idea from a fellow of whom I thought very highly, who called his collection "At the Scope", so that is what I called mine. I didn't use this to recapitulate entire books because I don't personally find that kind of thing helpful, and it would be a lot of work, and I already have the books. But these occasional notes have come in quite handy. There are months when I don't use a given chapter, then I'll use a given file twice in two days. I'm certainly glad I did it and it was not that much effort over the years.

 

[KCShaw]

I started doing something like that, before I found sources like Sinard and pathologyoutlines. At the time (well, then even more than now) I spent a lot of time on the computer (affectionally known by one of my attendings as the 'confuser') and elected to try to take and place referenced notes on a website. It only worked in occasional short bursts, as ultimately it took too much time the way I was doing it, which I eventually felt would be better spent covering more material by reading, looking at slides, etc. So it didn't really go anywhere. It's still up (www.pathipedia.com), but it's just the exceedingly sparse effort of a junior resident who ended up taking entirely another route after some minor sporadic playing around. Still, it may offer some ideas of how to, or more likely, how not to do it.

I think if notes &/or repetition is what works best for you (for retention AND efficiency), then do it -- but do it for yourself, in the way that works for you. There's too much to learn in too little time to think ahead to publishing it or somesuch thing for others, a la Sinard. And be willing to change tactics if it's just not panning out. Again, there's a lot to learn in only a little time -- less than you probably had in medical school, because of your job responsibilities on most rotations. The big advantage to actually doing this is that it may help you to "keep up" from the beginning of residency, which is perhaps the hardest thing for anyone to do. A lot of people seem to read the first month or so, then taper off for a year or two until the panic of boards starts to set in.

 

[Pathplay]

To the OP - if you have an iPad, the app Evernote is amazing.

I started using it a year ago and it allows you to import images directly from the web, insert weblinks to references, format notes etc. Easy to use, allows the utilization of multi-media sources, and is free.

 

[KCShaw]

Springpad is similar to Evernote, if you want to consider alternatives -- haven't used either extensively enough to make a real comparison though. I believe both have desktop versions, or at least a browser interface you can use on a desktop, and have iWhatever and Android apps.

 

[soccer98]

Did any of you guys take notes during signouts? How did you do it? I was thinking one simple spiral notebook would be sufficient.

 

[KCShaw]

Occasionally. Got annoyed with it, mostly. Some people I saw use a spiral notebook, but I found the content so haphazard as to be useless unless it was organized elsewhere later. Instead I just made scribbles on a scrap bit of paper and used it to read up, mostly. Even notes taken during more organized 'lectures' I found fairly useless as they tended not to really fit in with anything anyone was actually doing, so were just something else that distracted from the hands/eyes-on learning, although they also addressed things that show up on boards a lot more than they do in real life -- sorta a necessary evil. Still, I felt like I got more out of doing the work and basing some reading around that, although I wish the -work- had been a bit more systematic -- one of the advantages, IMO, for those programs who have directed/specialty sign-out as you can more easily study just that organ system while also signing out those cases (and without the distractions of other 'new' things in other systems). It's just a matter of finding an efficient way to organize it for yourself, whether that's putting the haphazard pieces in order so a year or two later you can come back to it and have it already organized and useful, or approaching it some other way.

 

[Euchromatin]

I had a small notepad that I would take notes with occasionally during signout. As others have mentioned, unless you go back and look at your notes later, either to add that information to other notes from that organ system or just to remind yourself to study some particular topic, they aren't all that helpful in the long run.

I would often bring a book, like the Molavi "Practice of Surgical Pathology" or the Washington Manual, to AP lectures and then just add any useful pearls that weren't already in the text into the margins. This worked okay for first year, but now I've more or less run out of margin space in the Molavi (and found out that some of the stuff I had written down was either not as correct/true as I had initially thought and/or was not that useful) and the Washington manual often seems to be missing a fair amount of info on immunos. I think I might pick up that "Differential Diagnosis" book for next month, when I go back onto the surg path service and start using that instead...it would probably be a good idea to review the Molavi text with all my notes in it and transfer the most relevant bits into the new book, but I'm not sure I will have enough time/motivation to really do that.

 

[KCShaw]

If you can find a concise enough text to carry around and flip through at sign-out in order to do that sort of thing, I guess that's not a bad concept. At least you could place notes in some pre-organized order. Probably a better concept for lectures and such though, where you can already be in the relevant chapter (and hopefully have pre-read for it, so you already know what is already in the book about that topic). Doesn't sound that easy in practice, but, it's all about doing things that work for you -- which sometimes means trying things out.