Does reading medical textbooks determine who will be a good doctor?

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Diphyllobothrium

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The content in med school is too much and I don't like reading big textbooks. I don't have enough time to read bic textbooks. Does it mean that if I am passing my pre-clinical years by using High-yield resources and not reading textbooks that I won't be a good doctor?

Some people say that in order for you to be a good doctor then you have to read Guyton and Robbins, for example. Is that the case?

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Medical textbooks are the only way to become a competent doctor. /s
 
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You learn how to be a good doctor in residency, not med school. What you do need is a foundation, which is built in med school. It doesn't matter how you build it, whether it's through big Robbins, Pathoma, or *shudders* school lectures. You just need to build it. Personally, I ignore lecture hard and focus on the high yield. I know I just pissed off some administrators with that last sentence. This makes me happy.
 
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No, reading textbooks is really inefficient. Do what is necessary with the most high yield and high ROI sources to pass your classes, score well on your boards, excel on clinical rotations. Once you hit residency, reading daily/regularly (e.g. UpToDate, relevant clinical literature/studies) in conjunction with participation in patient care (with true skin in the game and the emotional resonance that has) is what will make you an excellent clinician. Keep it up as an attending.
 
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Only when your arms become strong enough from handling heavy textbooks will you be able to carry patients on your own
 
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The content in med school is too much and I don't like reading big textbooks. I don't have enough time to read bic textbooks. Does it mean that if I am passing my pre-clinical years by using High-yield resources and not reading textbooks that I won't be a good doctor?

Some people say that in order for you to be a good doctor then you have to read Guyton and Robbins, for example. Is that the case?
No.
 
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No, it used to be your STEP 1 score. Now it’s your US World News ranking.

/s
 
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No, reading textbooks is really inefficient. Do what is necessary with the most high yield and high ROI sources to pass your classes, score well on your boards, excel on clinical rotations. Once you hit residency, reading daily/regularly (e.g. UpToDate, relevant clinical literature/studies) in conjunction with participation in patient care (with true skin in the game and the emotional resonance that has) is what will make you an excellent clinician. Keep it up as an attending.

UpToDate is hands down the best tool to study as an MS3/4. You can ignore any other material really.
 
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The content in med school is too much and I don't like reading big textbooks. I don't have enough time to read bic textbooks. Does it mean that if I am passing my pre-clinical years by using High-yield resources and not reading textbooks that I won't be a good doctor?

Some people say that in order for you to be a good doctor then you have to read Guyton and Robbins, for example. Is that the case?
Reading textbooks in the real world are for: 1. Reference and 2. Your own volition to read it.

Unless your class exams are 100% from said textbooks (and sometimes not even then), the answer to your question is "no"
 
I thought it was how many flashcards you do on Tuesdays between the hours of 8 00am and 11:39pm that determines this
 
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Why do people come on here just to ask questions for affirmation of their pre-held beliefs? smh man
 
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I suspect you can be a “good” doctor“ by today’s standards without reading Robbins. But somethings will be missed.
You will not know who wrote this or every picked up and read an original edition of his work in your school library.

”He who studies medicine without books sails an uncharted sea, but he who studies medicine without patients does not go to sea at all.”
 
There's so much that goes into being a good physician. Purely from a knowledge base standpoint, if you want to become a master clinician I think at least one full pass through a reference text in whatever your future area of expertise is intended to be should be a goal. You learn intricacies of particular conditions through providing and reading literature on direct patient care, but there's always a "first time" seeing a particular condition or first time seeing a unique presentation of a condition you've previously treated, and having somewhere in your mind the basics of that problem are a good thing to have. Big picture career wise the investment in reading something like Harrisons for internal medicine is not that high
 
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The way to be a good doctor is to generate as many RVUs as you can so the hospital system loves you and pays you accordingly.
 
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What do you think of StatsPearls?

I personally love StatPearls.
UpToDate certainly has its role (I use it particularly for reviewing guidelines, dosing regimens, choosing the optimal tests for further evaluation) but I don’t like it much for comprehensive learning purposes. StatPearls and a well-written review article (such as in NEJM) are my favorites to learn from. That being said, I am a huge reader and learn best by reading- but even I have found textbooks simply too daunting as a medical student and resident!

to the OP, to echo what others have said, you will be an excellent doctor so long as you work hard and stay humble- know there is a lot you don’t know, even if you don’t know exactly what you don’t know- and even with a few minutes of learning each day as a resident, you’ll be shocked to see how much you’ve learned cumulatively over the years! As a med student, the quality of the foundation you build will only help you in the future- review books, review articles, and StatPearls are your friend too.
Good luck!
 
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If you can't help with an answer, then it shouldn't bother you. Who hurt you?

Guys, does studying from my school's curriculum better prepare me for Step 1 than First Aid? My school admins say it does but I disagree. Let me know in the comments!
 
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Preclinical GPAs are the best predictors of Step I performance.

If you rely on FA only, you are playing with fire.

If your school uses NBME. If your school is faculty exams only, I doubt it's very predictive. No offense, but most faculty exams are terrible.
 
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If your school uses NBME. If your school is faculty exams only, I doubt it's very predictive. No offense, but most faculty exams are terrible.
The data I've seen at multiple medical education conferences (and my own school and publications) do not differentiate between Faculty written exams and shelf exams.
Avoid the sin of solipsism.
 
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The data I've seen at multiple medical education conferences (and my own school and publications) do not differentiate between Faculty written exams and shelf exams.
Avoid the sin of solipsism.

If I have learned anything in my few years in the world of medical education, its that medical education admins will say/write/publish anything that will affirm their own beliefs. I would bet if we actually broke down the average step score of someone finishing zanki vs no anki only school studying it would be a landslide.

All that being said, I was making an entirely different point and this is sidetracking.
 
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The data I've seen at multiple medical education conferences (and my own school and publications) do not differentiate between Faculty written exams and shelf exams.
Avoid the sin of solipsism.

Someone who disagrees with you is not committing a logical fallacy just because they disagree with you. Anecdotes aren't data, but at some point the small ns together become a very large n, and the overwhelming consensus is that faculty exams are usually terrible and not representative of nbme. A HUGE confounder in your argument is that people know they have to take step, and so they are still studying for step on top of studying for faculty exams. It's likely that people are doing well on step in spite of faculty exams, not because of them.
 
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Someone who disagrees with you is not committing a logical fallacy just because they disagree with you. Anecdotes aren't data, but at some point the small ns together become a very large n, and the overwhelming consensus is that faculty exams are usually terrible and not representative of nbme. A HUGE confounder in your argument is that people know they have to take step, and so they are still studying for step on top of studying for faculty exams. It's likely that people are doing well on step in spite of faculty exams, not because of them.

Agree 100%. Also, smart people are smart people. They are going to do well on exams regardless. They love to act like correlation is causation and pat themselves on the back for a job well done.

These admins act like their curricula is the holy grail of medical education, lol. How many times have I heard from other students "I should have never listened to my school and trusted the curriculum, I should've been relying on board resources instead"

Why are they threatened by the fact that we use superior resources? They should just be happy for us and get out of the way. It's medical school for medical students, not medical school for faculty/admin
 
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If I have learned anything in my few years in the world of medical education, its that medical education admins will say/write/publish anything that will affirm their own beliefs. I would bet if we actually broke down the average step score of someone finishing zanki vs no anki only school studying it would be a landslide.

All that being said, I was making an entirely different point and this is sidetracking.
Yes, we're wedded to our prejudices that faculty will fabricate data to prove them.

Why are they threatened by the fact that we use superior resources? They should just be happy for us and get out of the way. It's medical school for medical students, not medical school for faculty/admin

I'm not threatened by this. I deal with adult learners, who know how best they can learn.
 
Someone who disagrees with you is not committing a logical fallacy just because they disagree with you. Anecdotes aren't data, but at some point the small ns together become a very large n, and the overwhelming consensus is that faculty exams are usually terrible and not representative of nbme. A HUGE confounder in your argument is that people know they have to take step, and so they are still studying for step on top of studying for faculty exams. It's likely that people are doing well on step in spite of faculty exams, not because of them.
Do you have a citation for this?
 
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I'm not threatened by this. I deal with adult learners, who know how best they can learn.

lmao. Its crazy how every med school admin has the same mentality. Unwillingness to even consider alternate perspectives.

I sit on one of our voting committees and I see it all the time. An admin will report that "we have gotten amazing reviews from students and everyone is learning great!" Meanwhile if you actually talk to the students the approval rating of their initiatives is lower than Trump. Its phenomenal.
 
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Yes. I question your "very large n".

We have people from schools all over the country just on this forum who say their faculty exams are horrible and are not representative at all of nbme. I know at my school, most of the students also feel that way (we take both). It is not a big leap.
 
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We have people from schools all over the country just on this forum who say their faculty exams are horrible and are not representative at all of nbme. I know at my school, most of the students also feel that way (we take both). It is not a big leap.
It's not a big leap if you already believe it.
 
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It's not a big leap if you already believe it.

You have a small number n of people in a subset SDN of X, and they have some quality. Each member says that they are each part of their own individual subsets of X, which we'll call school_i which represent all the subsets of X, of which the majority share the same quality. Now if this is true, then the majority of each subset of X shares this quality, and so the majority of X shares this quality. Now, say you know for a fact that at least one of them is telling the truth. Now, given that the forum is anonymous and there is no incentive to lie, what is the likelihood that the others are lying?

The answer to that is left as an exercise for the reader.
 
You have a small number n of people in a subset SDN of X, and they have some quality. Each member says that they are each part of their own individual subsets of X, which we'll call school_i which represent all the subsets of X, of which the majority share the same quality. Now if this is true, then the majority of each subset of X shares this quality, and so the majority of X shares this quality. Now, say you know for a fact that at least one of them is telling the truth. Now, given that the forum is anonymous and there is no incentive to lie, what is the likelihood that the others are lying?

The answer to that is left as an exercise for the reader.
I shouldn't have bothered. You've made up your mind.
 
I shouldn't have bothered. You've made up your mind.

Do you honestly think that most medical students are happy with their school's curriculum? We need to have surveys of this that are not conducted by med school admins, badly.
 
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Do you honestly think that most medical students are happy with their school's curriculum? We need to have surveys of this that are not conducted by med school admins, badly.
I think basing that argument on a few dozen SDN anecdotes reeks of sampling and confirmation bias, not to mention that we're arguing about opinion instead of fact. Disliking your curriculum doesn't mean that it's not effective. If you think it's terrible, that's your business. But digging your heels in and declaring that most or all med school curricula are ineffective just based on your personal opinion and those of some other SDN posters is misguided at best.
 
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I think basing that argument on a few dozen SDN anecdotes reeks of sampling and confirmation bias, not to mention that we're arguing about opinion instead of fact. Disliking your curriculum doesn't mean that it's not effective. If you think it's terrible, that's your business. But digging your heels in and declaring that most or all med school curricula are ineffective just based on your personal opinion and those of some other SDN posters is misguided at best.

What if someone barely passes their professor written exams because od ignoring lectures (entirely, dont even read them once) and they score well on STEP 1 (i.e. >240 so well above the med school average) because they only ever studied outside resources (insert UFAPS), and that the class average at that school is upper 220s... Would you still stay the school curriculum > secondary resources?
 
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What if someone barely passes their professor written exams because od ignoring lectures (entirely, dont even read them once) and they score well on STEP 1 (i.e. >240 so well above the med school average) because they only ever studied outside resources (insert UFAPS), and that the class average at that school is upper 220s... Would you still stay the school curriculum > secondary resources?
I never said school curricula are inherently better. And a hypothetical is not evidence of anything.
 
I never said school curricula are inherently better. And a hypothetical is not evidence of anything.
Didnt say it was evidence, I was wondering your opinion on a hypothetical considering your position in this thread.

I'm similar to my hypothetical as above, and most of my classmates I talk to feel the same way as others who are arguing with you. My professors take full credit when we do well on NBME exams, but I know a decent portion of people in my class. And the majority of those people dont really pay attention to class lectures.
 
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