Actually, learning concepts is how you become a great diagnostician. Pattern recognition is a very complex phenomenon that relies heavily on unconscious neural frameworks that you build by studying to learn the reasoning behind a given pathology. For example. "A patient complains of a rash that covers part of his lower back. He states that it came on recently, but that the area felt painful before the rash began. Painkillers don't help." Now, most first year medical students know "rash=infectious disease" and "muscle pain=trauma", but they have no way of connecting the two. A 3rd year medical student understands that the pathophysiology of herpes zoster results in a dermatome specific spread of the virus into the nerve fiber, resulting in a very painful feeling that mimics a muscle strain. And that since the virus is inside the cell, painkillers won't have the same effect as an inflammatory induced phenomenon. Anatomy, infectious diseases, neuro, and pharmacology all combined into one concept. I hardly ever memorize anything explicitly in medical school. If you study hard enough, you don't have to do much beyond the occasional drug side effect that does not really make sense.
