HELP! study tips for quickly learning medical jargon

[ivyleague22ny]

hello!
I'm so excited that I got accepted to medical school (M.D.)!!
I also can't help but feel a little anxious about
starting med school this Fall 2003, especially gross anatomy.

I was glancing over a USMLE Step 1 Review Book
(First Aid) so I can have an idea of what I will need to
learn next year and I just noticed that the concepts are not
difficult to comprehend; however, the biggest hurdle
was deciphering the medical jargon. I'm not even sure
I was pronouncing the words correctly.

But I just felt like I had to look up every single word in the
medical dictionary (i.e. contralateral subthalamic nucleaus,
hemiballisus, hepatomegaly, etc.) and figure out even more
abbreviations (CHF, EOMI, etc.).

My main question is, for current medical students, how
did you go about learning all these new medical terms
efficiently?

It seems like all the anatomical terms I learned
in undergrad and in studying for the MCAT is "slang" compared
to all the technical medical jargon thrown at you during medical school.


Thanks in advance for any advice!

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[DrMom]

First of all: don't study now for your first year! You are wasting your time. Enjoy yourself: you'll spend way too much time looking at that stuff come fall semester.

Second: when you encounter those terms in med school, there will be some context to them. You will have tons to memorize, but you will be able to do it. Different people do different things. I have had lots of luck with flash cards...not just of the terms, but all of the info presented in class about them. I recommend that you get a good medical dictionary: I like Dorland's myself, but there are other good ones out there.

Third: you are right...the concepts in med school are not that difficult. It's the volume that'll get you. When we started school we were told that it would be like drinking from a fire hydrant (a common analogy, it seems). Pretty true. I've found that, in general, each class I have at med school in 3 weeks will cover what an entire semester of an undergrad course would have. Sounds bad, but you do get used to it after a while.

Good luck! I'm glad that you're excited, but stop looking at your First Aid book & go to a movie instead!

 

[Brewster]

I agree with the above...put First Aid down. It is good to be excited, but you have a long time ahead of you to study and learn that stuff. Relax, you are in (congratulations), now have fun and prepare (mentally) for med school.

As far as the jargon goes, you will pick it up as you go. It seems daunting now, but as was said above, there will be context when you learn it in med school which will make picking up the vocab much easier.

Good luck.

 

[Wednesday]

Hey ivy,

Not to belabor the point, but do stop studying. Wait until the fall. My addition to this discussion is that the terms that seem so strange now will make a lot more sense once you learn a few of them. For example hepatomegaly. Hepato refers to "liver" and megaly means "enlarged", so you get "enlarged liver". Then you'll see splenomegaly and have no problem figuring it out (or cardiomegaly, etc). What really gets me down is that lots of stuff has more than one name (!) and is often named after the person who found it. For example, macrophages have all different names in different types of tissues! But that's the pure memorization stuff and again, studying now won't help later. I sure wish I could go to a movie.

 

[UCLA2000]

You've got the rest of your life to learn that stuff. PUT THE BOOK DOWN.Take a freakin vacation and celebrate!

 

[IlianaSedai]

You'll pick up the vocabulary quite naturally and easily, without needing to get familiar with it before you start classes. No sweat! While it takes work to keep up with your classes, med school is not intellectually difficult-- college physics was much harder to understand.

There's only one word I drew a blank on, the very first day of anatomy class. That was <B>innervate</B>. For some reason, other people knew that while I didn't. It just means that if [name of nerve] supplies [name of muscle], that nerve <I>innervates</I> the muscle. And after that, I was all caught up.

 

[Kovox]

The more you use the medical jargon, the more you'll get used to it - as with any sort of jargon. In addition, you will have oral exams in medical school which will also assist in memorizing the jargon. However, you'll realize that a lot of the jargon make sense.

If you want to get a headstart on memorizing and understanding some of the jargon, don't do it from a book, that's hella boring. Here, there are programs for students that allow them to follow doctors around in hospitals and write down whatever the doctor says (This helps the student learn what doctors go through, as well as the jargon invovled..and it helps the staff at the hospital since doctors' handwriting tend to suck since they abbreviate so much and write like chicken scratch).

USMLE:
It's all cool yer into studying already or whatever for the boards. But if you really want to prepare than while you're in medical school, read your textbooks like you're reading a novel.

When you are reading about something new, ask yourself, "Why?" How can Group A Strep infection eventually cause narrowed pulse pressure? Why does Addison's disease cause hyperpigmentation? "Why?" "Why?" "Why?" and "Why?"

With that, I leave you with what my mentors told me "Approach medicine with a desire to excel, not for the sake of scores or credentials but for the sake of your patient, and...everything will fall into place."