how much do residents study?

[Doc013]

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However, how much studying does one have to do during residency and post-residency?
I am interested in path, but find the volume of material daunting. Med school is kicking my @$$; I don't want to feel like I have to study so much for the rest of my life.

 

[deleted314957]

However, how much studying does one have to do during residency and post-residency?
I am interested in path, but find the volume of material daunting. Med school is kicking my @$$; I don't want to feel like I have to study so much for the rest of my life.

You are in the wrong field my friend. Med school was a cake walk and a path residency makes general surgery look like Dante's inferno. You need to consider an MD-JD; only 3 years ( many places waive the LSAT for MD's) and the money is good. There is absolutely NOTHING in med school or path that is conceptually difficult as oposed to some of the crap you may have hit in college such as diffe-q. Just make sure you do a top 20 (preferentially 10) law school.

 

[yaah]

Being a good pathologist means you are studying a lot - even after training. You can learn to organize your life so that you can study efficiently and not have to study "all the time." But a lot of people have trouble with that.

 

[pathstudent]

I spent far more hours studying the first two years of med school. There were three to four hours of lecture and then I would study until ten at night routinely. Residency was active learning besides going to the one hour lecture a day. In general I would just stop and take ten to read about a new tumor I saw or brush up on a differential dx and how to work it up. Personally I found residency easier especially when I became more efficient. Not until board studying time did I come close to studying as much and even then it was less than what I did for finals in med school.

 

[Enkidu]

There is absolutely NOTHING in med school or path that is conceptually difficult as oposed to some of the crap you may have hit in college such as diffe-q

This may be true, but in my experience not very helpful advice. I studied mathematics in college, and it is conceptually much more difficult... but medical school is still more difficult overall. It's the volume of information that is difficult, and I imagine that pathology has the most volume in medicine.

 

[Doc013]

I spent far more hours studying the first two years of med school. There were three to four hours of lecture and then I would study until ten at night routinely. Residency was active learning besides going to the one hour lecture a day. In general I would just stop and take ten to read about a new tumor I saw or brush up on a differential dx and how to work it up. Personally I found residency easier especially when I became more efficient. Not until board studying time did I come close to studying as much and even then it was less than what I did for finals in med school.

yes im referring to volume. i don't think the material is especially difficult. it's mastering the objectives in the allotted time. anyway thanks for the insight. pathology seems like an intellectually stimulating field, but i fear ill tire of that. at some point i want things to slow down and the sooner the better. some of the rads residents said they work like 35 hour weeks. how can anyone say no to that?

 

[isaishere]

IMHO Pathologist read even more than any other specialist no ofense (ie internal medicine, neurologists... ) Just look at the size of the books! ODZE for example just about GI path, Mckee just for Skin et cetera et cetera

 

[TinyFish]

yes im referring to volume. i don't think the material is especially difficult. it's mastering the objectives in the allotted time. anyway thanks for the insight. pathology seems like an intellectually stimulating field, but i fear ill tire of that. at some point i want things to slow down and the sooner the better. some of the rads residents said they work like 35 hour weeks. how can anyone say no to that?

I think you can't say no to that if radiology actually interests you, and that's perfectly fine. Don't do something because you think it will be easier, unless you're TRULY interested. We get a false sense as med students that certain specialties are a total cakewalk. I doubt there's a single medical specialty that doesn't require at least some regular studying. You need to keep up with advances in the field. You're going to need to study no matter what - make sure it's something you like studying. For example, in my own case, I would much rather spend 27 additional hours/week studying pathology than an additional 4 hours studying radiology or orthopedics or cardiology, or any other number of fields.

That being said, path is pretty study-heavy. I wouldn't recommend it if you don't really like the material. If you want a specific number, I'm only one person, and I only started residency about 3-4 months ago, but I typically work 10-16 hours/day (depending on rotation) and then spend approximately 1-1.5 hours reading about cases after work every day, and maybe 2.5 hours on days off. This may taper down as I get burned out...but even when I'm doing the studying, I enjoy reading about these things. In fact, sometimes I get hooked and I can't stop. Find sometimes you enjoy reading about, and then explore that as a possible specialty for yourself. Medicine is not easy. Some people may work 35 hours/week, but I don't think the majority (by any means) do.

 

[TinyFish]

Oh, and I've been told by many practicing physicians in many fields that it never really gets easier in term of feeling like you're caught up. Eventually, you get used to the feeling and come to accept it. 😛

 

[KCShaw]

Presumably, you at least study "enough." Hopefully, you study more than enough, to stay with or ahead of your peers.

As others have suggested, the time spent studying is going to be more agonizing if you aren't interested in the material. If you're interested in the field, however, the study goes more smoothly and you find you've "studied" when you didn't plan to.

Everyone's different. Some people don't "study" much in the sit down and read for 3 hrs straight sense. Others do. Every program is different. Some will demand a lot of working time and leave little outside reading time, but you pick up a lot as you work. Others have relatively little hands-on time but more reading time.

Yeah, pathology has a lot of material. There's also a lot of visual learning. There's no reliable way I can tell you how much -you- need to study to be good at what you do.

 

[zao275]

Learning curve is pretty steep in path, but eventually I think you can "study as you go", if you like that method (ie - look up info and read about cases as you need to). I agree with the others that studying/reading about path is pretty fun for me, so I tend to be more active about it. I agree that the volume of info is pretty huge for path compared to most other specialties. Find what you love and then go for that field. Or, alternatively, use this technique to figure out what field to go into: http://www.themostinterestingmanintheworld.org/most-interesting-man-world-careers/.

(BTW, I love these commercials. Full list of the videos is available here: http://www.eatmedaily.com/2009/06/dos-equis-ad-campaign-the-most-interesting-man-in-the-world-video/)

 

[Doc013]

thanks for your input.

did you just feel like learning pathology was easy for you? i mean relative to the other classes you had.
i have done best in physiology and so far pathology compared to my other classes. i also did very well in cell bio. i feel like learning pathology is easy and enjoyable compared to other subjects (ie pharm and micro).

 

[KCShaw]

Basic science med-school pathology/pathophysiology, etc., is a far cry from the practice of anatomic &/or clinical pathology. Before you get too caught up in how much studying is done in pathology residency, you should get some exposure with a practicing AP/CP pathologist (not the PhD's running around the med school campus). Misconceptions about who pathologists are and what pathologists do are, unfortunately, perpetuated rather than clarified in most medical school settings.

 

[gbwillner]

However, how much studying does one have to do during residency and post-residency?
I am interested in path, but find the volume of material daunting. Med school is kicking my @$$; I don't want to feel like I have to study so much for the rest of my life.

From my experience (at a high-volume residency program), the learning curve is very steep- and first year residents routinely put in crazy hours when you factor in reading. Pretty much everyone NEEDS to read, just to get the BASICS of what's going on. Every time you start a new rotation you know basically NOTHING about the subject matter, meaning you are continually reading about it when you start, whether you read along with your cases or preemptively. Second year residents start to relax a bit. I hardly could bring myself to read, except for a case-by-case basis, because I felt I had a basic grasp of what was going on. I would get home after work and do anything but pick up a text book. I bought a PS3. Those who continued to read definitely had a significant advantage on pimping sessions, and probably for the boards. Now in my 3rd year, I will start reading daily again to catch up.

Hope that helps.

 

[Doc013]

From my experience (at a high-volume residency program), the learning curve is very steep- and first year residents routinely put in crazy hours when you factor in reading. Pretty much everyone NEEDS to read, just to get the BASICS of what's going on. Every time you start a new rotation you know basically NOTHING about the subject matter, meaning you are continually reading about it when you start, whether you read along with your cases or preemptively. Second year residents start to relax a bit. I hardly could bring myself to read, except for a case-by-case basis, because I felt I had a basic grasp of what was going on. I would get home after work and do anything but pick up a text book. I bought a PS3. Those who continued to read definitely had a significant advantage on pimping sessions, and probably for the boards. Now in my 3rd year, I will start reading daily again to catch up.

Hope that helps.

thanks that was very helpful.
im wondering if you feel like you are a student or if you feel like you work? that may sound like a silly question, but i think it will give me a feel for resident life.

 

[TinyFish]

thanks that was very helpful.
im wondering if you feel like you are a student or if you feel like you work? that may sound like a silly question, but i think it will give me a feel for resident life.

Um...a little of both, so far, I guess? I'm only a few months in. It's definitely not like medical school. You're a professional and you have responsibility. You need to study, but it's more of a self-driven process. Some people study more, some study less (or not at all)...and in either case, you're studying for yourself and for your patients, not to take a test (until boards roll along).

 

[KCShaw]

Although I had lectures, and there are exams to look forward to (if only RISE/boards, though some programs give you their own internal tests), it's not like typical standardized student education. Honestly, I didn't feel like either student or employee; it just felt like I thought a training position would. Non-medical friends & family always seem to think of it as you still being a student, but, you're not -- you're a doctor, though your practice is restricted until you get a full state medical license, and you just don't get paid that well.

Your day-to-day job responsibilities come first, but it's still on-the-job training. The relative lack of structure was the most difficult for me -- you have 3-4 years to learn everything, and unless all of your program's rotations are structured around 2 months of liver, 2 months of kidney, 2 months of neuro, etc., sometimes it's hard to know what to focus on or for how long. And even if they are structured thus, I've heard complaints from individuals in such programs that although they did 2 months of breast first thing in first year, 3 years later when preparing for boards they almost had to start over as they had hardly seen or studied it since.

 

[WhtsThFrequency]

Um...a little of both, so far, I guess? I'm only a few months in. It's definitely not like medical school. You're a professional and you have responsibility. You need to study, but it's more of a self-driven process.

I agree....it's not like medical (or in my case veterinary) school at all. You have very real responsibilities (and its nice to not have the majority of your time dedicated to scutwork anymore). I confer directly with clinicians all the time regarding biopsies, necropsies, herd outbreaks, legal cases, everything...and need to know what I'm talking about. I'm not a kid on a rotation where I just sit down and shut up. I'm a doctor and a resident, and its my responsibility to be efficient and correct - and yeah, it's a little disconcerting at first!

But that being said, there definitely is some student-esque camraderie amongst the residents, at least here. We all have to take a couple professional-level classes and there are lots of rounds and mock boards to study for and take. But when it comes down to it a lot of the "studying" is "on the job training"... diagnosis, casework, and consulting - the attending pathologists are there to catch us if we really mess up - but you won't have that forever.

Studying in residency is definitely more of a self-driven process - which requires a lot more planning than studying for one test where you can forget it all later. TBH, a lot of my learning and studying goes on when I'm out on the floor or at the scope, not just when I am buried in Robbins or the like 🙂

 

[WhtsThFrequency]

Basic science med-school pathology/pathophysiology, etc., is a far cry from the practice of anatomic &/or clinical pathology.

Yup. AP and CP are essentially taking every condition you have ever learned about in medical school, and re-learning it in 10x more detail.