How to study in medical school?

[dxcrunner]

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How do you all study in medical school and remember information long term? Do you preread chapters? Take notes? Focus only on lecture material? Some sort of combination?

 

[cbrons]

Dont start by reading the text. Get the big picture first. Sometime the lecturer can provide the big picture, in my experience its been Dr. Najeeb or Dr. Sattar videos.


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[Xyl_Gal_Gal]

No one remembers everything. if you want to prep for step during your classes it's important to spend a lot of time asking "why?" Concepts properly understood stick around.

 

[DermViser]

How do you all study in medical school and remember information long term? Do you preread chapters? Take notes? Focus only on lecture material? Some sort of combination?

I usually use lectures as the focus. Unless your class goes thru the textbook verbatim, you usually have no choice.

 

[Pose]

So I'm only a month in, but I just had my first midterm for anatomy, histo, and embryology. I walked out feeling horrible, but somehow managed a high score. For me what has been working is to not go to lecture, but to review the class capture so I can pause if I need to. While watching the recorded lecture, I'm making Anki cards from the lecture powerpoint. I review my cards every morning while everyone else is in lecture. Sometime around the weekend, I do practice problems from either UMich or Lippincott Q&A/BRS/Gray's Review.

I have no idea if this will work for other classes since we're on a block schedule of sorts. In any case, I treat everything on the powerpoint as necessary information.

Edit: just saw you asked about long term retention. I have no idea.

 

[gregoryhouse]

Actually learn the material instead of memorizing. For everything else anki.

Also if you organize things logically that will help a lot. For an example I'll use sickle cell disease symptoms. Instead of just memorizing the list of symptoms like this: Dactylitis, Acute chest syndrome, Avascular necrosis of femoral head, Autosplenectomy, Increased susceptibility to infections, Aplastic crisis, Sequestration crisis, Bilirubinate gallstones, Strokes, leg ulcers, retinopathy.

It will be much easier to remember if you organize it logically.

Microvascular occlusions lead to dactylitis, avascular necrosis of femoral head, stroke, leg ulcers, retinopathy.

Extravascular hemolysis leads to bilirubinate gallstones, aplastic crisis, sequestration crisis

Sequestration crisis leads to autosplenectomy -> leads to increased susceptibility to infections -> leads to acute chest syndrome

If you form it into a story of events its a lot easier to remember that long term than just memorizing a list.