Invaluable Resources

[binarysolo]

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Hi all,

I'm doing an informal little survey to find out which resources medical students wish were available to make their life easier

It can be anything, really.. think stuff like mnemonics, an interactive notecard study website like quizlet.com, a certain kind of scientific calculator, a time management program, a certain kind of alarm clock, etc.

Let's hear em!

 

[Simmy]

Mnemonics and travel minde-maps are sick when it comes to remembering (for me)... Took me 10 minutes to memorize the 20 amino acids names in a cronological order and I can still remember them without a problem.. Before I would have spent a good deal of time reading them over and over again right before the test and then forget them a cupple of days later.

I read a book this summer called "Memory, how it works and how to improve it"... A fantastic book written by a guy with over 30 years of experience working and teaching ppl how memory and mnemonics can help you. He has a Ph.D in it and in the book there is FIFTY PAGES with lists of referances from sientific research that has been done about the subject and is included in the book.

Also making a schedual (rough outline) for your week to make you see how much time you have for classes, library time, working out, dinner etc is very helpfull. It takes away alot of everyday stress and time spent planning your day... Ive made a plan like that for my week that I can follow through the whole semester without having to do any changes.
"How to become a straight A student" has a good section on time planning.. Other than that the book is so-so when it comes to tips that actually helps you.

 

[Nephron]

I just posted the full text to a 570 page comprehensive guide to Fluids, Electrolytes and Acid-Base on web. Its divided into 20 chapters and is available as a PDF. Enjoy

The Fluid, Electrolyte and Acid-Base Companion for Free

 

[unsung]

Hi all,

I'm doing an informal little survey to find out which resources medical students wish were available to make their life easier

It can be anything, really.. think stuff like mnemonics, an interactive notecard study website like quizlet.com, a certain kind of scientific calculator, a time management program, a certain kind of alarm clock, etc.

Let's hear em!

What I wish WERE available?

#1 on the list would be some kind of video game that would allow me to play it and in the process learn the stuff I needed to learn.

I mean there's lots of "quizzing" websites out there already for histo w/ slides and all that good stuff. I find them very helpful, and certainly much more so than me sitting there looking at an atlas (or even me sitting there looking at real slides through a microscope).

But why isn't there anything good for anatomy? There's cool technology out there that lets us take a 3-D look at the body from the inside out, as we move through the GI tract or whatever... all that's missing is some little Mario skipping through naming the structures he encounters 😉

Anyway, I'm big on interactive 3-D environments... it could even be multi-player and instead of spending hours digging through fascia (which, fine, is worth it to do 1x or 2x just for the experience of it), the time could be used to learn & remember structures.

Instead what seems to happen is people learn through sitting down with Netter's (which is = a CARTOON people, if you think about it... do we learn radiology from looking at a cartoon guide to radiology? No, we learn from real radiographs...).

Getting a little side-tracked But yeah, aside from anatomy, plenty of other courses could be adapted for gaming. I mean, since so much of what we learn 1st 2 yrs is rote-memorization of gallons of facts, anyway... a lot of that really benefits from repetition and drilling. And repetition and drilling is always funner in the context of a game.