Memorizing all this info!!!!

[Unty]

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Yeah this is probably going to sound like a dumb question...but how do you guys remember all this information during residency. Yeah reading about your cases help you retain the info much better...but some of the stuff tested you may never see...and when I do try to memorize something...i just forget it maybe days later! I know repetition is key but it seems like there is just so much information to continuously repeat things. I've always been the type of person who just can't remember squat...seems like i have to repeat something a hundred times before it gets engrained in my hippocampus.

Or am I just dumb?

Anyone have any advice on how to remember all this material and be able to spit it out in the long term?

 

[mlw03]

it's like med school. you do something over and over again, the key points stick, and when you eventually do whatever you're going to do day in and day out, you'll learn the stuff that's necessary to do that job. if you made it through med school, path residency is a continuation of that process. nobody remembers ALL of it.

 

[mrp]

Forget all that other crud you learned in med school, like acid base stuff or the molecular structure of arachidonic acid, to make room for what an epithelioid hemangioendothelioma looks like or how to grade follicular lymphomas.

 

[smellycat]

I would agree. Repitition. Some things I started using lame mneumonics or drawing silly pictures to help me remember. I had a cow with big udders to help me remember that Cowden syndrome had an increase chance of breast cancer.
If you've gotten this far in medicine I think you'll be fine in residency. Find your way to remember things (visual helped me a lot).

 

[HbyHA]

i know exactly how you feel. every time i talk to an attending who starts a sign out session with, "So, you're a fourth year now?", i feel the need to immediately answer "Don't hold it against me!"

i'm locked in an epic struggle here... i feel the hot stinking breath of the boards on my neck, but i soon get overtaken by a fierce case of senior-itis with a super infection of post-Chief traumatic syndrome. sprinkle in some extreme disinterest for all things not related to Forensics, and you have one sorry mess of a resident.

every time i think i "GET" something, i'm confronted with yet another thing that i know nothing about and have never seen before. like today, a germ cell tumor. I've NEVER had a testicle. EVER! how does that happen??? and i have a hard time just reading about and memorizing information. i need to put it into the context of a case.

blargh.