physiology advice?

[bubbleyum]

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so i know there has been quite a few allopathic posts since med school has started about anatomy, but i am struggling more with physiology. though i haven't been studying 24/7 i don't think i have been slacking off and i feel prepared before the exam, but then don't do well. and our final is the NBME physio exam, so am very concerned...

hoping you smart people have some advice or tips that have worked for you.

 

[deleted113029]

so i know there has been quite a few allopathic posts since med school has started about anatomy, but i am struggling more with physiology. though i haven't been studying 24/7 i don't think i have been slacking off and i feel prepared before the exam, but then don't do well. and our final is the NBME physio exam, so am very concerned...

hoping you smart people have some advice or tips that have worked for you.

speak to your professor and TA immediately. people can give you study advice but it may not work for you, so better go to them because they know your weak areas.

 

[Law2Doc]

i feel prepared before the exam, but then don't do well.

You may be lulling yourself into a false sense of security and not pushing hard enough at it. From what I've seen, the folks who do well never "feel prepared". There's always more to a med school subject than you can know, unless you are really good at focusing in on the very high yield stuff (which your scores suggest not). If you've gone through all your class notes/lectures umpteen times, then pick up a board review type book (preferably one with problems) and work through those. As in college, doing problems helps in physio.

Also agree with the prior poster.

 

[DoctorFunk]

Are you using a text along with the class notes? If not, I recommend Costanzo's Physiology text (not her BRS book). It's a quick read and has everything you need to know.

Also, how much attention do you pay to the diagrams and graphs shown in class or in your lecture notes? I found knowing these cold was a huge part of doing well in my school's physio class, as most of the important concepts are embedded somewhere in those graphs.

 

[mules05]

I had trouble with physiology at first because of the way I was trying to learn. Everyone tends to make a big deal of the fact that physio is more concept-based and you just need to understand it, so I learned for understanding, figuring that knowledge would follow that. Now that I'm going through it again with our path course and reviewing, I'm finding that it works much better, at least for me, to focus on memorizing things- i.e. associate a particular hormone with its origin, target, and action- and then when I get a question that asks me to understand something, I can extend that basic memorization to apply to broad concepts.

 

[braluk]

I have an exam today in med physio and figured the best way to learn is from doing practice exams and quizzes and taking notes on the wrong answers as well as the right ones- might be better than reading straight out of the text if you're rushed to get as many high yield answers as you possibly can.

 

[Doctor Bagel]

Also, how much attention do you pay to the diagrams and graphs shown in class or in your lecture notes? I found knowing these cold was a huge part of doing well in my school's physio class, as most of the important concepts are embedded somewhere in those graphs.

I hate graphs. This probably has something to do with me not doing as well in physiology so far as I'd like. Costanzo's a great book. It didn't help me so much on our last test block because we had this weird confusing professor who wrote weird confusing questions.

 

[lilmo]

I used BRS Phys back in the day and it worked well for me. Costanzo was a fabulous writer and I bet her book would be better than BRS due to the increased amount of information. Shelf exams always seem to go into a little more detail than I would prefer. It's so frustrating to narrow it down to two and then have to flip a coin.

 

[Biscuit799]

Physio is a different beast. Anatomy, Biochem, all the way back to Bio 1 are generally memorize and regurg. Physio is more concept, and rationale. It involves more taking basic concepts and reasoning what the next step is. Thus you have to sort of augment your thinking, approach it from a different manner than anatomy.

 

[cfdavid]

I had trouble with physiology at first because of the way I was trying to learn. Everyone tends to make a big deal of the fact that physio is more concept-based and you just need to understand it, so I learned for understanding, figuring that knowledge would follow that. Now that I'm going through it again with our path course and reviewing, I'm finding that it works much better, at least for me, to focus on memorizing things- i.e. associate a particular hormone with its origin, target, and action- and then when I get a question that asks me to understand something, I can extend that basic memorization to apply to broad concepts.

I'd agree to some extent. Especially for certain of the topics, like GI physio.
I've always enjoyed "problem solving", but you just can't avoid the necessity to memorize in med school. It's a fact of life.