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Studying Before Residency
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Couple of things. What field are you going into? Are you currently a 4th year MS? (If so, there shouldn't be much of need to refersh stuff, but instead learn NEW stuff for your specific field).
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Not surprisingly, gutonc is correct. I am always a little amazed by how much residents focus on fund of knowledge (ugh, I hate that term). I don't care that much if you don't know something - that's why I'm here. Be prompt, available, and teachable. Deficiencies in those are much more concerning and difficult to correct. Screw it up after being instructed otherwise, then we'll worry about how much you know.
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If you went to France and knew no French, would you be able to hit the social ground running? Probably not. You'd struggle until you got the basics down.
The same could be said about several fields in medicine, including pathology, where you are essentially entering a foreign country with a foreign language.
A little preparation can go a long way.
Obvious post is obvious. Of course I expect residents come with a baseline knowledge commensurate with their medical degrees, but that's not what we're talking about.
What is your field
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LOL we haven't really helped at all.
Still waiting to get more details from you.
But good luck in any event.
Some knowledge comes with the degree and some doesn't. If it's covered on the shelf/core rotation odds are you know it as well as you're going to already, but there are a lot of parts of your new profession you might have had no exposure at all to before residency.
I'm in Pediatrics. Its not strange for Interns to come in with no knowledge at all of, in particular, NICU. A little bit of reading on NICU can go a long way in what will be one of your worst rotations. I imagine most specialties have similar blind spots.
I'm not sure exactly what you're getting at here. Of course everyone's mileage with respect to medical school may vary. That's not the point. I'm contending that faculty recognize that such knowledge gaps are unavoidable, and they place (or ought to place) an appropriate level of importance on them. In contradistinction, I think students/new residents overemphasize it. I would also say that a post-match MS4 is not in a good position to recognize where his/her knowledge gaps are, and even if he/she were, out-of-context studying is an inefficient way to close those gaps.
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That's why they are on this thread asking for guidance.
Why are you so anti preparation? I almost want to laugh at how ridiculous this back and forth is. You REALLY want OP not to do any prep work!
You're putting words in my mouth.
The OP asked for guidance and received it. It's not like I'm upset that the thread was started. All I said was that I'm a little amazed as to what residents, or in this case MS4s, choose to focus on.
Capitalized words and exclamation points notwithstanding, the idea that I'm "anti preparation" is absurd on its face. If you can't understand the points I'm making, then I can't help you.
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I don't recall asking for your help. Let's not lose focus of this thread's intention.
Here's what you can do:
1) know how long it takes you to drive to the hospital, so you aren't late
2) know where the parking garage, the bathrooms, where you're supposed to be the first day
3) if you have to do ACLS/ATLS/PALS etc, you can brush up on some of the algorithms to be prepared
4) once you know what your first rotation is, you can read some overview before then but otherwise its not necessary to pre study for residency
1) know how long it takes you to drive to the hospital, so you aren't late
2) know where the parking garage, the bathrooms, where you're supposed to be the first day
3) if you have to do ACLS/ATLS/PALS etc, you can brush up on some of the algorithms to be prepared
4) once you know what your first rotation is, you can read some overview before then but otherwise its not necessary to pre study for residency
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My prelim surgery program has ACS Fundamentals of Surgery case-based curriculum as a requirement to complete prior to orientation. I must say they are really, really good so far to get one's bearings straight.
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Completely agree, and I did the same thing in preparation for surgery and internal medicine. I found the early preparation to be an effective catalyst for learning while on rotation.
Knowing at least some of the rotation lingo
sure makes you look much more eager and interested to learn.
Any EM people out there?? I already bought Rosens and was gifted Tintinalli's (older version). I've been reading through some of the Cardinal Presentations section in Rosens and my head is already exploding. Anything "quick and dirty" that would be good prep?
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Podcasts
I know of EMRAP but it costs $$. I'm not an aural learner so was looking for something in text.
What did you use for study?
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surgery - pestana
medicine - step up, case files, mksap (definitely one of my harder shelves)
