Using Pathoma and Boards and Beyond

[Osteosaur]

So I've bought Pathoma and B&B to incorperate into my second year studying. I am a little lost as to how to go about it. Do you guys watch the videos, make sheets of notes, and review them? Give the video a first pass and then Zanki? People swear by them but I'm sure that passively consuming them is not the way to go.

Any thoughts or tips?

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[maplecookie]

I think you have to play around and see how best things work out for your own personal studying style

Personally, I annotate the BnB slides/Pathoma book as I watch the videos and then review them along with Zanki
If I’m crunched for time I’ll just watch the videos and go ahead and start the zanki before I go back and do the annotations

Hope this helps!

 

[DubbiDoctor]

The best way to retain information is through (z)anki. There are cards for the content explained in BB and pathoma; unsuspend those cards after watching the videos. Doing it this way will show how much you really retained from passively listening to Dr. Ryan or Dr. Sattar. In general, watching videos helps build a foundation and provides context, but to hammer in the testable details, you should rely on more active forms of learning, i.e. anki and practice questions.

 

[Ho0v-man]

Watch videos

Draw out his horrible pictures

Do cards

Get owned by cards

Review pictures and realize they’re perfect in every way, just like Dr Sattar himself

Continue cards

Master cards

Destroy exams

 

[fldoctorgirl]

So if I have a lecture on x today, the day of the lecture I start by watching the Pathoma videos. This is just a casual watch, no notes or anything, to expose me to the material. Then, if it's a professor who's lecture I actually watch, I'll watch it right after to get a feel of how much Pathoma covered. Start Zanki path for that system. Our school uses Robbins, so the next day I will read it. Sometime before the exam, I will get in a second pass of Pathoma with note taking, then a third pass later on just reading my notes, no video watching.

 

[PugsAndHugs]

Personally, I annotate the BnB slides/Pathoma book as I watch the videos and then review them along with Zanki

I do the same exact thing. I even went as far as printing a pdf of all of sketchy micro with pre-made notes to annotate, but that was a little too much.

 

[Premed2295]

I do the same exact thing. I even went as far as printing a pdf of all of sketchy micro with pre-made notes to annotate, but that was a little too much.

Hi. I do something similar but the point of this comment is actually to say how cute your dog is.

 

[4thtimeretaker]

Did you all get any sort of discount on pathoma?

 

[Thesimplelifeofamyloid]

Hi. I do something similar but the point of this comment is actually to say how cute your dog is.

Stock image on Google

 

[efle]

During the unit I would watch the Pathoma and Boards videos twice, usually at 1.5x then 2.0x

I had the Pathoma book and Boards PDFs to review even faster than that for a third or fourth pass leading up to the exam

I was never an anki user, but I know there's a new deck called Lightyear made of all the Boards material and one called Duke for all of pathoma.

 

[FindersFee5]

Pathoma is great, because while the videos are all very high yield, each section is short enough to watch like the weekend prior to your unit starting. Professors will try to tell you pathoma is a review resource, but it's actually much better at teaching the pathology than 99% of them.

 

[efle]

Pathoma is great, because while the videos are all very high yield, each section is short enough to watch like the weekend prior to your unit starting. Professors will try to tell you pathoma is a review resource, but it's actually much better at teaching the pathology than 99% of them.

I'm shocked your professors even know what Pathoma is. Mine are all ancient creatures that never took Step1 because it didn't exist yet, and keep telling us 100% falsehoods about how "nobody cares about board scores, you just need to pass"

 

[Ellomate]

BnB is such a time commitment.
I currently have almost 15000 anking cards unsuspended.
I'm 3 months away from dedicated, and 4 months from the actual exam.
I'm dealing with resource overload with UWORLD, Pathoma, BnB, Anki, Sketchy, Costanzo...
How do you guys juggle all these in a day...?

 

[Matthew9Thirtyfive]

So I've bought Pathoma and B&B to incorperate into my second year studying. I am a little lost as to how to go about it. Do you guys watch the videos, make sheets of notes, and review them? Give the video a first pass and then Zanki? People swear by them but I'm sure that passively consuming them is not the way to go.

Any thoughts or tips?

You don’t really need both. BnB has basically all you need. But for both, just watch them on 2x to get the gist and then go to anki and questions. Videos are super passive and should really be only used for putting things in context.

 

[Osteosaur]

Well it's been 18 months since I made this thread!

BnB is such a time commitment.
I currently have almost 15000 anking cards unsuspended.
I'm 3 months away from dedicated, and 4 months from the actual exam.
I'm dealing with resource overload with UWORLD, Pathoma, BnB, Anki, Sketchy, Costanzo...
How do you guys juggle all these in a day...?

I think you need to keep in mind where there is overlap and cut the fat. I ditched bnb a month in, I read First Aid and Pathoma as a first past, and did Zanki and Pepper decks (based on FA, Pathoma, and sketchy) for maintenance.

Ultimately active learning where you're forced to recall the info is what made it stick for me. Anki has all the content of those resources so once I reviewed them a single time I just kept up with reviews instead of going back to the resource.

UWorld is essentially because it's high quality practice questions. Everyone I know who did really well did a lot of questions

I did not like bnb at all. Questions were nothing like step1 and I tuned out of videos after 20 minutes.

 

[aldol16]

Didn't use BnB but for Pathoma, that's better used during dedicated period. It's really a fast read and it's a good review resource. But likely you need more depth for your classes, which something bigger like Goljan will give you.

 

[FindersFee5]

Didn't use BnB but for Pathoma, that's better used during dedicated period. It's really a fast read and it's a good review resource. But likely you need more depth for your classes, which something bigger like Goljan will give you.

I think what actually makes Pathoma so incredible is that it's very compact while also bringing 85% of the depth you need. I firmly believe that somebody could pass step 1 using only pathoma for learning and Uworld for question practice.

 

[Ellomate]

Well it's been 18 months since I made this thread!



I think you need to keep in mind where there is overlap and cut the fat. I ditched bnb a month in, I read First Aid and Pathoma as a first past, and did Zanki and Pepper decks (based on FA, Pathoma, and sketchy) for maintenance.

Ultimately active learning where you're forced to recall the info is what made it stick for me. Anki has all the content of those resources so once I reviewed them a single time I just kept up with reviews instead of going back to the resource.

UWorld is essentially because it's high quality practice questions. Everyone I know who did really well did a lot of questions

I did not like bnb at all. Questions were nothing like step1 and I tuned out of videos after 20 minutes.

I agree with you on practice problems.
Studies show with more practice questions = higher the score.
I'm 3 months out from my dedicated.
So I'm at a place if I should just watch all the videos now and hammer practice questions during dedicated.
Or just use practice questions now, and look up only those I'm not familiar with via BnB or Pathoma videos.

I tried cramfighter to lay out how many videos I have to watch if I want to fit in BnB, Pathoma, Sketchy micro, Sketchy pharm.
And the generated schedule does NOT look sustainable. It's 11-14 videos a day (+40 UWORLD Q's/day).

Looking back, do you wish you put more time into Q Problems over video Content review?

 

[aldol16]

I think what actually makes Pathoma so incredible is that it's very compact while also bringing 85% of the depth you need. I firmly believe that somebody could pass step 1 using only pathoma for learning and Uworld for question practice.

That's why it's a great resource for dedicated period. Brings everything back to mind. But at the end of the day, the bar isn't passing Step 1. It's doing well on Step 1. To do that, you need better in-depth knowledge that's beyond the bullet points in Pathoma.

 

[Matthew9Thirtyfive]

*shrug* I guess I’m in the minority. I didn’t really like pathoma. I thought it was good at first when I used it very sporadically, but the one block I ditched BnB for pathoma and costanzo was my worst one by a lot. It’s the only preclinical block I didn’t honor.

 

[FindersFee5]

That's why it's a great resource for dedicated period. Brings everything back to mind. But at the end of the day, the bar isn't passing Step 1. It's doing well on Step 1. To do that, you need better in-depth knowledge that's beyond the bullet points in Pathoma.

I think you pointed out why it's actually a bad review source. It provides a good overview and scaffold for you to build on, but when you're in your dedicated period (especially if you want to really crush step 1), you should be focusing on refining and filling in the things you're missing.

 

[aldol16]

I think you pointed out why it's actually a bad review source. It provides a good overview and scaffold for you to build on, but when you're in your dedicated period (especially if you want to really crush step 1), you should be focusing on refining and filling in the things you're missing.

I think that Pathoma is essential for dedicated period. You have to know what's in Pathoma cold and going through it serves as review. If you feel weak in certain areas, that's when you do the deep dive since just memorizing the Pathoma bullet point isn't enough. Pathoma itself during dedicated for path plus FA plus UW is pretty much all you need. You don't need to go through Goljan again (if you've gone through it in class) or Robbins or anything like that.

 

[slowthai]

I think that Pathoma is essential for dedicated period. You have to know what's in Pathoma cold and going through it serves as review. If you feel weak in certain areas, that's when you do the deep dive since just memorizing the Pathoma bullet point isn't enough. Pathoma itself during dedicated for path plus FA plus UW is pretty much all you need. You don't need to go through Goljan again (if you've gone through it in class) or Robbins or anything like that.

I won't comment on the Pathoma discussion, but Goljan's RR and big Robbins are superfluous. Most of the 250+/260+ scorers nowadays run big Anki decks and hammer UWorld +/- other banks. Those texts are best used as references imo.

 

[zhuang]

I won't comment on the Pathoma discussion, but Goljan's RR and big Robbins are superfluous. Most of the 250+/260+ scorers nowadays run big Anki decks and hammer UWorld +/- other banks. Those texts are best used as references imo.

What is the BIG Anki deck? Can you provide the link? Any difference between regular Anki and BIG anki? Thanks

 

[slowthai]

What is the BIG Anki deck? Can you provide the link? Any difference between regular Anki and BIG anki? Thanks

No, I'm just talking about the two main ones: Zanki/AnKing and Lightyear

 

[Matthew9Thirtyfive]

I won't comment on the Pathoma discussion, but Goljan's RR and big Robbins are superfluous. Most of the 250+/260+ scorers nowadays run big Anki decks and hammer UWorld +/- other banks. Those texts are best used as references imo.

For real. Textbooks are one of the worst ways to learn.

 

[FindersFee5]

I won't comment on the Pathoma discussion, but Goljan's RR and big Robbins are superfluous. Most of the 250+/260+ scorers nowadays run big Anki decks and hammer UWorld +/- other banks. Those texts are best used as references imo.

Agreed. If you're trusting pathoma to get you a super high score as a final polishing review material nowadays, you're going to get into trouble. My final deep dives to get the really low hanging fruit were like, recent popular NEJM articles and subspecialty textbooks.

I still think pathoma is an amazing resource though, and gets you closer to passing by itself than any other resource.

 

[slowthai]

Agreed. If you're trusting pathoma to get you a super high score as a final polishing review material nowadays, you're going to get into trouble. My final deep dives to get the really low hanging fruit were like, recent popular NEJM articles and subspecialty textbooks.

This brought a smile to my face because Goljan used to talk about this haha

 

[thatchemguy]

I won't comment on the Pathoma discussion, but Goljan's RR and big Robbins are superfluous. Most of the 250+/260+ scorers nowadays run big Anki decks and hammer UWorld +/- other banks. Those texts are best used as references imo.

Yeah, I don't really understand how people find time to read textbooks, plus it's so incredibly boring. Anki has definitely been my savior for preclinical (I realize the irony in my statement since many people find Anki boring and time consuming - works for me though).

 

[slowthai]

Yeah, I don't really understand how people find time to read textbooks, plus it's so incredibly boring. Anki has definitely been my savior for preclinical (I realize the irony in my statement since many people find Anki boring and time consuming - works for me though).

Yeah. Like Matthew says, active learning is the way. Anki + practice questions are the most high yield. Supplement with your favorite passive studying resource prn.

But at the same time, I will always stand by doing what works for you above all.

Edit: Anki's only time consuming if you suck! I'm joking I'm joking lol. But seriously, if you know how to use it properly, it's brutally efficient, especially over the long term.

 

[Matthew9Thirtyfive]

Yeah. Like Matthew says, active learning is the way. Anki + practice questions are the most high yield. Supplement with your favorite passive studying resource prn.

But at the same time, I will always stand by doing what works for you above all.

Edit: Anki's only time consuming if you suck! I'm joking I'm joking lol. But seriously, if you know how to use it properly, it's brutally efficient, especially over the long term.

Yeah it would take me like 90 mins, 2 hours tops to do all my cards for the day. Now that I’m into clerkship, it takes me under an hour to do cheesy Dorian plus I’m doing Zanki step 1 (just micro+pharm+biochem) since we take step 1 after a year of rotations. That’s not a big commitment.

 

[slowthai]

Yeah it would take me like 90 mins, 2 hours tops to do all my cards for the day. Now that I’m into clerkship, it takes me under an hour to do cheesy Dorian plus I’m doing Zanki step 1 (just micro+pharm+biochem) since we take step 1 after a year of rotations. That’s not a big commitment.

This is a smart setup. Aside from UW, what other resources are you planning to use for step 2? I'm curious because there's like a million different ways people approach step 2 prep, unlike step 1.

 

[Matthew9Thirtyfive]

This is a smart setup. Aside from UW, what other resources are you planning to use for step 2? I'm curious because there's like a million different ways people approach step 2 prep, unlike step 1.

So we do a year of rotations, then we get 9 weeks to take leave and have dedicated for step 1. Then we just have to take step 2 before November of fourth year. Right now my plan, since step 1 will be p/f for me, is to take a couple weeks of my dedicated period to review and take step 1 and then use the other like 6 weeks to prep for step 2.

Honestly I’m probably just going to use UW and anki lol.

 

[aldol16]

I won't comment on the Pathoma discussion, but Goljan's RR and big Robbins are superfluous. Most of the 250+/260+ scorers nowadays run big Anki decks and hammer UWorld +/- other banks. Those texts are best used as references imo.

RR is great for during the organ blocks. It's not a textbook. Just a more comprehensive review book with nice pictures that hammer home the concepts. The best pic that I still remember is their liver pathology one. Then UW + Bros deck (throughout years). 260+

 

[slowthai]

RR is great for during the organ blocks. It's not a textbook. Just a more comprehensive review book with nice pictures that hammer home the concepts. The best pic that I still remember is their liver pathology one. Then UW + Bros deck (throughout years). 260+

I know that it's not a textbook, but it's still way too dense for daily study. Moreover, time is best spent on more efficient modes of study. Few of us can just read and retain heavy texts like that.

 

[aldol16]

I know that it's not a textbook, but it's still way too dense for daily study. Moreover, time is best spent on more efficient modes of study. Few of us can just read and retain heavy texts like that.

Again, not during dedicated. Use it as you go along your pre-clinical curriculum. Definitely not dense for an organ-block compared to what the lectures are like.

 

[slowthai]

Again, not during dedicated. Use it as you go along your pre-clinical curriculum. Definitely not dense for an organ-block compared to what the lectures are like.

I'm talking about during the block. That's why I said daily study. I don't even watch lectures. The point is to be as efficient as possible.

 

[Matthew9Thirtyfive]

I'm talking about during the block. That's why I said daily study. I don't even watch lectures. The point is to be as efficient as possible.

Lol for real. Watching lectures and reading textbooks is just taking time away from better, active learning methods.

 

[aldol16]

I'm talking about during the block. That's why I said daily study. I don't even watch lectures. The point is to be as efficient as possible.

Lol for real. Watching lectures and reading textbooks is just taking time away from better, active learning methods.

Whatever floats your boat. Step 1 going P/F anyway.

 

[slowthai]

Whatever floats your boat. Step 1 going P/F anyway.

Step 1 going p/f doesn't change a thing. I would still be using the exact same methods even if it wasn't scored. As I'm sure you understand, a strong step 1 sets you up for a strong step 2.

Seriously, it's awesome that you were able to use RR with great success. Mere mortals like me require relentless pounding of the information into our heads in order to make it stick.

 

[zhuang]

Step 1 going p/f doesn't change a thing. I would still be using the exact same methods even if it wasn't scored. As I'm sure you understand, a strong step 1 sets you up for a strong step 2.

Seriously, it's awesome that you were able to use RR with great success. Mere mortals like me require relentless pounding of the information into our heads in order to make it stick.

What is RR? Thanks

 

[slowthai]

What is RR? Thanks

Goljan's Rapid Review. It's a pathology review book.

 

[aldol16]

Step 1 going p/f doesn't change a thing. I would still be using the exact same methods even if it wasn't scored. As I'm sure you understand, a strong step 1 sets you up for a strong step 2.

Seriously, it's awesome that you were able to use RR with great success. Mere mortals like me require relentless pounding of the information into our heads in order to make it stick.

It sets you up for CK in the sense that good test takers tend to do well in both. There is content overlap but CK clearly has a much more relevant clinical focus instead of basic sciences. You do see some repeated material. Again, whatever floats your boat. If Step 1 was P/F for me, I would use the time spent prepping for it in better ways. Tons better stuff to do than that.

It was hardly difficult to go through RR as I was going through organ blocks. Did Anki at the same time too. Plus ECs.

 

[Ho0v-man]

Recently I diagnosed a woman with multiple false positive urine pregnancy tests with selective IgA deficiency just based on history. Never would have considered it if I didn’t grind so hard for step 1, but I can actually see the BnB slide in my head as I type this. Preceptor was like “daaayum.”

Ironically that never showed up on any test for me. It’s one of those things like SAME that I was so sure would come up and just never did lol.

As out of control as Step 1 has gotten, I’ll always think p/f was a mistake.

 

[slowthai]

It was hardly difficult to go through RR as I was going through organ blocks. Did Anki at the same time too. Plus ECs.

Hmm. I guess you used RR like I used Pathoma. Fair enough.