Voluntarily repeating MS1?

[docterspaceman]

Has anyone ever done or ever considered voluntarily repeating their first year of medical school? I don't have trouble passing classes, but I am very unhappy with my level of comprehension of the material we have been learning. If I could start over, I feel I could do much better, partly because I've only recently been able to improve my studying stamina to an acceptable level for medical school. In any case, I feel that I am not achieving any sort of long term retention material and have serious doubts about being able to be a competent doctor. I would be very willing to repeat first year, though I do not know how schools would feel about that given that I have not needed to remediate any my courses.

How much of these first two years of didactic learning are we expected to be responsible for? In what years do you learn the most/what years play the biggest role in determining how capable I will be as a doctor - didactic years MS1/2, clinical years M3/4, or residency? It seems like residency is where you would learn everything important that you need to apply to your future career, but how much are you expected to know going in?

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[Allegra]

If anything, repeating a year of medical school (voluntarily or not) will adversely affect your chances of gaining a residency. And if you got to a residency interview and the program director asked you to explain why you repeated MS1, and your reply was "well, I passed the first time but I just felt I could do better and learn more," they would probably think you were insane. Because that's insane.

Secondly, that's another year of tuition. And it's insane.

No one is perfectly satisfied with their performance all the time, especially perfectionist med school types. I was a student that did just average in M1 (and barely scraped by in one course - neuro). I'll be truthful and say it was tough during M2, and sometimes I felt like I was doing double duty because I had to spend some time actually learning what I should have learned in M1 before I could focus on the current material. But my grades still drastically improved. I honored neuro, and did very well on Step 1. Just tough it out and keep going, and review relevant material when you need to correlate with M2 stuff. It will make more sense then anyway.

Did I mention voluntarily holding yourself back is insane?

 

[Textbookversion]

Has anyone ever done or ever considered voluntarily repeating their first year of medical school? I don't have trouble passing classes, but I am very unhappy with my level of comprehension of the material we have been learning. If I could start over, I feel I could do much better, partly because I've only recently been able to improve my studying stamina to an acceptable level for medical school. In any case, I feel that I am not achieving any sort of long term retention material and have serious doubts about being able to be a competent doctor. I would be very willing to repeat first year, though I do not know how schools would feel about that given that I have not needed to remediate any my courses.

How much of these first two years of didactic learning are we expected to be responsible for? In what years do you learn the most/what years play the biggest role in determining how capable I will be as a doctor - didactic years MS1/2, clinical years M3/4, or residency? It seems like residency is where you would learn everything important that you need to apply to your future career, but how much are you expected to know going in?

You are nuts. If you pass, move on! If passing wasn't sufficient to succeed as a physician they'd have a higher passing threshold. Work hard, learn as much as you can and you'll be fine. Trust me, people will let you know when you aren't competent to move on to the next stage of your training.

 

[kindasorta]

Don't do it man. Don't do it. Aside from the million stupid reasons regarding your retention of the material: it will wreak havoc on your residency applications.

 

[xrevision]

Repeating a year is a red flag that may filter out your residency application before a human being even lays eyes on it.

 

[YH5]

I think voluntarily repeating a year would filter out your residency application after a human being lays eyes on it.

 

[girlonfire]

Even if you repeated and fully understood everything that was taught, it will not offset the damage you've done by choosing the do-over.

 

[Fox800]

You've gone full-****** for even considering this. I swear SDN gives me a new SMH moment every time I log on.

 

[vested]

And after you graduate, how many tests/procedures are you going to repeat because they weren't good enough?

Your perfectionism is destructive. You have OCD. You need help.

 

[CDI]

You've gone full-****** for even considering this. I swear SDN gives me a new SMH moment every time I log on.

+1

OP, you passed = you're good enough, move on.

If you're not good enough, Step 1 will put you in place. Since you're getting by, I'm sure that won't be an issue either.

 

[JShephard]

Has anyone ever done or ever considered voluntarily repeating their first year of medical school? I don't have trouble passing classes, but I am very unhappy with my level of comprehension of the material we have been learning. If I could start over, I feel I could do much better, partly because I've only recently been able to improve my studying stamina to an acceptable level for medical school. In any case, I feel that I am not achieving any sort of long term retention material and have serious doubts about being able to be a competent doctor. I would be very willing to repeat first year, though I do not know how schools would feel about that given that I have not needed to remediate any my courses.

How much of these first two years of didactic learning are we expected to be responsible for? In what years do you learn the most/what years play the biggest role in determining how capable I will be as a doctor - didactic years MS1/2, clinical years M3/4, or residency? It seems like residency is where you would learn everything important that you need to apply to your future career, but how much are you expected to know going in?

M1 wasn't that important @ my school. Repeating it would be repeating the least important part of my education. An exercise analogy: it would be like asking someone if you could repeat your 5 min warm up a few more times before 1 hour of weight training... sure, you can. But it's not going to help you achieve any fitness goals.

I'd say you need to know about 50% of what you learn in the first 2 years... but you'll never know what 50% and it won't really make sense until you tie it together into clinical presentation, pathophysiology and treatment... unless you're going into research - you will only need what you use to understand, diagnose, and treat disease. That's why much of biochem is out the door very fast - that's why the nonclinical anatomy is gone fast (i.e. the 25 landmarks from the tibia are useless outside of ortho). Use it or lose it.

Good luck.

 

[Thyroxine]

You couldn't pay me to repeat pre-clinical medicine - let alone ask me to pay for it myself unnecessarily.

Do you really think it's necessary to be able to recite Kreb's cycle to be a good and competent doctor? Or to be able to draw out the brachial plexus from memory? Or any of the other overly scientific and non-clinical things which are covered in MS1/pre-clinical medicine? I haven't even brought up embryology as that would be too obvious, but you get my point

I'm not saying that pre-clinical medicine isn't important, but you do not need perfect retention of irrelevant scientific facts to be a good physician. The clinical students and doctors I've spoken and worked with are very frank about how they've forgotten the vast majority of the details they learnt in pre-clinical medicine, that doesn't mean they're bad clinicians though!

I'm a pre-clinical student at the moment, and I'm very happy to be in med school, but seriously, the minute I complete my final pre-clinical exams (like your Step 1 I guess) I won't ever pretend to care about origins and insertions or different psychological models ever again.

 

[JShephard]

You couldn't pay me to repeat pre-clinical medicine - let alone ask me to pay for it myself unnecessarily.

Do you really think it's necessary to be able to recite Kreb's cycle to be a good and competent doctor? Or to be able to draw out the brachial plexus from memory? Or any of the other overly scientific and non-clinical things which are covered in MS1/pre-clinical medicine? I haven't even brought up embryology as that would be too obvious, but you get my point

I'm not saying that pre-clinical medicine isn't important, but you do not need perfect retention of irrelevant scientific facts to be a good physician. The clinical students and doctors I've spoken and worked with are very frank about how they've forgotten the vast majority of the details they learnt in pre-clinical medicine, that doesn't mean they're bad clinicians though!

I'm a pre-clinical student at the moment, and I'm very happy to be in med school, but seriously, the minute I complete my final pre-clinical exams (like your Step 1 I guess) I won't ever pretend to care about origins and insertions or different psychological models ever again.

In other words, if you averaged a 99% or a 71% - it doesn't really matter. Now obviously the skills and work ethic to achieve those DO matter, but the actual material isn't that important.

 

[CDI]

I'm a pre-clinical student at the moment, and I'm very happy to be in med school, but seriously, the minute I complete my final pre-clinical exams (like your Step 1 I guess) I won't ever pretend to care about origins and insertions or different psychological models ever again.

Won't even really need to know the origins/insertions for Step 1, except knee ligaments or rotator cuff (at least thats what it seems like from UW/NBMEs).

 

[evilbooyaa]

Just wanted to parrot everyone else's views that have been posted.

Don't repeat 1st year if you passed everythigng.

 

[umean2tellme]

You should just repeat every year of medical school and residency. That way you'll be twice as smart (I think that adds up).

 

[Thyroxine]

Won't even really need to know the origins/insertions for Step 1, except knee ligaments or rotator cuff (at least thats what it seems like from UW/NBMEs).

Fair enough, I'm not a US student. We don't need to know origins and insertions to pass exams either, but they're still given in lectures and it freaked a lot of people out at the beginning of the course. My point is that memorising every fact given in pre-clinical medicine isn't more likely to make the OP a better physician

 

[NeuroLAX]

if anything, repeating a year of medical school (voluntarily or not) will adversely affect your chances of gaining a residency. And if you got to a residency interview and the program director asked you to explain why you repeated ms1, and your reply was "well, i passed the first time but i just felt i could do better and learn more," they would probably think you were insane. Because that's insane.

Secondly, that's another year of tuition. And it's insane.

No one is perfectly satisfied with their performance all the time, especially perfectionist med school types. I was a student that did just average in m1 (and barely scraped by in one course - neuro). I'll be truthful and say it was tough during m2, and sometimes i felt like i was doing double duty because i had to spend some time actually learning what i should have learned in m1 before i could focus on the current material. But my grades still drastically improved. I honored neuro, and did very well on step 1. Just tough it out and keep going, and review relevant material when you need to correlate with m2 stuff. It will make more sense then anyway.

Did i mention voluntarily holding yourself back is insane?

+1.

Insanity!!

 

[J ROD]

:troll:

 

[notbobtrustme]

M1 isn't even that important for the boards.

 

[docterspaceman]

You've gone full-****** for even considering this. I swear SDN gives me a new SMH moment every time I log on.

Hahaha this post made me laugh out loud. Love the tropic thunder reference.

Anyways, thanks for the advice guys. To clarify, this isn't about being OCD and getting 100% on tests, it's about being able to provide the best care possible. I'm sure you would all be willing to spend an extra year learning if it would help you become a much better doctor (also, repeating the year at my institution is free). Obviously from your responses, this would NOT be the way to go about it. And judging from the fact that I could find NO other forum threads on this topic, no one has ever considered doing this, it is a terrible idea, and I should be ashamed of myself. Thanks for putting up with me. Some of your responses were very reassuring.

 

[GoSpursGo]

My friend, you are describing a classic case of Imposter Syndrome. Don't worry, most people in med school have had it at one point or another--you don't necessarily get over it, you just get used to it

As many others have said, 90% of the stuff you "learn" in first year is not in any way clinically relevant, and repeating an entire year would be such a monumental red flag on your residency application that it's definitely not worth it. Don't worry--if you're passing, you're doing fine.

 

[cubssox2000]

Hahahahahahahahahah. Repeat M1 year. What a joke. You are funny OP.

 

[CDI]

Fair enough, I'm not a US student. We don't need to know origins and insertions to pass exams either, but they're still given in lectures and it freaked a lot of people out at the beginning of the course. My point is that memorising every fact given in pre-clinical medicine isn't more likely to make the OP a better physician

I'm an IMG as well. Just noticed that point, figured I'd mention it.

And yes, I agree, a lot of stuff in pre-clinical is overkill.

 

[GadRads]

LOL at thread. If you are passing, all is well. You cannot know everything.

 

[alpinism]

Hundreds of people do it every year. It's called an SMP.

Get straight As in all M1 classes, get accepted to another med school, repeat M1 courses.

Everyone is right though, very little material in M1 is clinically relevant or important for the boards. As long as you pass, that's all that matters.

 

[gman33]

Review some of the basic stuff as you study for your MS2 classes.
This will help cement what is important.

Do not under any circumstances repeat the year if you pass.
Waste of time money etc.

I can hardly even remember what we learned MS1, let alone the actual material.
Not really that important, except in the broad sense.