What does it mean to "annotate" first aid?

[Stillwater45]

---

Members don't see this ad.

Im a second year and Im hoping to start studying for boards this Christmas Break...I plan on studying first aid, I keep reading about people annotating first aid, what does this mean?

Also how much do you read FA vs. Subject specific books and how do you balance this out with questions. I was under the impression that most folks just do questions all day and then go look up the concepts they miss. How does reviewing books and annotating FA fall into play? Thanks

 

[Terpskins99]

Im a second year and Im hoping to start studying for boards this Christmas Break...I plan on studying first aid, I keep reading about people annotating first aid, what does this mean?

Also how much do you read FA vs. Subject specific books and how do you balance this out with questions. I was under the impression that most folks just do questions all day and then go look up the concepts they miss. How does reviewing books and annotating FA fall into play? Thanks

Annotating just means to jott down extra notes in the margins filling in details about stuff that First Aid doesn't explain thoroughly (especially path/pharm/phys).

I don't know of anyone that ONLY does questions (I'm sure there are some out there that do). Most people usually have some sort of study schedule where they focus on one subject all day (this is where they'll usually transfer info into first aid). Typically, once the final week to board-day arrives... they'll ONLY review out of their annotated (and likely very beat up) First Aid book.

 

[twintiger32]

First Aid is a very brief review book that tries to hit high yield points, and als provides mneumonics and tables. LEARN from other sources (other review books, etc), REVIEW from first aid (by annotating, you can ADD to the high yield points that are already in FA). Don't get too obsessed with annotating...do what works for you. Some people get so obsessed with it that they basically copy their review book into FA...I hardly annotated at all and learned the material just fine.

Figure out which SOURCE (do a search on this forum for great sources) you will use for each subject and use that as your primary learning tool. Add really important points that you think deserve to be in next year's edition of FA, in your FA. Then theoretically, you can put away your review books for the last couple weeks before boards and just study and memorize your FA.

Good luck.

 

[Stillwater45]

Thanks guys, that makes a lot of sense.

So once school was/is out and you have ~5 weeks to review, what percentage of your time is spent reviewing vs. doing questions?

 

[twintiger32]

for me (257/99), questions included kaplan's qbank and robbins review of path (great book). Add all those up, divide by the number of days you have left. Typically i did 50 kaplan q's a day, and tried to do 1 section of robbins each day. good luck