What is the most difficult organ system during preclinical years?

This forum made possible through the generous support of SDN members, donors, and sponsors. Thank you.

Most difficult organ system?

  • cardiovascular

    Votes: 50 15.3%

  • endocrine

    Votes: 12 3.7%

  • GI

    Votes: 10 3.1%

  • heme/onc

    Votes: 16 4.9%

  • immunology

    Votes: 20 6.1%

  • musculoskeletal

    Votes: 9 2.8%

  • neurology

    Votes: 82 25.2%

  • psych

    Votes: 2 0.6%

  • renal

    Votes: 91 27.9%

  • reproductive

    Votes: 13 4.0%

  • pulmonary

    Votes: 21 6.4%
  • Total voters
    326
D

Didierdrogba

Goldmember
10+ Year Member
Joined
Mar 5, 2011
Messages
823
Reaction score
29
I am currently a first year, but I already feel that organ systems are not created equal. In your opinion, what do you think the most difficult organ system is for students to learn before step 1?
Members don't see this ad.
 
Didierdrogba said:
I am currently a first year, but I already feel that organ systems are not created equal. In your opinion, what do you think the most difficult organ system is for students to learn before step 1?
Click to expand...

Still a first year too but I've heard that endocrine and renal are bad
 
Your first and last sections are the hardest, whatever they are. The first because you're adjusting to med school, the last because all you want to do is study for Step 1 and not deal with bull****.

I don't think there's a difference in inherent difficulty. I did the worst in GI, best in cardio/renal, other people will give you 100 different answers.
 
Members don't see this ad :)
Yeah, depends on person and school. Neuro and renal were hardest for me.
 
while i understand that this probably could have a lot of variability, i just wanted to see whether there would be consensus of any sort. :luck:
 
Wordead said:
Your first and last sections are the hardest, whatever they are. The first because you're adjusting to med school, the last because all you want to do is study for Step 1 and not deal with bull****.

I don't think there's a difference in inherent difficulty. I did the worst in GI, best in cardio/renal, other people will give you 100 different answers.
Click to expand...

Agreed.
 
Wordead said:
I don't think there's a difference in inherent difficulty. I did the worst in GI, best in cardio/renal, other people will give you 100 different answers.
Click to expand...

right, but grades in class do not necessarily translate into difficulty of the course
 
Psychiatry/behavioral sciences was my worst theme during the preclinical years, my lowest-scoring section on step 1, and my least favorite rotation in third year.
 
Didierdrogba said:
right, but grades in class do not necessarily translate into difficulty of the course
Click to expand...

I think you are not understanding the point. There is no subject that is inherently more difficult than any other.
 
For me, it was definitely renal path.
 
Stellar Clouds said:
Sounds like you might be confusing hatred with difficulty 🙂
Click to expand...

Oh I don't hate psychiatry at all; in fact, it was the rotation I had been looking forward to the most (though by the end, it was my least favorite).

I feel like psychiatry is difficult due to all the arbitrary diagnostic criteria, the obscure technical terms and vague presentations and the fact that no one knows how any psychiatric medication actually works. Most other organ systems are cut-and-dry.
 
Members don't see this ad :)
In terms of learning the material I would say it's a tie between Cardiovascular and Heme/Onc.

Cardio is just super complicated. Pathological heart sounds are a bitch to learn. All those arrhythmia drugs will make you wanna tear your heart out, EKGs still have the ability to make me shudder invariably...

Heme/Onc is absolutely terrible...specially the Pathology of it...good luck differentiating all the leukemias from slides. I needed a suicide hotline after that class.

In terms of appearing on Step 1 though that's a different thing. Step 1 Cardio and Heme\Onc were fairly straightforward. The WORST subjects for Step 1 were basically all the stuff that you were supposed to have learned during M1 year but of course will have completely forgotten by the end of M2 year.

Stuff like biochemistry, genetics and neuro-anatomy.
 
So far, renal has been the toughest for me. I thought the lectures were really disorganized though.
 
I think the biggest factor is your school because of A) who teaches it B) How they test

For example, many are saying Renal was hard. It was my easiest and highest grade. Thats because we had an amazing professor who coordinated the course and he came up with simple, logical ways to approach renal topics.

Yet no one on here really said Psych or Repro were hard. At my school they were brutal because we had horrible professors.
 
docnotsopc said:
Yet no one on here really said Psych or Repro were hard. At my school they were brutal because we had horrible professors.
Click to expand...

Whaddaya mean no one? I said psych was the hardest for me.

And it has to do with your prior training, too. For example, I was an engineer before I came to med school, so the physiology topics like cardiology, pulmonology, and renal were easy-peasy for me (kind of like physics-lite).
 
It varies from person to person. For example, in our systemic pathology course, I thought Renal was really hard to understand because everything sounds the f***ing same. Like focal segmental glomerulosclerosis or IgA nephropathy or global interstitial nephrotic tubular fibrosis (ok I made that last one up). But I thought cardio was super easy because the physiology just makes sense to me.

We can all agree that biochem sucked though lol
 
Neuro. Makes me want to cry.

I quite enjoyed endo actually (hence the username 😛)
 
I feel that renal is very conceptually tough to digest. For example, one aldosterone can both cause hypokalemia and alkalosis, but in some situations, it is also associated with metabolic acidosis. This one-to-many relationship really throws me off. I think neuro is quite the opposite, one lesion most certainly causes one deficit, therefore a lot less confusing.
 
Eh renal phys for me. Neuro is probably a distant second.
 
fizzle said:
Oh I don't hate psychiatry at all; in fact, it was the rotation I had been looking forward to the most (though by the end, it was my least favorite).

I feel like psychiatry is difficult due to all the arbitrary diagnostic criteria, the obscure technical terms and vague presentations and the fact that no one knows how any psychiatric medication actually works. Most other organ systems are cut-and-dry.
Click to expand...

I wouldn't underestimate one's own "mental baggage". For argument's sake, GI was one of my toughest since I had some very amateur concepts of the physiology/pathology/anatomy that I had to unlearn first... to keep in perspective.. I mean, you can grow to love the challenge of Renal, no? ...And if you loved molecular biology, you could love Renal, no?
 
Neuro was the hardest for me, and at that it was really just the brainstem. I also thought learning all of those damn translocations for lymphoid neoplasms sucked too.
 
Biochem anyone? Talk about something straight out of satans a**
 
My vote is for renal because so many things my professor said seemed incorrect when tested against every other text I read.

Mind was full of fuk and my obsession with understanding the correct mechanism of whatever would cause me to fall behind.
 
Put me in the "depends on you and your instructors" category. My school personally had amazing neuro profs, while other classes we were left a bit more to fend for ourselves. Certain subjects also just "click" better for one person than another; for whatever reason, I STILL get owned by the kidney even after doing a whole month of it as a clinical elective, while I did great on our heme/onc exam. Some of my classmates are complete opposites.
 
the only reason renal path is so terrible is b/c robbins renal is dog****. A couple read-throughs of pathoma and I was 98% percentile uworld renal.
 
GoSpursGo said:
Put me in the "depends on you and your instructors" category. My school personally had amazing neuro profs, while other classes we were left a bit more to fend for ourselves. Certain subjects also just "click" better for one person than another; for whatever reason, I STILL get owned by the kidney even after doing a whole month of it as a clinical elective, while I did great on our heme/onc exam. Some of my classmates are complete opposites.
Click to expand...

the reason why i didn't put that there was because everyone would pick exactly this answer
 
fizzle said:
Whaddaya mean no one? I said psych was the hardest for me.

And it has to do with your prior training, too. For example, I was an engineer before I came to med school, so the physiology topics like cardiology, pulmonology, and renal were easy-peasy for me (kind of like physics-lite).
Click to expand...

Not necessarily true. I took a ton of pharmacology in undergrad. At one point I knew most of the drugs we have learned in med school and more..... yet I found pharm at my school hard because the profs sucked by their poor organization/ explanations. At the same time, I also had a lot of endocrine in undergrad, found this easy in med school.
 
I'd say neuro. It's way different than any other system and I had no exposure to any sort of neuroscience before med school, which made it that much harder.

I'm surprised at the number of renal haters. I like renal and find it relatively intuitive (somewhat like cardio). Compared to other systems I think it's more conceptual and less memorization.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I717
 
Neuro. Didn't help that our instructor was HORRIBLE. Worst instructor we've had to date.

I wouldn't have passed that class if I didn't teach myself from Thieme Neuro and High Yield.
 
Everyone's hating on renal? I LOVE Renal. But then again, the prof makes all the difference.

Neuro... now neuro sucks. But the prof made it suck. There was a lot of cool information, but if the prof is bad, it ruins the subject.
 
Definitely didn't like neuro. I sucked at it 1st and 2nd year.

Renal may have been hard, but it made sense to me when I was learning it.

However, obviously, the real answer here is that it depends on who your professors are.
 
CodeBlu said:
Everyone's hating on renal? I LOVE Renal. But then again, the prof makes all the difference.

Neuro... now neuro sucks. But the prof made it suck. There was a lot of cool information, but if the prof is bad, it ruins the subject.
Click to expand...

Same situation at my school with both courses

Totally agree with the prof making the difference in courses
 
I'm surprised that pulm is so under-represented. Pulm was the hardest for me to get through...SO BORING.
 
Hardest for me was neuro--there was just a lot to memorize. I did fine with the neurophysiology questions once I had the anatomy down. I think I just needed to spend more time with the course.

I don't get why renal is up there. If you scored >/=10 on any MCAT science, renal should be rather intuitive once you memorize where things should be. But our minds work differently. Overall, I thought cardio, pulmonary, and renal were the most doable, followed by GI, endocrine, and then repro.
 
I really enjoyed renal. A lot of the people in my class did not care for the professor who taught renal but I really liked her and she definitely kept things simple and organized.

Pulm was the wooooorst for me though because my professor did not teach it well. His information was very disorganized and did not correlate with any of the other standard physio books so I was pretty lost.

I had mixed feelings about immuno.
I felt like I had to self teach myself everything from scratch by reading the textbook because the professor went WAY too fast.
 
Not an organ system, but I feel Embryology should be on there anyways.

I ****ing hate embryology.

I don't see why people would think renal is worse than neuro... For first year anyways.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

Notthatdoctor
What is the best time for steps in six year system?
Replies
2
Views
540
voxveritatisetlucis
V
Doctoscope
Is it worth finishing preclinical B&B in preparation 3rd year and Step 2?
Replies
7
Views
828
voxveritatisetlucis
V
wysdoc
Applicants to residencies at Texas Tech Lubbock or El Paso during their IT system lockdown
Replies
0
Views
698
wysdoc
wysdoc
mtsapko
  • Poll Poll
Transition from preclinical to clinical (M2 to M3)
Replies
8
Views
1K
eteshoe
eteshoe
D
What is the future of Dermatology?
Replies
12
Views
4K
voxveritatisetlucis
V
Top