Why do med students use books as sources for Step I instead of flash card decks?

[Icecold]

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When it comes to studying for Part I of the dental boards (the equivalent of Step I in med school) dental students mosty study from a collection of about 2000-3000 flashcards known as the Dental Decks. I'm sure some of them crack open a text here and there to reinforce a topic, but most of their studying is done from the Dental Deck flash cards.

I notice med students rely mostly on review book sources, creating sometimes long lists of books, that they study from. Why dont more med students study from flashcard sources? Is it really necessary to study from review books for the majority of your material? Just curious why more med students arent talking about the flashcards out there for Step I.

 

[PepperMD]

I can't speak to the content, difficulty, etc of the dental boards, and I'm certainly not implying anything about the sort of knowledge obtained in dental school, but I couldn't imagine being able to fit all of the detail required in Step I of the USMLE on 2000-3000 flashcards, let alone perhaps tens of thousands of flash cards. There's just way too much detail. That being said, it certainly might be feasible to have a set of broad topic flashcards that might work to highlight general areas to further review. Of course, I guess it might be reasonable if the cards were sufficiently dense in content, but then they would lose their "flash" quality, no? But again, I don't know much about dental curriculum or the dental boards to give a fair comparison. What's on these cards anyway? From what I understand, dental students have to know considerably more hardcore detail about head and neck anatomy that I could imagine taking a large number of cards in itself.

Overall, it's probably more a matter of the resources available and what has worked for past students being passed down from year to year.

 

[Captopril]

When it comes to studying for Part I of the dental boards (the equivalent of Step I in med school) dental students mosty study from a collection of about 2000-3000 flashcards known as the Dental Decks. I'm sure some of them crack open a text here and there to reinforce a topic, but most of their studying is done from the Dental Deck flash cards.

I notice med students rely mostly on review book sources, creating sometimes long lists of books, that they study from. Why dont more med students study from flashcard sources? Is it really necessary to study from review books for the majority of your material? Just curious why more med students arent talking about the flashcards out there for Step I.

Flash cards are for factoids, books are for concepts.
USMLE makes you think + remember, not just one or the other.

 

[ENThopeful]

seems feasible for pharm and micro

 

[scube]

I also think from looking at Dentessentials, which is kaplans review book for the exam that the dental exam covers less material(the book was much smaller than medessentials.) that would be one heck of a stack of cards. I also assume(ie might be wrong) dental boards have much more anatomy which can be learned on flash cars.

 

[DoctaJay]

lol, everyone is being so polite.