Study Strategies During Medical School

Studying in medical school is different than any other studying you have done before. This is just a fact. This is true because of the amount of information thrown at you each day. It has nothing to do with difficulty, in fact 98% of medical students are well prepared for the level of difficulty and its not a matter of trying to “understand” concepts. The difficult part is absorbing all the information and then retaining it. 4 to 5 lectures a day, each day with new info trying to get it all in and remembering what you learned the previous days is tough. Cramming almost everyday for monthly exams keeps you in “test mode” constantly.

Two learning scenarios in general that you deal with in medical school:

1) Lecture
In lecture, professors often try to turn it into an interactive process where they implement the Socratic method and ask questions to the class. They try to generate class discussion. Without getting into a grand description of this let me just say that this approach to a large group (>100 students) is not effective for most students. This concept comes from a Law school model that works well when discussing abstract philosophical thought and correlating it with the practice of law but it does not work well when trying to teach objective science. Personally I prefer a lecturer to merely stand and deliver the information. I find constant questioning to be a distraction and takes away from the delivery if info. However there are many students who prefer that method.
2) Small group
In small groups you and about 5 -10 students meet and discuss cases relevant to current lecture topics. This is an area where open discussion usually does help with the education process.

Ok let’s get back on point. This post is really about how to effectively study in medical school. Remember that this is merely my preferred study method. In my school, and many schools, they make use of the Podcasts. Podcasts are great because they allow you as a student to watch the actual overhead presentation of each lecture and hear all the audio. They usually get posted an hour or so after the lecture is completed (see podcast post below). I tried going to lecture for the first three months of Med school and did fine. I was getting 70% to 80% on exams and I was ok with that. The problem was that I was working my ass off and felt like I should be getting 90% for my effort. I began transitioning to podcasting and my first exam was a 95%. Overall I yielded a net gain of >10% on all exams with podcast. Dont ask how I figured those stats.

Studying for each lecture, you should have a strategic approach that you use with all of them. I would first skim over the lecture notes, which were pre printed by our school. I would focus on paragraph headings and try to think for a moment about each topic without reading the actual paragraphs, effectively brainstorming what I already knew about those areas. This would prepare my mind for that information. Once comfortable with the big picture I would begin back at the first paragraph and read through it quickly. Then again more methodically and try to pull out the big-ticket items. I would go on the each paragraph with the same approach. When done with the reading I would view the podcast and watch it diligently, pausing it almost every 2 minutes to effectively take notes. When done with each lectures’ reading and podcast I would complete the learning objectives, which our professors outline for each lecture. After completing them I would move on to the next lecture and do the very same thing until either I was starving or exhausted.

For those of you who aren’t furnished with preprinted notes and instead only have reading assignments from book chapters, it will be more time consuming but doable.

Unless you are uber smart and able to retain things that you see only once, you will have to maintain firm dedication to studying and never get lazy. When you are tired, yawning and your eyes are losing focus of the words, coffee will not help (Coffee only helps your brain when your brain is alert). At that point you should take a 15-minute power nap and get back to it. Seriously, this works well. I would lie on the hard floor with my legs on a chair and fall asleep. On the hard floor it takes about 15 minutes until pressure points cause you some pain and wake you up. This is your built in alarm clock. Get up, suck it up and get back to work.

I studied all day everyday, literally. That’s what it took for me to be as successful as I wanted to be. I would take a day of review each week and go back through only the learning objectives of previous lectures. I never used note cards because I didn’t learn that way. I merely read through the learning objectives and recited them out loud sometimes. As soon as I felt solid with the information I would meet a loyal study partner who had the same study strategy. We would both go through the learning objectives and talk about them, always learning new information from each other. With out my study partner I would have done significantly less well on my exams.

That’s it for now. Any specific questions pleas make a comment to this post and others can add their input as well.