How to take advice like a medical student!

"I got a 240~" a resident I was speaking to let on. My eyes perked up, I need to know what books he used. I made him illuminate his studying method and his resources.  "I read through the book only once. blah blah blah." Wowww...! Hold up! "One time." This advice was not for me.

Advice is great. I am always willing to lend an ear to things that help me improve. However not all advice bears relevance to me or my situation. This is not to say that these same recommendations are nonsensical. It might have worked for the advisor and so is relevant to him.

I remember during pharmacology II during my basic science spiel on Sint Maarten. I created questions from the lecture slides and supplemented those with questions from Benji's website. (if you are considering AUC as your path in medicine make sure you check out his website. really insightful.) I used these questions as my sole studying material. Needless to say I did extremely well in that exam. A friend of mine that missed the exam asked me how to study for the exam. I gave her my list of questions (the same ones i used to study), a couple hundreds. She tried using them for a few days but soon after she gave up on that method. I'm not certain what method she used but I believe she did well too.

In that scenario, my method of studying worked for me but not for her. This is because we all have different strengths, weaknesses, preferences, different things that we consider tedious, and different ways we assimilate information. As a result some study methods  work well for others and might not work well for their friends.

Before you receive advice you have to know yourself. You have to know your strengths, your weaknesses, your preferences. For example if you know there is no way under this sun that you would wake up at 5 am in the morning starting your studies at 5 am in the morning would be equivalent to self deception.

Next find someone that has similar issues in assimilating information as you do, and seems to have similar strengths and weaknesses as you do and try following his advice and see if it works. If it does not ask someone else for help or try something else. 

What everyone/thing wants from a medical student...

There is one thing that you own that everyone wants; your family wants it, your girlfriend wants it, facebook (if you are so inclined) wants it, your friends want it, your email wants it, sleep wants it, extracurricular activities want it, studying wants it. If time was the first thing you thought of reading this you are right. There just does not seem to be enough time to do everything you want. As a medical student how do you find the time to do what is the most important for your time as a medical student.

As a medical student you will find that 24 hours a day does not seem sufficient. The semester starts, you sleep and wake up and already there is the first exam. After that exam, you blink and there is the next exam. Time just flies. There seems not to be enough time.

You studied really hard for your first block. Your results come back. Whew you survived. Now its time to relax. You take a week off from studying. You relax, sleep, talk to family, talk to your girlfriend, wife and spend time just doing whatever you want. The next week you say I will start tomorrow. That tomorrow turns into another week. Now you have two weeks to grind. You grab your books sit in your favorite spot and grind. You study hard but now you are spending time catching up. You need more time but oops now its 11pm and you need to call your girlfriend/family. Finally, blocks (exams) are tomorrow and you know you have to cram all night. This happens over and over again. Its a vicious cycle.

How do you deal with this? Haaaa. You on your own.

Just kidding. The best thing to do is to study  a little everyday. Yes. This is nothing new; its common knowledge. As such I'm sure you have tried to implement it at one time or another. Considering how much information you are able to assimilate on the day prior to your exams this should be a cinch. Suprisingly, it is not, you pull out your books/notes and read. For some reason you cover only a little bit of material you need to. If its even 45% (arbitrary number of the top of my head) of what you are able to cover on the day prior to the exam you are doing good. Unfortunately, more than likely it is not. Then you wake up and its already the eve of your examination and you still have to cram most of the material since you have not been able to keep up irregardless of the fact that you tried to study everyday. Why?

There are many reasons for this. They vary depending on individual. One common reason relevant to myself and a few others I spoken to appears to be pressure, ie the pressure you feel from the proximity of the exam.  The further away the exam is the less pressure you feel. With the pressure lifted  you feel you have more time to do other things. All of a sudden you have many things vying for your attention, things that you would not conceive on the day prior to exams. You dont push yourself to finish your alloted readings because you feel you have time to catch up. Catching up... ... (Now thats one dangerous phrase, but thats for another blog post. )  The exam comes around and you are cramming again. After this trial you return to your old habits.

Knowing what to do does not seem to be enough at times. So how do you handle studying with hard even when the exam is far off. You can approach it in two ways: 1) create your own pressure or 2) work without pressure. I can not speak for creating pressure because its not the route I took. Maybe reminding yourself constantly of the importance of the exams etc might help. Maybe... What I advocate is akin to nike's slogan, " just do it." Do not think, Do not rationalize... Just make a plan that you believe will help you spread your material over everyday (excluding weekends of you so please) and then blindly follow it like a robot. Just make blindly complete your daily goals.  In a week or two you can look back and see how your plan is working and tweak things.

This worked for me. And I hope it works for you.

Will she ditch her boyfriend for a Ferrari... lol.

A case during my allergy rotations...

With my stethoscope around my neck, wearing my short white coat, screaming medical student to anyone aware but apparently not so to patients, I called in my patient a recently born baby girl with possible allergies. At that time I was rotating at an allergy clinic in Bronx lebanon, a time I would describe as educative and fulfilling. I liked the level of responsibility that was permitted me. My attending took the time to review topics with me. It was great, he was great. I got to practice all the techniques I wanted and got to visualize many physical examination findings that I had read about but never seen prior. Also, being called doctor after I had previously informed them that I was a medical student made my head swell. But all of this is not what I wanted to talk about.

So there was a 3 month baby brought by her mother in for an evaluation of possible allergy. The story was right after receiving her 2 month old vaccinations she had an episode of syncope. As per mother patient started crying after being vaccinated and then syncopized. No rash, difficulty swallowing, dyspnea, or fever was present. She was kept for observation in the ER for a few hours and then allowed to go home. There was no recurrence of this syncope. The question i pose to you readers is what would be in your differential diagnoses for this patient???

answer next week.

Vine.