USE IT or LOSE IT, future Docs!

Have you all ever heard the phrase: “If you don’t use it, you lose it”? To what degree is this true? When it comes to medical knowledge, it makes perfect sense–specially by considering the amount of info involved.

Each med student has many tasks to deal with so keeping up with the updates and refreshing one’s core knowledge doesn’t seem that easy. Yet, it isn’t that hard if you integrate it into your lifestyle. In view that what works for some doesn’t work for everyone, I’ll present a few best practices for you to decide wisely.

Try to think of knowledge as a lifestyle

In fact, learning should be a lifelong practice; just like the lifestyle changes you’ll be asking patients to make when they are diagnosed with a chronic condition. Let’s put it simple: make it a habit naturally incorporated into your daily life and then it won’t look so overwhelming.

If you are not the kind of student who likes sitting down with a pile of books in a room at the end of the day or during breakfast/lunch/dinner, you might be one of those who prefers learning while being on the go. For example, you could do it on the elliptical machine at the gym or on your daily bus/tram commute. As you sweat it out on the machine, you’ll absorb relevant information that could be beneficial afterwards.

While exercising, you could also listen to specific podcasts. Some suggestions are the New England Journal of Medicine podcast with Steve Morrissey or the one with Joe Elia: NEJM Journal Watch, as well as general news podcasts from NPR or The Economist. It’s not about listening to them all every day; just some of it.

Your smartphone can turn into a useful learning tool while commuting

For instance, you may read Journal Watch content in general medicine, hospital medicine, diabetes, etc. This method might be interesting for those who hear something once and don’t have it down cold, so they need to reinforce the information they get (e.g. some of the daily headlines from First Watch get explored further in Journal Watch stories).

Others are more of visual learners and for that, I would recommend using some question banks as you’d be able to go through a great deal of questions at a manageable pace. You’d also have more time to review what you didn’t answer right. Speeding up your test-taking skills is as critical as increasing your knowledge, as advised by Judi Kesselman-Turkel & Franklynn Peterson in their bestseller work Test–taking Strategies.

Keeping up with the latest information is just part and parcel of the job, and that’s when Qupi enters the game. It makes students review essential topics; the core medical info that is to be constantly reviewed if you want to be a respectful clinician right after your med studies. I believe that is your main goal, isn’t it?

It may sound like doing all this means spending countless hours on learning

Yet, it’s not really the case. It amounts to maybe 15 minutes a day (or a bit more depending on your availability). Just put in a little time up front by signing up for alerts from products like Qupi and it will all come to you. My advice to someone who thinks this is too much work: start small, and build a habit. Don’t bite off more than you can chew (:

Some YouTube channels are handy too

For example, Future Doc House explains medical issues and shares the knowledge he gained through his medical studies. You can also find material linked with microbiology via easy-to-understand and straight-to-the-point practical videos. In this way, you’d benefit from the net.

Go find the sources that suit you better and discover your personalized routine (remember not to compare yourself though, as per my previous article). Once you set it up, sticking to it turns out not to be that tough.

Does any of the recommendations above make sense at all? If so (or if not) please leave your comment or any doubt/question below. A last phrase I’d like you to remember: practice makes perfect, so keep trying and assess your own outcome as you move forward. To subscribe to Qupi, click on the link that follows => Continue with Facebook

The Benefits of Taking a Basic Medical Terminology Quiz

For those of you studying the vast branch of medicine, complicated words are no news. We get to know these hard words on a daily basis and they can be hard to pronounce, let alone understand and memorize. Even after frequent repetitions and endless amount of time memorizing important terminologies, they all end up mixed together in the end. You can’t just understand them as part of a process, nor can you relate them to a specific function, it’s simple, old, learning by heart. So, is there any easy way to remember them? A basic medical terminology quiz offers you to remember these hard to learn words, in an easy and fast way. You may have frequently heard professors and seniors urge you to use a basic medical terminology test. Well, here are the reasons why these tests are so useful!

Repeated retrieval aids in retaining knowledge the long run

When you take a basic medical terminology test, you are repeatedly trying to make your brain remember information. When you do this frequently, the brain strengthens its synapses and transfers the information from the short term to the long term. This makes your study much more productive.

Organizes information in the brain

Testing yourself with these quizzes helps to create co-links and allows your brain to relate. Reading the context is one thing and then allowing your brain to find the vital link is another. This solidifies what you learned in the books and helps retain information easily.

Improves in correlation with the new context

You will advance through several years of education, learning new and adding to your knowledge every time. If you take a basic medical terminology quiz frequently, it will allow you to build on your knowledge and will help you with linking the previous information to the new one. This accelerates the learning process, especially as you don’t have to flip back every few minutes to check the meaning of a word.

Basic medical terminology test helps identify gaps

Learning from the book makes it feel like you know everything. Unless you are tested, you will never find out which pieces were missing. The tests and quizzes help you to identify the potential weak spots in your learning so that you can work on them harder to make your knowledge foolproof.

Prevents interference

If you do not solidify your knowledge, there is a really good chance that whatever new you learn will jumble up with your past knowledge. Everything will mix up so that in the end, you are not sure of anything. In order to prevent this, it’s better to assess and reassess your knowledge prior to learning something new and these basic medical terminology tests can help you do so easily.

Medicine is an art. You need to learn it in the proper manner to ensure that you remember all of it at the right time. It’s no easy business remembering pages upon pages of never ending books. However, if you learn them right, correlate every step of the way and regularly assess your skills, by taking a medical terminology quiz, for instance, you can claim any amount of knowledge you desire. The brain has fascinating capabilities, you just need to know how to work it!

5 Tips for New Medical Students

What advice could I possibly give to fresh students of medicine?

I mean, I didn’t go for medical studies (and don’t plan to do so, to be honest). However, I hold a translation diploma and I’m currently studying a master in communication. Thus, I believe you guys will find this article useful and if so, might somehow apply some of these 5 tips for new medical students. In case you are still skeptical, I’ve also asked among the doctors and medical students that I know and most of them agreed on the following:

1) Don’t let yourself down

[custom_frame_center shadow=”on”] [/custom_frame_center] Medicine is tough and so is translation (and many other degrees). Even if you didn’t perform as well as you thought you would, smile and move on. You may have tried hard but we are all humans with our ups and downs. Hence, do your best without getting discouraged. One does not need to be the best in every single subject; you’ll like some more than others… and it’s perfectly fine! Look: the person who graduates with the lowest grades will still be a doctor. Just put some effort and you’ll get there someday.

2) Avoid learning by heart

[custom_frame_center shadow=”on”] [/custom_frame_center] Learning, from Venezuela to Poland, should be about understanding the concepts, not memorizing the words. “What is Luis writing about? C’mon, there’s no other way to study anatomy without cramming!” The truth is that there is, in spite of the long texts you must go through (trust me: I’ve learned a couple of languages this way). For that, I would recommend you all read texts in advance the actual lecture so you are ready to ask specific questions to your professors (and you’ll remember things in the long term).

3) “Focus on me” (as Ariana Grande’s hit)

[custom_frame_center shadow=”on”] [/custom_frame_center] When I was in the translation and interpreting school, I didn’t have the distraction of a smartphone (I only had a BlackBerry: it was the fad of my university times!). Do you really have to check your Facebook account every minute? If you decided to go for medicine, then focus on it as much as you can (whether you attend a lecture or study by yourself). I’m not urging you not to use your smartphone at all: just try to do “smart” things with it such as visiting the largest user-generated medical question database: Qupi.com

4) Go green by recycling

[custom_frame_center shadow=”on”] [/custom_frame_center] Ask advanced students for the tests they had. By learning the concepts from previous exams, you are on the right track to learning properly—and therefore passing your tests. I know professors like to ask about the most important aspects of given subjects (and if they decided to go into details, you’d already have the whole idea because you wouldn’t learn things by heart, right?). This is why it’s likely that some questions are similar (if not exactly the same). I did it for several theoretical subjects and it worked. Give it a try…

5) Don’t worry, be happy!

[custom_frame_center shadow=”on”] [/custom_frame_center] One thing you should always make sure of is finding some leisure time. Even if you had a tough week—and a long oncoming weekend to study for other tests—relax on your own or hang out with your friends (not too often, though). After lectures, if you don’t have any difficult test in the short term, try to act normal (yes, you are normal in spite of your medical studies!). Some of my coolest memories (and not so cool pictures at times) were from parties. Have fun, I mean… it’s just a degree and you’ll surely nail it (: Did you like this new article? Yes? No? Either way, please feel free to leave your comments below and stay tuned because my next blog is about to come. By the way, don’t forget to check the Qupi.com

The Importance of Medical Question Banks

Why is early practice using medical question banks important?

In 2012, over 45 thousand people applied to medical schools in the USA through the American Medical College Application Service, out of which 19,517 matriculated into a medical school for a success rate of 43 percent.¹

Now that you are a medical student (congratulations!), what should you do in order to increase your chances to become a doctor? (more…)