How to Study Effectively for Medical School: A Detailed Study Plan
If you gather a bunch of first or second year medical students, there's a good change that a significant portion of their conversation would include the best way to study or the best resources to use. It's the sad reality of medical student life. It'll get better one day but, for now, let's continue that conversation and discuss the foundations of studying effectively in medical school.
Because of the sheer volume of material you are expected to cover and learn, it doesn't pay to nitpick and scrutinize each detail in the lecture. It's better to go through the material three times adequately than it is to really scrutinize the material once. This is because, by the time the exam comes around, you'll have solidifed your knowledge of the material with constant repetitions, whereas you will have forgotten the material if you've only gone through it once. Repetition is the name of the game (flashcards capitalize on this) and you should schedule your studying so that you achieve maximum number of repetitions of learning the material, regardless of the particular way that you study.
Repetition requires quality review texts in addition to class provided lecture notes and slides. See below for the best review resources.
Anatomy Biochemistry Cell Biology & Histology Microbiology Pathology Physiology PharmocologyInternal Medicine OB/GYN Pediatrics Surgery Psychiatry Neurology Family Medicine
The following details a generic step-by-step organization for each day's studying after lecture. So, let's say, for example that it is Monday and that you have lecture that starts at 8 AM.
Some people would advocate previewing the material before lecture. If you feel that this benefits you, go ahead and do it. However, don't attempt to fully learn the material beforehand, as, if you had 4 lectures Monday morning and it took you an hour to digest each lecture, you'd have to wake up at 4 AM to do so (most likely earlier than that to account for personal hygiene, breakfast, and commute time). What you can do, however, is quickly skim the day's powerpoints or handouts to familiarize yourself with the material.
Go to class, if you so choose.
After class and when you sit down to study, you should map out the next 4-5 hours. If, say, you had four lectures that morning, you should designate the amount of time you want to spend on each subject. For the sake of simplicity, let's assume that you will spend 1 hour per lecture.
Read through the first lecture's lecture materials. Whether this is a powerpoint from the lecture that morning, a "required" book chapter, or a handout, spend time reading through the material. Highlight, markup, draw on this, and write small notes on the sides of things you want to reiterate to yourself.
On one piece of paper, outline and write out the main concepts of the lecture, studying and attempting to memorize as you go. This piece of paper will become your "facesheet" for that lecture. It should detail the things that you want to take away from the lecture. Try to keep it to one page/sheet of paper, the reasoning being that you don't want to spend all of your time writing out your notes.
Open Anki and type out flashcards over any 1 to 1 association things that require rote memorization. This is not the place to write paragraphs of concept explainations (that should have been done on your facesheet); answers on flashcards should be able to written in one sentence or preferably in one word. Don't spend time making sure the punctuation or spelling is correct...just jam these cards out as fast as you can. Making cards doesn't help much--the benefit comes from going through the cards.
At this point, your hour is coming to a close. You have read through the lecture materials, made a facesheet over the lecture, and made some flashcards over the lecture. Glance over what you've done and then move on to the next lecture.
Repeat steps 4-7 for each lecture.
Now that you've finished reviewing all four lectures, take a break. It's likely been 4-5 hours at this point of sitting and studying. Go workout for an hour or go home and cook some dinner. Do the normal human things. Don't feel guilty about not studying. Let's assume that at this point, it is 6:00 PM.
At about 8:00 PM, return to your study materials. Read over your facesheets that you made. Run through your flashcards for each lecture.
After reviewing your notes and flashcards for this morning's lectures, review your notes/flashcards from the lectures that occurred two days ago. Let's discuss this point a bit more.
If the name of the game is repetition, you want to constantly be reviewing old information as well. There is a concept called spaced repetition (that the flashcard program Anki is based on ) that essentially says you need to review things more often after initially learning something and that you can pare down your studying over those topics later on. Essentially, fresh information should be reviewed regularly a few times until they come a bit more permanent. That's why you should review the same material a few days later — so that your mind revisits the material and keeps it fresh. Afterwards, you can space the amount of time between reviews a bit longer apart.
So, returning to our example day, before you go sleep, you will have reviewed the same material 4 times (if you previewed). That is, you saw the material once when you previewed, you saw/heard/learned it during lecture, you read it for yourself and took notes on it during your afternoon studies, and you reviewed it once more before you went to sleep. In addition, you will have reviewed your notes and flashcards from the lectures 2 days prior which, before the weekend, means you will have reviewed that material 5 times.
Every weekend, you should run through all of your facesheets and flashcards from that past week. After the weekend, you will have gone through the material 6 times (4 repetitions on the day of study, 1 repetition two days after the lecture day, and a weekend repetition). YOu should, however, spend some time during the weekend focusing on hard concepts or areas you are weak in. Of course, depending on if a particular lecture is later in the week or earlier in the week and closer to the exam date or further from it can change the number of repetitions, but you get the idea.
Before your test block, schedule your studying so that you review the facesheets and flashcards another 1-2 more times, focusing on areas that you are deficient in. This will bring the grand total of repetitions to be 7 to 8 times. Fit additional repetitions of weak areas where you see fit. In addition, if you are crushing flashcards from lectures whenever you have a bit of free time or down time can provide many more opportunities to cycle that knowledge in your mind and help you remember.
By no means is this objectively the best study schedule. It is simply a study plan that is built on tackling as efficiently as possible the two different spheres of medical school learning, concepts and details, using broad conceptual outlines, or facesheets, and flashcards within the context of spaced repetition. Adapt this study plan to your liking and preference as you see fit.
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Also, take some time for yourself too. Go for a run. Grab a bite with a friend. Watch that guilty show. Buy yourself a gift (these are all under 20 dollars). Try to enjoy the journey along the way.
Further Reading
Study tips and resources for classes in MS 1 and MS 2 Years and rotations in MS3, MS4, and Intern Year
General Study Tips for surviving medical school
A list of proven and tested Study Supplies