Using resources throughout Medical School

00:00 Welcome back to the first year of medical school lecture series. Now in this lecture, we’re going to talk about using resources in medical school. Some topics we’re going to discuss is the challenge of using multiple resources as a medical student. You have more resources available to you than you can handle. The key is knowing how to pick the right ones and how to use them effectively. Using multiple resources though is important because you need to be able to use multiple resources and use them effectively to do well on both medical school exams and USMLE exams. When you’re picking resources, you’re going to want to focus on audiovisual learning tools to enhance your learning since that improves your recall significantly over just going to lecture or just reading alone.

00:47 The last thing we’re going to want to talk about when it comes to picking resources is having continuity with your resources. You want to use them over the years of medical school and build familiarity with them and have a strong knowledge base.

01:00 So, let’s discuss effectively using multiple resources as a medical student.

01:05 Studying and learning effectively does require using multiple resources but not too many.

01:11 Many students are aware that to study more than one textbook or simply studying more than your medical school lectures and textbook is to your advantage.

01:20 The reason here is that not all resources or lectures are created the same.

01:24 They don’t always help every type of student. So first, content that’s taught in medical school is going to vary from every single school in the nation. It depends on the professor who is giving it, what they think is important, what their research is focused on. Thus, medical school lectures are sometimes great and focused on high yield material. The professor does a great job of teaching the material in a simple way and engaging you. But unfortunately, this may be more of a dream.

01:53 This often is not the case. Students are given lectures that are usually more focused on research or contain lots of low yield or not clinically-focused content. So, the challenge really is to ensure that you're doing well on both your school exams which can be high yield or low but also learning high yield material to do well on standardized national exams.

02:16 So, when it comes to picking resources, research has shown that not all resources are created the same nor do they help you the same. Research has shown that lecture has the absolute lowest recall for students while audiovisual methods can give you a fourfold increase and be more useful. The numbers are really quite simple. You go to lecture.

02:38 You retain about 5% of the material. You use an audiovisual tool. You’re going to retain 20% of the material. Now, that's significantly different. Thus, it’s extremely beneficial for students to obtain an audiovisual lecture series like the Lecturio videos you’re watching now and follow along with their school lectures. In this manner, you'll be reviewing material multiple times.

03:01 You’ll review material from the lectures in your school and you’ll review high yield material that’s clinically relevant and also relevant to the board in the Lecturio videos.

03:12 In this way, you're killing two birds with one stone. You’ll do well on your medical school content in tests and you’ll also do well on national exams. Now third, in addition to using lecture and audiovisual resources, students will also need to get high yield books to focus on what to read.

03:29 Reading a book that is high yield, and there's a long list of high yield books, is a great way for you to review material and also be able to focus your mind on what is high yield information and what you should really be learning absolutely. Now, in addition to reading high yield material, you’re going to want to have what’s called a reference book. A reference book is a very big, thick book that you'll use as a reference when you are reading something from lecture or watching a Lecturio video concept or reading a high yield book and you ask yourself, you know what? I need more from this. I need more background to understand the high yield information.

04:03 You’ll crank open this very big book and read more in depth. Remember, a reference book is not something you read from cover to cover. It’s something you open, search, and read in section.

04:14 Now fourth, there is another resource that you can use. These are called question banks.

04:18 What question banks do is test your knowledge, hence for question banks.

04:23 Now, Lecturio has questions in their learning ecosystem that tests your knowledge.

04:28 There are various question banks and questions banks can be digital on a computer platform or even question bank books that are available. Now, find a question bank that you like to test your knowledge as you're learning the material. The value here is it’s based on how doctors and physicians are trained. We're trained by exams. Exams are based on questions.

04:50 So, doing question banks is a good way for you to test yourself and also learn.

04:55 But be cautious. Question banks are usually focused on USMLE exams and not exams covered in medical school. Thus, you should really be reserving question banks for USMLE material. But there is a side note here. If you are watching the Lecturio lectures, there are questions that go along with each lecture that retain your learning.

05:16 So, they're not solely focused on USMLE material. So, what you need to do is find resources that you like.

05:23 But make sure you don’t overwhelm yourself. This is the most common mistake I see first year medical students doing. All the mentorship and tutoring I’ve done over the years, this is the recurrent theme. Students need to limit themselves to the number of resources that they actually use. Often, students will show up to me when they tell me they have problems studying with a huge pile of books or all these resources all over the place.

05:46 They don't even know where to start. So, start using resources early in your medical school years.

05:52 Start playing with a bunch of them and see what sticks and hold on to them and just stick to a few.

05:57 Then use those same resources as the years continue. Familiarity with resources and continuity is key.

06:04 Now, let’s review what we’ve talked about. You need to use multiple resources to do well on both medical school exams and USMLE exams. When picking these resources, you want to use audiovisual learning tools to enhance your learning since this significantly improves your recall over just reading or lecture alone. You want to have access to both high yield and low yield essentially in depth learning information. For the high yield, this includes high yield books and high yield audio-visual lectures. For the in-depth, you're going to want to have reference books to give you background information to supplement your learning. Make sure not to overwhelm yourself with too many resources. This is the most common error I see first year medical students making.

06:50 Now, make sure to have continuity with your resources over the four years of medical school.

06:56 You want to build familiarity with these resources to help build your strong knowledge base.

07:00 There's nothing better to go as a fourth year medical student back to a first year textbook that you are familiar with and re-read information. Thank you.