Blog Post Focus
In this post I shall discuss good study habits for medical students and the benefits they bring to the medical student.
Introduction: Good Study Habits
Why Few have Good Study Habits
Good study habits in medical school are the same good study habits at any point in life. Unfortunately, few people have developed good study habits up to this point in their life. Poor study habits are time-consuming and require a lot of effort. For some reason, people think the harder you work the better you learn, which is wrong and misguided. Furthermore, poor study habits are the only habits that some people ever learn, so they are taught and promoted. Fortunately, anyone can develop good study habits at any time.
Benefits of Strong Study Skills
Good study skills in medical school will make your studying more effective, helping you to excel in classes. They will make your studying more efficient, decreasing the time and stress necessary to perform well on exams and actually learn the material. Furthermore, good study skills become habits, which will help you at any future point in your educational journeys.
What are Good Study Habits?
Good study habits are effective and efficient compared to other study habits. Additionally, good study habits promote long-term learning. They are not utilized once to cram for exams. Rather, they are used to learn material and gain understanding of topics.
Good study habits ultimately employ the following principles: spaced repetition, interleaving of topics, and self-assessment.
Spaced Repetition
Spaced repetition is simply reviewing material. We use it or lose it—whether it is a physical skill or knowledge. Reviewing material strengthens our learning pathways. Each time we revisit the material it is solidified and easier to access in the future.
Spaced repetition can be even more sophisticated by applying more frequent repetition to material that is new and less frequent material that is well-established. A simple way to do this is making flash cards and separating them into decks that are brand new, decks that you recently learned, and decks you know cold. You increase the frequency of review of the newer and less-known material than the material you have solidified.
Flashcard Software
A more sophisticated way to employ spaced repetition is to use Anki, a flashcard software. It is easy to download and use. You make your own cards, they can be stored on your computer, and easily altered. Then, you can use pre-set settings or change settings to guide how frequently material is reviewed.
In medical school you will be exposed to tons of material. It is easy to make flash cards and to employ spaced repetition and to refine the frequency of repetition based on how well you know the material.
Interleaving of Topics
Interleaving of topics is reviewing material that may be unrelated in some way or seem unrelated. It is avoiding studying only one branch of material.
For example, in medical school you will study information corresponding to the cardiovascular system and the gastrointestinal system. Interleaving study would be reviewing some information on both systems.
You can focus your studying on some topic, but don’t exclusively study one topic for a prolonged period of time.
Finding Connections Across Topics
For example, if you just finished covering the cardiovascular system and are not studying the gastrointestinal system then you can start learning about the GI system, while still reviewing CV system material.
This could look like making flash cards for the GI system and making their review the most frequent, but still reviewing some topics in CV that are better known. Or, you could be doing self-assessment questions in a question bank and doing both CV and GI questions.
Self-assessment
Self-assessment is testing oneself. It is determining if you really know something, or if it just feels like you know something. Knowing what your know well and don’t know well helps shift your focus of studying.
Some ways to perform self-assessment include answering questions from a question bank regarding your topic of study, or choosing any topic you just went over and seeing if you can explain it to yourself without looking at your notes, or taking the opportunity to teach someone any topic you have learned to this point.
Question Banks
If you are answering questions correctly from question banks and understand the explanations, then you know things well. If you are getting answer wrong and don’t understand the explanations, then you don’t know the material well. If you cannot self-explain material without looking at notes then you don’t know the material well. If you cannot teach someone material you have told yourself you have learned, then you did not learn it well.
Self-assessment can be tough, but it helps us identify more accurately how well we know material. We often have the illusion of competence when we read or review material because we have just gone over it or the material is right there for us to reach out for if needed. However, if we don’t know the material, then we need to work more on that material, rather than just assume we know it well enough.
Testing gets a bad rap, but in certain ways it can be an effective form of self-assessment and further guide our efforts in learning.
Some Final Thoughts
Reading, Highlighting, and Taking Breaks
Reading is good for initially gathering information. Re-reading has limited value. Highlighting has limited value. Learning is effortful, but if you get to the point you feel overwhelmed or exhausted then you should give yourself a break—you aren’t likely to learn much at that point. In fact, we need breaks sometimes to make breakthroughs in learning.
A Reputation to Uphold?
You may not have needed good study habits up to this point. You were always “smart” and could cram. Or, you didn’t see the point of learning anything long-term because you didn’t think you would ever use the information again. Perhaps you are prideful and feel that you aren’t “smart” if you study.
Reiterating the Benefits of Strong Study Skills
Good study habits are easy to learn and can be employed immediately. They can save time and stress. They are more effective and efficient than some techniques like re-reading and highlighting. They support long-term retention, instead of requiring one to always re-learn the material every time the topic comes up. Smart people utilize good study habits to better use their time. Using poor study habits and wasting endless hours and stress is not smart and is instead a barrier to real learning.
As a medical student there are many great resources available for initial learning. Then, using spaced repetition (like Anki) and self-assessment tools (like UWorld) you can set yourself up for success from the beginning. Your experiences with studying may turn more positive and less frustrating.
Resources and Links
See my discussion about study habits for the prospective medical student here https://permanentstudentdoctor.com/good-study-habits-as-a-prospective-medical-student/.
Two resources that taught me about good study habits and improved my study habits for the better are Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning and Learning how to Learn on Coursera.
Check out Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learninghttps://www.amazon.com/Make-It-Stick-Peter-C-Brown-audiobook/dp/B00M1Z2THY/ref=sr_1_1?crid=L0JSVM6M9K4C&keywords=make+it+stick&qid=1702766178&sprefix=make+it+stic%2Caps%2C255&sr=8-1.
Also, check out Learning how to Learn on Courserahttps://www.coursera.org/learn/learning-how-to-learn?.
See the following link to Anki https://apps.ankiweb.net/.
See the following link for a description of Anki and how to set it up https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WmPx333n5UQ.
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