Blog Post Focus
This blog post is another discussion on studying. This time focusing on why bad study habits are such a barrier to learning. If more interested in the benefits of good study habits in general, check out my prior posts including this one for medical students.
Introduction: Avoid Bad Study Habits
Bad study habits in medical school need to be avoided. They decrease study efficacy and efficiency, which can increase stress during medical school. They can decrease confidence in yourself. They make it harder to pursue the specialty you want. Furthermore, bad study habits make for a worse physician.
Making Study Less Effective and Efficient
Bad study habits make studying less effective and less efficient compared to good study habits. Less effective means learning the information to a lesser quality than when using good study habits. Less efficient means spending more time studying the same amount of information. Don’t spend more time studying the same information, while learning less of it. Avoid bad study habits and waste less time.
Decreased Confidence
The deluge of learning in medical school requires time and effort. If you have poor study habits you may not keep pace with the constant flow of information. More poignant—you may fall behind. Come test day you may not be prepared.
If this continues to happen, while you may pass, you will likely not feel confident. It is demoralizing to spend so much time and effort working for something and ending up with poor quality. Studying now affects how you study and learn later as a resident and as an attending. Avoid bad study habits and instead improve your confidence with good study habits.
Pursuing a Desired Specialty
Poor study habits in medical school can lead to decreased confidence, which can lead to poor performance on rotations. It can feel like being out of place. It can feel like not belonging. It can manifest as never understanding the differential diagnosis or the treatment plans of the care team. You can be assigned topics to cover, which you learn briefly and then forget. Later on, you learn them again, and then forget.
Avoid Bad Study Habits to Avoid Being A Weak Team Member
Being unable to follow care team plans can require you to ask for clarification repeatedly, which can be irritating. Or, when asked questions you may seem clueless repeatedly. Lacking the foundational knowledge you may not be able to communicate effectively with the team.
Poor study habits can feel like always preparing and still coming to the team lacking. This can make getting a strong letter of recommendation more difficult, which can make pursuing a desired specialty more difficult. Instead of building a strong foundation now, one is left with a weak foundation that seems to keep floundering away and requiring to be rebuilt from scratch. Avoid bad study habits to be a stronger team member.
Becoming a Lesser Physician
Bad study habits mean becoming a worse physician. You don’t want to be a physician who is unsure of oneself. You don’t want to be unaware of what you do and don’t know. Bad study habits do not lend one to properly assess what one does and does not know. It makes it more difficult to recognize common and uncommon presentations.
Years of Poor Habits Are Hard to Break
Once one is an attending one is expected to have had years of solidifying knowledge with proper practice. Poor study habits can interfere with solidifying knowledge. Instead of a near-decade of good habits, one has a near-decade of bad habits. The longer habits are sustained the harder they are to break. Avoid bad study habits and embrace good study habits instead.
Less Effective
A physician who is always forgetting and then re-learning, and then forgetting again cannot be as effective as the physician who is always strengthening their knowledge. When one is unaware of what they do or do not know they cannot effectively look up needed information and put it into action. Avoid bad study habits to avoid being a less effective physician.
Conclusion–You Need to Avoid Bad Study Habits in Medical School
Bad study habits as a medical student must be avoided. If they are continually practiced they are reinforced and are harder to overcome in time. Poor study habits can lead to poor performance, make it harder to have confidence and a sense of belonging, and ultimately lead to being a worse physician. Poor study habits prepare you to poorly manage time and effort. Patients and the medical profession take a lot of time and effort.
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