How do you remember everything you learned in medical school?

[End Poverty]

In my med school, we have cumulative exams for everything we have covered in med school every three courses. Yesterday, when I looked over my notes for the contents I covered last year, I realized that I have forgotten some of it... it's incredibly sad because I put in a lot of effort when I was learning it the first time.

I was wondering how can one study efficiently to not forget content? How do you maintain good long term memory? Do you have to constantly do practice questions? or read over your notes periodically? How do you incorporate that in your study schedule?

[Egg_McMuffin]

disclaimer: I'm a fellow MS1 muddling her way through and having the same challenges

1. You're not alone. I feel like forget most of the stuff I learn. And the upper-years keep reassuring me that it happens to everyone, and that you will keep coming back to the same concepts again, and again, and again. From my experience as a clinical RD, when you actually use some of it in clinical setting it'll stick better

2. From research that's being done...it's about active recall and spaced repetition vs passive learning (like reading notes). My classmates swear by Anki, but there other platforms that serve the same function. There are other similar Having the time to incorporate it into my study routine regularly, however, is another story....:P

[End Poverty]

12 minutes ago, Egg_McMuffin said:

disclaimer: I'm a fellow MS1 muddling her way through and having the same challenges

1. You're not alone. I feel like forget most of the stuff I learn. And the upper-years keep reassuring me that it happens to everyone, and that you will keep coming back to the same concepts again, and again, and again. From my experience as a clinical RD, when you actually use some of it in clinical setting it'll stick better

2. From research that's being done...it's about active recall and spaced repetition vs passive learning (like reading notes). My classmates swear by Anki, but there other platforms that serve the same function. There are other similar Having the time to incorporate it into my study routine regularly, however, is another story....:P

I use anki osmosis and kaplan question bank, yet I still forget things . I just don't know how I will function as a clerk ( I will start clerkship next year in my school).  I'm also a slow learner which make things worse because I don't have a lot of time to review things that I covered last year.

If someone has effective strategies, please enlighten me?

[Butterfly_]

Spaced repetition via self-testing has been an effective method for me so far. Focus more on recall rather than recognition. (There's lot of research on this in psychology and the evidence does suggest it works) 

Also at this stage I think it's more important for us to learn the concepts rather that memorizing all the facts. 

The facts will come with time because we will most likely encounter these concepts again and again as we progress.

[JohnGrisham]

26 minutes ago, End Poverty said:

I use anki osmosis and kaplan question bank, yet I still forget things . I just don't know how I will function as a clerk ( I will start clerkship next year in my school).  I'm also a slow learner which make things worse because I don't have a lot of time to review things that I covered last year.

If someone has effective strategies, please enlighten me?

You'll be fine. Being a good clerk is about working hard and being reliable, if you can remember minutae thats a bonus not a necessity.  As long as you can remember big picture and frameworks, you're golden.

Many people, up to and including staff often comment "oh yeah, ive re-learned XYZ 10 times now" - important concepts get re-taught over and over, with varying levels of difficulty. 

[NLengr]

3 hours ago, JohnGrisham said:

You'll be fine. Being a good clerk is about working hard and being reliable, if you can remember minutae thats a bonus not a necessity.  As long as you can remember big picture and frameworks, you're golden.

Many people, up to and including staff often comment "oh yeah, ive re-learned XYZ 10 times now" - important concepts get re-taught over and over, with varying levels of difficulty. 

And you don't need a ton of what you learn anyway once you get out of pre-clerkship.

/Krebs cycle, I'm looking at you....

[jlkhhylyiluh6]

re-learn over and over again. Also, you dont need to remember "Everything", not even close. Once youre an attending  you probably only use <10% of what you learned, and that becomes intuition/common sense instead of something to actively recall.

[W0lfgang]

F no. I don't even remember everything from residency. Far from it.

[LostLamb]

Just want to reiterate what other staff and residents are saying...you can't remember it all unless you have an elusive long-term eidetic memory.

You'll learn what you really need again and again and again. The minutiae will fade.

[Aetherus]

Everytime you relearn something a little bit more will stick. Generally, the more times you’re exposed to a concept, the better you remember and the more important that piece of information is.

Med school has some repetition built into it as well for the important concepts. For example we had the same lecture about acid/base disturbances like 6 times in medical school (I’m not even exaggerating on that number). It’s a skill they thought was important for us to know, and so they built in the repetition. And it works. I can interpret any gas, at any time of day in my head because it was drilled into me.

Conversely, I can barely remember how many types of immunity the body has. For most people that stuff isn’t clinically relevant and so it dissapears.

[JohnGrisham]

Confirmed, I still have to relearn blood gases every 6 months when I actually need to use it. I made myself a 1-pager to relearn the mental math conversions. 

[blah1234]

Repetition keeps the useful knowledge and skills burned into you. You dump all the nonsense minutiae from medical school/residency out of your brain once you're finally finished. 

[rmorelan]

9 hours ago, NLengr said:

And you don't need a ton of what you learn anyway once you get out of pre-clerkship.

/Krebs cycle, I'm looking at you....

bingo

[deeman101]

I hate to break it to the medical students here, especially ones in preclerkship. The curriculum you learn in medical school is not really that practical. What you're really learning is a work ethic and approach to medicine and patient care. It's not found in a text book, but it will set you up well to maximize on clinical opportunities and residency. Just remember when you're in a hospital setting keep your eyes and ears open and let it sink in. Remembering "everything" doesn't make you a good doctor. Trying to do that may even make you a worse one if it's causing you to miss the real lesson. 

[ploughboy]

Med school?  I can't even remember what I had for breakfast...