WHAT YOU SHOULD KNOW AS A MEDICAL STUDENT IN NIGERIA

Some very important aspects regarding medical education, that all newly admitted medical students should know.

1) COMPETITION

First thing you have to keep in mind is that this is not a competition with other students, you are here to become a good doctor and a better human being not to get more marks than your fellow colleagues. Honestly, it doesn’t matter who gets more marks, what matters is if you really know tahr you are here to learn what.

2) CRAMMING

Not only cramming takes lot of time, but it is also not beneficial at all, e.g let’s suppose you cram all the origins and insertions of muscles of upper limb before the stage. I can guarantee, if you didn’t properly understand and visualise it before, you’ll have forgotten most of the things by the time your next stage. What you need to do is that you learn the terminology, what does the medical jargon actually means, then you understand the concepts by visualizing it. Look at Netters Atlas, see the muscle, look how it is present in the body and where its attachments are. Now if the question comes of a particular set of muscles and their function, you can easily visualize the picture you saw and remember the action of muscle. So don’t cram, read, understand things, visualize them, see how big the picture is connected, and you’ll realize its actually not that hard.

3) PRACTICE QUESTIONS or TEACH instead of REREADING

Another thing, which most of us do wrong is that when we have to revise anything, we simply reread the text again. Several studies have proven rereading text has very little efficacy in remembering them. This Is because when we are rereading a topic, we realize we have read this before and the highlighted stuff makes us feel we already know it, now this is a very huge mistake. Why? Well because you say to yourself that this is familiar, you know this. But what you really need is having the ability to recall something, there’s a huge difference in recalling stuff vs recognising that you know it. When you know you have to teach a topic to someone, you tend to understand and learn it better because you know you have to make the other person understand it. if you see the people who do well in exams, you’ll realize they practice a lot, not just reread, but actually solve questions.

4) SPACED REPETITION

If you want to learn a system, lets say its 1st of March and the test is on 10th, and its going to take 10 hours for you to learn it, instead of spending 10 hours in the last 2 days, divide it into 10 days, when you do spaced repetition you’ll learn better.

5) INTEGRATION

One of the best ways to retain an information is to connect with something you already know, let’s say you are reading the Physiology of Nervous System, if you try to remember the Neuroanatomy and connect the Physiology with the anatomical parts you’ll retain much better.

6) DISTRACTIONS

Try to reduce your distractions when you study. There’s no point of opening a book for 5 hours because you and I both know that you aren’t going to study for five hours, it’s two hours of reading and three hours of scrolling, it’s better to just study for two hours and then scroll!

7) BREAKS

We humans don’t have a good attention span, so it’s better to divide your sessions into small parts with short breaks in between. You can use the “Pomodoro Technique”. It is basically you study for twenty five minutes, then you get up do something else for five minutes and then again.

8) ANKI

It is the most important tool you can encounter in your medical college life. Most of medical students around the world use it. unfortunately its not very popular in Pakistan. You can watch many videos on how to use it. It’s a flashcard application which uses the methods of spaced repetition and practice. By its algorithm, you can download already made flashcards or make your own, and practice questions on it, the ones you forget the most will repeat on regular intervals till you remember it.

The most important thing here I’d like to say is that, medical (or any other but especially medical) education is a life long thing, don’t burn yourself out, try to understand and integrate things with each other, and try to learn other things too. A good doctor isn’t just the one who know bookish knowledge the most, its also the one who know how to communicate well with his/her patients, and how to see from their perspective and make them understand about their conditions and treatments.

Study and study well but do other things too, your own health, your friends, your family have a right on you and integrating and making other aspects of life better will in turn make you better. So make the world your library, learn from everyone and everything, have a good attitude towards life and you’ll do great. Best of luck!

By: Teamy Cambridge