Study Aids and Revision Tips for Medical Students
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Study Aids and Revision Tips for Medical Students Medincle - It is specifically designed for med students with SpLDs or who speak English as an additional language. It is on the DSA list of approved AT. Created by doctor with dyslexia. https://www.medincle.com/ Simple Med - SimpleMed is an entirely FREE platform for Medical Students to learn and revise Medicine more easily, with concept-based articles and a free multiple choice question bank! SimpleMed is built by Med Students, with only the key information needed and without the extra fluff - all with the aim of reducing the stress that students experience. https://simplemed.co.uk/ Khan Academy - Khan Academy is an American non-profit educational organization created in 2006 by Sal Khan, with the goal of creating a set of online tools that help educate students. The organization produces short lessons in the form of videos. Its website also includes supplementary practice exercises and materials for educators. https://www.khanacademy.org/coach/dashboard Medical terms and roots https://cjnu- matt.webs.com/List%20of%20medical%20roots,%20suffixes%20and%20prefixes.pdf ISMP list of confusable drugs https://www.ismp.org/recommendations/confused-drug-names-list Pronunciation of common drugs https://clincalc.com/PronounceTop200Drugs/ https://www.drugs.com/uk/ 3D Body anatomical software: https://www.zygotebody.com/Medical words plug-in for Word Spellcheck: https://www.medincle.com/https://www.lexable.com/global-autocorrect/ - they also have a medical dictionary that can be activated to help with spell-checking medical assignments. 1 Metacognition/Learning preferences • What kind of learner are you? • What exactly works and doesn't work for you? • Are you using your preferred learning strategies in an effective and reflective way? • Can you explain how exactly you revise? • Is there part of the procedure that you are missing out or that you need to strengthen? • Use active, multi-sensory learning. Work to your strengths and consider ways of working that you hadn't previously used – look at: visual - word, visual - picture, auditory, kinaesthetic The exam • What exam consideration, if any, are in place for you? • Are you having problems scanning the questions and possible answers? • If you are having visual scanning problems, there are features within Microsoft to screen out external visual interference, change the background colour of your screen or reduce visible lines of text to one or three lines within Immersive reader. • Do a mock multiple choice test every day, so that it is almost second nature when you get to the day of the exam. • If the exam is on screen, use zoom to make everything appear bigger - this will enable you to focus on each of the multiple choices, and the size will help to pick up small words that often make a big difference to the choices. • A strategy for coping with a multiple choice exam, where reading for accuracy is essential: drop the wrong answers before spending longer deciding between the likely ones. • In questions where you have little knowledge, go for pure strategy: if, out of four possible answers, a concept is present in three of the answers, then that is most likely to be one of the concepts in the correct answer. Doing the same with the other concepts in the choices can often help to establish which choices to drop. • Do the easy questions first – not ij the Vignettes thoughVignettes etc • HUG method for answering questions: Highlight the verb or action word in a question Underline important information Glance over the information again to make sure you have understood the question correctly. 2 Revision preparation longer term • Revision starts the day you receive something new to learn and a particular kind of systematic rotation system of revision can get you to the day of their exam in a calm(ish) state of mind. Yes, you have limited time, but you can set something in motion now, so that you become clear as to what you know and can identifies quickly just the bits you don't and work on those. Low-level self-quizzing. • How organised are you when managing time? Maybe this is not an issue, but sometimes you have to take a step backwards to go forwards, so that the revision stops for a bit while you plan, mark out and begin to practise a new revision routine. Year planner, 4 week timetable. • ASK Moodle page 3 Reading Techniques Read with your brain not your eyes – they are just the means Go through a book, article or lecture slides 3-4x more quickly than 1x slowly Work Smart - gain 80% of the meaning by reading 20% - the 80/20 method gives the brain an overview of the article or book that you are trying to absorb. Preview - flick through the book, article, lecture slides, just getting the boundaries of it Then read intro and conclusion/summary ONLY Then look at diagrams, graphs, contents, chapter headings and index Then if you able to - highlight in one colour all the sub-headings and chapter headings (even if they are separated out and in bold, it helps to break up the text) and read them out loud Then highlight the first sentence of every paragraph in another colour which will tell you the topic/subject of that sentence (don’t read any more than that for now) and read it out loud Decide which areas of the text you need to go into in more detail 5-minute Mind Map jotter: Spend five minutes before reading jotting down everything you know about the subject before starting reading – it puts your brain in the right mindsett and new knowledge hooks onto old knowledge much more easily than simply launching in and reading new material. Set Goals: Why am I reading this? What do I want to get out of this? As with a journey you would set a destination and use a route map, do the same when reading a book or article. This also helps to establish the right mind-set. Keywords and Key Themes: Think about keywords and key themes, it gets the brain in the right mental place too but like the jigsaw, the brain will start to look to infill the gaps when you use this with the 80/20 technique. Read Actively: Write notes in the margins or a notebook - either summaries or spin off thoughts that could be used in an essay later – the kinaesthetic action of writing notes even if those notes are not looked at again has been shown to re-force the memory of the information. Chunk your time: Set a time period before commencing any study for instance 2 to 3 hours and decide how much you would like to cover in this time period. This gives the brain an overview of the overall study period and research suggests that the human brain has a very strong tendency to complete things. Set a timer for a period of say 30 to 40 minutes. Even if you are in the middle of a sentence when the timer goes off stop and take a break. Write a couple 4 of words about each paragraph you have read. Set a timer for your break of 5 to 10 minutes and go and do something different. When you return to your study read over your quick notes and then look over briefly what you have just studied, this helps to embed the memory and reinforces what you have just read. Have a look over what you are about to study very quickly and then start next study period of 30 to 40 minutes setting a timer. Have another 5 to 10 minute break and when you come back skim over the last two study sessions that you have completed. Carry on in this way for the overall amount of time that you decided on at the beginning. Beginnings and Ends: The beginnings and ends of anything studied tend to be remembered more than information covered in the middle. The above method of studying creates more beginnings and ends and therefore more chances of committing information to memory. Recall and Concentration: This way of studying also keeps recall and concentration high. Working for 2 1/2 hours straight means that recall and concentration tend to drop dramatically in a continuous 2-3 hour study period. Breaks: The breaks themselves are just as important as the study periods because they give the brain a chance to assimilate the information and to intra-integrate with previous information learned. 5 You could try - Dual Reading: Alternate between 2 chapters/books/articles. Read a paragraph, have a break then flip to the next text or read between an overview – say an internet text and a more in- depth text. This helps to associate information with what you already know and helps set the text in context and can keep concentration high. Tips to reinforce the memory of what you have read: Condense down your notes to identify key words and core themes which will be useful for revision. Being able to hear a lecture or read a book and then summarise it in your own words as succinctly as possible is a key skill to learn at university and very helpful for life. To help you find key words and core themes imagine you have to explain your work to a relative or friend in the most logical and understandable way you can. This technique focuses the mind and concentrates the information. Review is an excellent return on your investment. 5 minutes can potentially save you hours of time when it comes to the exams.