Studying for Med School Exams

      During my med school orientation one of the deans mentioned that the information you study in undergrad is like drinking water from a water fountain, but in med school, it's like drinking water from a fire hydrant. At the moment it seemed a little dramatic but after having taken two exams in medical school, I know he was right. The material itself is not intellectually harder, there is just A LOT of it. Every two weeks or so we get tested on 25-30 hours of lecture, excluding anatomy (from the lecture hour count, not from the test). Exams are multiple choice, two questions per lecture hour. Being a science major was of MUCH help. A lot of the material they start with is advanced genetics and biochemistry with clinical correlations, so if you have a good foundation of those, you shouldn't be too overwhelmed. Professors will not break down or dumb down the material piece by piece for everyone to digest peacefully. They have 50mins of lecture and if you didn't get it, go to their office hours or ask a friend for help. Professor's are not rude regarding questions, but their lecture is being recorded and they only have so much time to get it all into the tape. Plus, this is the big leagues now. People are good about learning things on their own without a professor.
      Even though I have always had good study habits, after the first exam I had to make some adjustments to adapt. Re-listening to the lectures, and going over my notes a few times was not enough. There is so much information that by the time you finish going over all of it, the material from the first few lectures is already slipping out. I found ways to organize information so I could process and understand it faster: flow charts, YouTube videos, pictures, tables, outlines, dirty mnemonics, you name it, I've done it. Group study was also of tremendous help. People find different ways to teach each other important material, and once you talk about a certain topic, you will not forget it. My class is a great team when it comes to helping each other. We have a Sharepoint account where we upload notes on unrecorded presentations, practice quizzes, summarized anatomy, etc. We also have a Facebook page where we post links to helpful videos and websites. My peers have been my teachers as much as my professors have, or more.
         A week before the exam, the  only balance you will have in your life is the one between food, sleep, and studying. Nothing else matters. Dishes? Pile them on the dishwasher. Hamper? Overflowed. Bathroom? Dirty. Phone rings? Ten missed calls; from mom. Again, having a science major is a good prep for the type of life style you will find in med school. Studying in a group also helps you keep your sanity. People tend to make jokes or just start a conversation and that time can loosen up the tension and help you keep going. I have never been able to study at home for long focused periods of time, so I basically spent my weekend in school. As long as I have my student ID  I can go in any time I want. They have a lounge there with fridges and microwaves, so I went prepared with lunch, dinner, snacks, and coffee for the day. Saturday I went in at 8am and left at 10pm. Classmates that came in later, say noon, stayed up until 3am. Of course, we took breaks. Usually to eat, take a small walk, talk to other people studying at school, but anything more than one hour is a luxury we cannot afford.
         In an optimal study plan, the weekend is just for memorizing and developing a good grasp of the information. By this time you should have finished re-listening to lectures and writing notes. For both of my exams I woke up feeling confident about them. But when I took the test I felt like none of the important information I had studied was there, and I struggled to remember little details I knew I had studied but was not 100% sure  I remembered correctly. Talking about the test afterwards makes it all worse because everyone has different answers and they all have good arguments for each of them. It seems like any answer would be possible and the only definitive factor is what the professor says is right, because the professor says it's right. Even though, I felt awful after both exams, I did better than I expected for both, scoring in the high B range. The average was also in the high B range, but fortunately for me USF has a pass/fail policy and the average does not factor into my grade unless everyone has scored poorly.
         The day after an exam is my off day, and I use to catch up with life. Get everything in order and call everyone I haven't talked to in days. You just get one day though, because even though you just took a test you already have more information to study before it piles up. It is a stressful process, however, the nerd in all med students secretly enjoys what they are learning. But I would advise to anyone who is not passionate about medicine to stay away from it. It is the passion that keeps you going through all of it, knowing that this information could potentially save a patient's life someday. If you are still a pre-med, try to get yourself out of  a path in medicine as much as you can, and if you can't, then you know it's for you.

The White Coat Ceremony

    On August 17, 2012, 163 first year medical students of the largest incoming M.D. class ever at USF MCOM, received a white coat. It was a two-hour ceremony on a rainy afternoon. We still had class from 8am-12pm, but many students skipped to receive the family members that would attend the ceremony. My family is a 3-hour plane ride away, so they could not be present, but my best friend of 11 years now came to see me, so it was as if I really had family there after all. All the excitement and commotion usually present at graduations was there, except we were starting a journey instead of ending it. Dressed in our business-best, ready for the marathon of camera flashes that would come our way, we marched in the ballroom behind a man playing bag pipes, in our respective alphabetical order. We sat facing the crowd, with gleaming faces; in the melee it was hard to tell who was bursting more with pride, the students or the families.

    Dr. Stephen Klasko, CEO of USF Health and dean of the Morsani College of Medicine, proceeded to give a speech about the meaning of the white coat. Without the coat, he is a regular guy, but as soon as he puts it on, people look at him differently. They show respect and trust because he is representing something more than himself. Receiving the white coat marks the start of our professional life. It still blew my mind to think that the 163 students around me WOULD be doctors one day. It was a certainty and not a possibility anymore. 

        Dr. Brownlee, professor of medicine and 2012 recipient of the Leonard Tow Humanism in Medicine Award, spoke about the dangers the white coat can bring. Illusions of power that interfere with patient care and about the importance of taking the white coat off every once in a while to just be human.  Simple things like saying "I'm sorry" to a patient can be the most humanistic and hardest thing to do for a physician some times. Alicia Billington, a third year medical student at USF MCOM and president of the Student Council, spoke about humanism in her experiences as a student. She encountered a three-car crash on the highway once and stopped to help the victims while an ambulance arrived. At that point in her academic life, however, the most she could do was give CPR if a victim's heart stopped, and there was not much she could do without equipment to aid her. She spoke about how she sometimes felt she had been clinically right, but she still felt she had failed the patient. “Please don’t forget to smile and touch your patients. Don’t for forget to be human,” Alicia said. I surprisingly enjoyed each of the speeches. I expected them to be monotonous and boring but they held everyone's attention the entire time. l also loved how they emphasized the advantages and disadvantages of the white coat; like they're about to raise you on a pedestal, but they ask you to remember to step down and level with everyone else at the same time.

       Then the official coating began. Members of the faculty coated the students as we walked to the stage in groups of four. The coat had the school's seal on it, as well as a gold pin in the collar that read "Humanism in medicine". Theoretically, it should have had our names embroidered on them, but the order was not done on time and we had to return the coats after the ceremony was over.When everyone had been coated, the class was presented. The audience's exhilaration swelled our chests even more. We proceeded to pledge the Oath of Commitment, USF's modified version of the Oath of Hippocrates. In it vowed to practice medicine honorably and morally; to improve healthcare in our community; and to recognize when our abilities reach their limits, and seek assistance when that happens. We also made a commitment to life-long learning and respect of patient confidentiality.

       In a way, the White Coat Ceremony felt like a marriage ritual. Even though we get a coat instead of a ring, we still promise to practice it faithfully for as long as we shall live, and it still marks first day of the rest of our lives.

Short Video of Ceremony-Tampa Bay Times

Article by USF Health on WCC: http://hscweb3.hsc.usf.edu/blog/2012/08/18/a-commitment-to-humanity-in-medicine/#.UDPfQrGgvIQ.facebook