As a medical student, there’s nothing more important than setting yourself up for success. The best way to go about this is by knowing what to do and when to do it! To ensure you make it up there, Laura Turner, a health professional, and Dr.Mamoona Khokar, the Director of Clinical Curriculum at Osmosis, organized an exclusive Q&A webinar event that shed light on the three most important student components: study strategies, healthy habits, and mentors.
If you’ve been wondering how you can work these three things in your favor, this information will be impactful to you. For easy reading and understanding, we transformed the webinar into an easy-to-read FAQ-style article. Enjoy!
What is your study style and how do you identify it?
Medical learning involves a large volume of fast-paced information. Everything builds on each other and demands a high level of recall. Therefore, having a distinct strategy that will help you tackle your coursework is important.
Learning is the key component to being successful as a medical student. By synthesizing and retaining knowledge for the long term, you’ll know what to do in your studies and out in the field.
The good news is that medicine and science are two evidence-based subjects. Having a learning strategy will allow you to go through the most crucial parts of learning.
The reality is that no two learners are the same. There’s one who prefers to learn visually and the other orally. The visual learner will have a better understanding when they see e-concepts, while the oral learner will understand best when they hear these concepts.
Some verbal learners thrive when they read and write about concepts. Social learners thrive as part of group discussions and then move on to independent studying. Finally, some prefer learning alone.
No matter the category that you fall into, the most important thing to note is that your learning style changes with circumstances.
For instance, you may be good in Pathology and can study all by yourself and ace the test but may not be as good in Anatomy.
In the case of Anatomy, you may opt for a group discussion. There’s nothing wrong with this. We all have distinct styles and methods of going about the learning process.
What are learning personas?
Learning personas are fictional profiles that showcase the characteristics of a target audience.
Osmosis developed a quiz that categorizes learners into four learning personas, including:
- The cherry picker
- The completionist
- The coursework crusher
- The wheel spinner
To identify your learning persona, you will examine your study needs as well as the challenges that you face.
This Osmosis quiz will allow you to go through all important factors and components that go into your study time to determine your study persona. Once this is done, the quiz builder will construct an action study plan for your specific persona.
Just like with learning styles, your learning persona can change depending on your circumstances.
As such, finding out your study persona is not a one-and-done deal. It’s something that you’ll want to revisit throughout your entire educational journey. Identifying your learning style and study persona will make learning more effective.
What are the different learning strategies that exist?
There is an array of learning strategies that exist. They include:
The study cycle
This is previewing material before attending your classes, then reviewing and studying it afterward. The final component is to assess the effectiveness of that study strategy.
This is a significant part of the learning process as you’ll be able to break up or segment your learning into chunks or pieces. And that way you’ll end up learning more effectively.
Spaced repetition
This is the concept of reviewing and revisiting information at increasing intervals. By doing this, you’ll not forget what you study as easily as you would with a single revision session. In other words, spaced repetition improves retention.
First described in 1885 by a German psychologist, this study strategy works by keeping what you learn in your working memory’s storage.
If you don’t review it, then you are bound to forget the information. Then there will be a decrease in information retention. But if you continuously review information in spaced intervals, you’ll flatten the forgetting curve. Ultimately, this leads to better retention in the long term.
Spaced repetition is all about timing. The best time to review your material is just when you are starting to forget it. This will remind you and help you work towards retention.
However, it’s important to note that spaced repetition is not just about reading the same information over and over again. It’s best to mix up your learning activity to make the most of it.
For instance, if you were reading on Pathology, a couple of days later, test your knowledge on the subject matter by the use of quizzes and flashcards.
Prioritize the repetition of any questions that you get wrong. This will help perfect your knowledge of those questions.
It also helps in reducing your study time as you’ll not spend your time on irrelevant information, and you will focus on other things that matter.
Distributed learning
This is spacing out your learning into several short segments over days or weeks. While the working memory is different from person to person, it carries an average capacity of three to five things at once.
Therefore, breaking your big exam boards into smaller pieces that you will cover in two to three days will serve you better.
This way, you’ll enjoy better learning and retain more information. As medical learning is about long-term retention, practicing this kind of learning will help you get there.
If you choose distributed learning, remember to make a schedule and be specific and realistic. Include a break here and there, and you’ll increase your focus. Remember, your brain needs these breaks to process the information that you’re taking in.
Interleaving
Interleaving is all about mixing up the order of the topics that you are studying. According to scientific research, this learning strategy is proven to improve retention.
For instance, when you are studying, you are not thinking about how concepts are related to each other. Due to this, the information you gather will end up in your working memory and you’ll easily forget it.
But when you interleave, your brain will have to find ways and figure out how concepts are related. Therefore, it will retrieve information from your long-term memory as you’ll continuously make comparisons, links, and connections of the prior information you came across. This way, you’ll have a deeper understanding of the information that you study, and you’ll retain more of it in the long run.
Apart from remembering things for a longer period, interleaving increases your ability to apply the knowledge that you have quickly.
While interleaving sounds challenging and requires a high level of organization, it is a rewarding learning strategy.
Test-enhanced learning
This refers to answering questions as you study. It’s all about testing your knowledge of the subject matter. It is a great way to improve retention.
An incredible amount of research proves that testing your knowledge enhances learning. Because it’s an active learning strategy, it’s effective when compared to reading notes where you’ll be engaging with your educational materials passively.
When using test-enhanced learning, you’ll have to search through your memory every time you answer a question. So, the more you practice, the more you’ll recall during an exam. The more time you spend testing yourself, the easier the information will come to you in crucial moments.
The good news is that you can collect practice questions from the teacher or gather them online. Either way, take time to review your answers and get a better understanding using the feedback that you receive.
Doing this will also help you cultivate a better mindset towards examinations in general. You’ll know that exams are not just meant to access your learning; they also provide a learning opportunity.
Study strategies are all about figuring out how and what works best for you in each of your courses. It’s an opportunity to better your understanding and implement the strategies that will make you more comfortable in your learning environment.
Even better is the fact that the strategies lead to long-term outcomes that will come in handy throughout your medical career.
How do you make your study schedule?
Knowing how to make your study schedule is one of the most important parts of studying effectively. Having a schedule that is in tune with your study persona will make all the difference.
Know your least and most productive times during the day (or night) as it will guide you on when to sit down and have a serious study session.
You may be a morning reader who does well with a lot of silence. In this case, you’ll find waking up at dawn and taking a crack at your books will have the best effect. During this time, silence is often at a maximum because mostly everyone else is sleeping.
If you need a bit of background noise or soft music to study, that’s acceptable too. It’s best to go with what works well for you.
Remember not to indulge in activities that will increase your study time. For instance, if you answer texts and check your social media pages during your study time, you’ll be distracted. This will increase study time and you will most likely not remember everything that you read.
Self-discipline is key.
What are the foundational areas of success in school?
The four areas of foundational success include sleep, activity, nutrition, and social support.
Being a good student starts with your overall wellness. While you want to enjoy your study time, you don’t want to do it in a way that will cause burnout.
Needless to say, you cannot achieve much if you are not in a good state of health at all times. You’ll be more productive if you choose to incorporate healthy habits into your day.
Sleep
Sufficient sleep is important for your academic success because longer sleep duration and high-quality sleep are two things that are tied to high GPA levels.
If you receive less than six hours of sleep in two consecutive days, your performance will drastically decrease because insufficient sleep lowers your thinking and focus ability.
Getting enough sleep is important for you to recognize how you’re doing and to be able to successfully get through your material and to learn well. High-quality sleep is about sticking to a consistent sleeping schedule. While this may sound pretty obvious, a majority of people follow an inconsistent sleeping schedule. It’s important to go to bed and wake up at the same time daily. Enjoying a bit of relaxation time before bed is a great way to calm down and ease into your sleeping routine.
Also, avoid caffeine about six hours before bed so that you’ll not stay awake most of the night. The environment should be quiet and at a good temperature. Ideally, your sleeping area should be comfortable enough to easily lure you to sleep.
If you’re busy throughout the day, 10 to 15-minute naps should help you get the relaxation that you need.
Activity
Exercise is always a beneficial activity in our daily routines. It’s no exception in your student life. Some of the most beneficial exercises are the kind that you are willing to do regularly.
You’ll decide if aerobics is better than strength training or if you can fit both into your schedule.
Taking short breaks is an important activity that will improve your cognitive performance as you study. A 20-minute break is enough to help you recharge and focus.
After all, the brain requires a lot of energy to function. As such, overworking yourself without taking breaks will reduce your memory capacity and energy function.
Nutrition
Some foods and drinks are considered memory boosters. While the internet is full of diet advice, food preferences vary from person to person.
Berries and citrus fruits are scientifically known to improve cognitive functions. Nuts and walnuts also improve your thinking ability and reaction over time. They also help with your ability to retrieve information quickly.
Finally, fish is associated with better retention and higher performance.
Social Support and Mentorship
This is the support that you receive from the people around you, who are your parents, loved ones, friends, and peers.
When things get tough, which they occasionally do, you can count on them for emotional support. This support is instrumental throughout your studies. It’s the kind that will cheer you up when you don’t get the results that you anticipated in your exams or when you are not feeling well. It’s this love and support that will be your driving force.
It ties into your academic success because feeling alone in school will negatively impact your studies.
You are bound to perform better when you feel loved and supported by the important people in your life. In this case, you will concentrate on your studies knowing that all is well on the homefront.
If you’re looking to build a social support network, you have to pursue relationships with those around you and put effort into nurturing these relationships.
Stay in touch with your friends and family and express interest and appreciation. You’ll want to avoid competition as this will degrade the quality of your relationships.
You should also be ready to provide the support that you are seeking. In case you need support outside of your friends and loved ones, your school provides additional support resources, such as mentors and counselors.
In your medical studies, mentors will serve a wide variety of roles, such as cheerleaders, advocates, and supporters. They’ll always make a vast impact on your life. They not only help you define your goals but also cheer you on as you achieve them.
They will help you identify critical opportunities and show you how to find success in them. They open doors for you and point you in the right direction.
They are a guide in your decision making, and most importantly, they will help you adapt to your learning environment.
Your mentor could be a senior medical student, a professor, or an upperclassman. They could even be administrators.
Even better is the fact that you can have more than one mentor, and they can all serve different roles.
To qualify as a mentor, they should be interested and invested in your education, provide experience and resources, and be approachable and accessible to you.
Summary
As a medical student, being adaptable to your journey and learning from those around you is part of the journey.
It will take time and effort to figure this out. But with the right study habits and assistance from your social support network and mentors, you can get it all done.
Circumstances will change from time to time throughout your student life and career. Adapting to change is all that matters.
Osmosis is happy to be part of your learning experience. We pride ourselves in helping current and future physicians learn, retain, and thrive.
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Do you have any questions about your learning journey? Reach out to Osmosis.com
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