I do a lot of reading. By necessity. In the past few minutes, I have had to look up Goodsall's rule, Gadolinium contrast use in pregnancy, and what Kocher won the Nobel prize for. This is not a joke; I was asked about each of these today, and I didn't know. Maybe if he had won the prize in the last century or so, I would have had a shot...
As a matter of pride, however, I am also trying to do a certain amount of non-academic reading. It somehow feels like a defeat to do 100% UpToDate reading over the course of a week. So I've been reading a little bit of George RR Martin - the guy popularized by HBOs 'Game of Thrones'. They're long books that are kind of like Lord of the Rings but with more realistic wound progression... and also boobs.
In any case, the whole thing makes me glad to live in a society that has no kings, indoor plumbing, and polymerase chain reaction syphilis detection. Don't take that shit for granted.
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What are you currently studying for? USMLE?
ReplyDeleteMedicine shelf. Or I was last week, anyway.
ReplyDeleteHave you done the USMLE already? If so any advice on the books/schedule/strategy? Cheers.
ReplyDeletePS. Site is fav'd, love med art ;)
Yeah, took Step One in June.
ReplyDeleteI would recommend working from First Aid and filling in any gaps from there as necessary. People tend to go overboard on the books, so I wouldn't go overboard before I actually started studying.
As far as actually studying goes, get yourself a Q-bank (I used USMLE World). I pretty much just took a block of random, timed questions everyday, moving up to two or three toward the end. After every block, I went through and wrote one line about the question in a notebook (I was probably less diligent toward the end when there were more questions to do). It takes a fair amount of time, but it really does help you remember.
It's no fun, but it's do-able, and it worked out pretty well for me. Good luck!