my study week #4 feat. A4 posters

Medicine is a course that requires you to know a little about a lot - and when I say a lot, I mean a lot. How I've managed to make it through this far, and with decent marks too, is a complete mystery to me. I guess it definitely helps that I'm super interested in everything I learn about and that this is something I've wanted to do for pretty much my whole adult life.

Nevertheless, I still had to use different tools and ways to make things go into my brain. Here are two examples of things I did this year to try and remember things. I would definitely advise categorising things in your mind - so in the picture below, you can see that I've drawn a diagram to help with the gross anatomy of the liver/biliary system and jaundice. I've split up the causes of jaundice into pre-hepatic, hepatic and post-hepatic; and this definitely helps when relating them to the results of liver function tests.

Another huge topic were heart murmurs; there are quite a number of them and differentiating between them can get confusing, especially under pressure. I tried to help my brain with that by making a flow chart but I wasn't happy with the original version (not shown). Therefore, I redesigned it and added some colour coding - you can see this in the next picture. Although I haven't noted down every single heart murmur that exists, this is a start to remembering all the differentiating features of the most common ones.

These are just two ways I try and memorise huge chunks of information - there are many more, such as making flashcards and posters to name a few. The most important thing is to study in a way that works for you :)