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How to Study Effectively: Powering Up Your Study Habits

In TipsForEMExams by Devika SinghLeave a Comment

Kuldeep is a 29 yo medical student who has been studying daily but can’t seem to keep up with the content. His friends seem to be scoring higher than him on tests. How can Kuldeep add some new habits and learn how to study more effectively? When it comes to studying, we are often poor judges of when we are learning well and when we are not. Evidence shows that information sticks better …

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Tiny Tips: Altered Mental Status

In Medical Concepts, Tiny Tips by Brent Thoma6 Comments

Altered mental status is a frequent presentation with a very broad differential. Having a solid approach helps provide structure to the workup of a difficult group of patients. IS IT MEAT is a common mnemonic for this presentation and the best one that I have come across (thanks to Nadim Lalani from ermentor.com for teaching it to me and George Farjou for the quick comments to improve it). Not only do the letters have fairly intuitive …

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AnkiEM Evolution – Flashcard Exchange & Flashcards Deluxe

In Knowledge Translation by Brent Thoma6 Comments

For the background on this project check out my post The AnkiEM Project. Basically, when I started making cards to review for my board exams I knew that I wanted to use a spaced-repetition flashcard tool (thanks to Chris Nickson‘s from Life in the Fast Lane for exposing me to this concept) and Anki seemed like the best bet. However, as I collected feedback from Eve Purdy, Andrew Tagg, Joshua Power and Reuben Strayer I began to consider other alternatives. Specifically, I agreed with Joshua Power that it would …

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The AnkiEM Project

In Knowledge Translation by Brent Thoma16 Comments

Inspired jointly by Reuben Strayer‘s catalog of EMCards on Emergency Medicine Updates and Chris Nickson‘s post at Life in the Fast Lane on spaced repetition, I will be trialing a combination of these two ideas using Anki flashcard software to create the AnkiEM Project. Dr. Strayer‘s strategy for studying for his board exam was to summarize Rosen’s Emergency Medicine onto flash cards. In the spirit of FOAM, he then scanned all 1412 cards onto his EM Updates site and made them freely available. If you haven’t already checked them out …