#2 🧠MedEd Mondays: Eliminating boring ward rounds
🙌Discover new study hacks and high-yield MedEd resources.
🔗 www.matt-barrett.com | 🧠 Study Medicine Smarter and Unlock More Time
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Eliminating boring ward rounds
Finally 🙌… Its been some time in the making but here we have it - my first official post! It’s taken so long, mainly because juggling Foundation Year 1 alongside anything is really difficult! We got there though 👏 Welcome to my blog.
Why am I here? Well, I’m big on medical education. Through medical school I consistently performed well and I learned a tonne of effective (and not so effective) study habits along the way. I learned a lot on how to study efficiently and I was able to study in such a way that free’d up a lot of time to invest elsewhere. I chose to invest that in research, society work and in forming a medical education startup. You can read all about that stuff here if you’re interested.
After a solid year of speaking to medical students from all stages, I’ve found that two things are for sure:
1) Medical students often find difficulty in HOW to study.
Isn’t it interesting how med school attracts the brightest in the county who perform similarly at GCSEs and A levels, yet when it comes to medical school, there’s a huge disparity in academic performance.
2) Medical students often find difficulty in WHAT to study
Some have the privilege of having access to past papers or senior students with the know-how on what to study, but for many, WHAT to study may not be clear cut. Of course, this differs between medical schools and your preferred learning style but ultimately, with more and more resources online, there may very well be content that you’ll find immensely valuable out there… you just haven’t discovered it yet.
With so much burnout in medical school and the huge pressures of balancing med school around CV work (and squeezing in a social life somewhere), wouldn’t it be better if you could study in a way that free’d up MORE time?
I’ve created 🧠MedEd Mondays in an attempt to help you to study medicine smarter, not harder. Its the mantra I live and work by and I hope it helps you to unlock more time to invest how you please!
Let’s get right into it ✌️
🙌 Study Hack of the Week: How to STOP Ward Rounds Wasting Your Time (5 mins)
Q: What's a shifting dullness?
A: Medical students on a ward round
Whilst you finish cringing with me, you'll likely agree that you've had more than your fair share of joining slow-paced or un-engaging ward rounds during hospital placements. Ward rounds can be a real time sink, OR you could turn them into value… here’s how.
🔓 The MedEd Vault: High-yield MedEd resources you may never knew existed.
🔦This week’s resource in the spotlight is: PassMedicine
🔗Join here: https://passmedicine.com/
Of course I’d dedicate my very first MedEd recommendation to Passmedicine! It’s my number one recommended resource for those studying in the UK. Here’s why:
Pros:
The most comprehensive medical/surgical question bank with 1000s of questions aimed at medical students
Fully tailored to national guidelines and updated regularly by practicing clinicians
An active community - the comments section is great for answer clarification, debate, banter and motivation.
Kendra Wong (if you know, you know)
Replicate exam conditions under pressure
Powerful metrics to track your progress
Cheaply priced
Cons:
Sometimes used too competitively to compare rankings against other students - if you’re getting streaks of wrong answers, you’re growing, not failing. There are biases in the ranking metrics that will make you rank lower than those who have just joined or refreshed their questions - only compare yourself to yourself yesterday.
🧠Study Medicine Smarter, Not Harder. For more study hacks and a whole list of high-yield MedEd content that you may never knew existed, head over to www.matt-barrett.com | WHAT to study and HOW to study medicine, all in one place.
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