#4 🧠MedEd Mondays: Turn lecture time into revision fuel.
🙌Discover new study hacks and high-yield MedEd resources.
🔗 www.matt-barrett.com | 🧠Study Medicine Smarter and Unlock More Time
👋Hey, I’m Matt Barrett. You're receiving this email because you signed up to 🧠MedEd Mondays, a weekly newsletter to help medical students and doctors to study medicine smarter, not harder. Thanks for joining me! I hope you find value in this week’s post, whether that be by discovering a MedEd resource you didn’t know existed, finding a way to study more efficiently, or getting a hit of study motivation!
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Tis the season.
Hi guys! In case anyone was wondering from my last post how I got on last week (where I was low*-key nervy about moving onto the acute medicine wards) - I made it through my first week💪
But enough about me, you’ve got bigger fish to fry. We’re deep within exam season after all! I hope all of you are maintaining a healthy balance of studying and taking care of yourselves.
Either way, I wanted to share with you FOUR quick revision season tips…
1. Prioritise YOU first
Preparing for exams is similar to how athletes prepare to compete. Don’t be that persons who neglects their health for a few more moments of studying - I definitely fell into this trap as a medical student and realised later that it wasn’t worth it. Make sure you make time for planning and preparing meals, exercise, calling friends & family and being social.
2. Have a long term reward
Its always nice to have something to look forward to on the other side of a gruelling exam season. What have you got planned? Having something booked in the calendar that you’re genuinely excited for will help you push through.
3. Set short term rewards too
Have something to look forward to EVERY DAY! Reward yourself after your long revision sessions. That might be Netflix and chilling’ or taking nap in the afternoon. Whatever suits you!
4. Go Pomodoro style
As revision schedules begin to takeover your mind, it’ll help to keep focus by giving yourself plenty of small breaks. This is where Pomodoro comes in - Ive got a blog coming out about it next next week!
Now, for the new additions…
*okay, it was high-key.
🙌 Study Hack of the Week: How To Be More Productive During Lectures. (5 mins)
We’ve all been there. You’re 5 hours deep into a day of lectures. Your orbicularis occulii have never worked so hard to keep your eyelids from closing. Your lecturer seems blissfully unaware that they’re perfectly reciting word-for-word the text heavy slides they’ve bestown in front of you. It’s hard to concentrate and you just want to leave.
Lectures can feel like a time sink when you’re unengaged. Wouldn’t it be great if you could consistently make the most of your lecture time?
🔓 The MedEd Vault: High-yield MedEd resources you may never knew existed.
🔦This week’s resource in the spotlight is: Life in the Fast Lane (LITFL)
🔗Access here: https://lift.com/ecg-library/
Q: What’s pink and hard in the hands of an orthopaedic surgeon? A: An ECG!
ECGs are a numbers game. The more you see, the more you recognise the patterns. While we wait for clinical imaging algorithms to take these pink sheets out of our lives for good, you can train your brain to do the same using Life in the Fast Lane. Created by emergency physicians, it’s a brilliant resource for getting familiar with the pink stuff.
Pros:
A HUGE library of ECGs
An accompanying Facebook group/social media with a whole community of ECG fans discussing cardiac electrophysiology (what more could you want?) - https://www.facebook.com/Medical.Blog
Case-based approach to images allowing you to have an unprompted stab at the underlying diagnosis
A really nice differentials page for when youre sussing out ECGs in the wild: https://litfl.com/ecg-differential-diagnosis-ecg-library/
Also covers chest X-rays and ultrasound scans in a similar format.
Search by diagnosis in an A-Z directory: https://litfl.com/ecg-library/diagnosis/
Cons:
A huge library means a load of content that you DON’T need to see - a useful resource to understand ECGs but no need to go too niche or to cover all cases.
I like easy-to-navigate pages, so I’m not 100% keen on the websites UX.
👋Thats all for this week! See you in 10,080 minutes.