Note-taking for medicine

[qwdfbn1996]

Just wanted to know what people consider are some effective ways of note-taking in medical school, and how people condense and memorise the piles of content. Curious to know what worked and what didn't. Thanks guys

[Quantum44]

It depends a bit on how your course is structured. If it is more focused on learning content through CBL/PBL, then you should base all your notes around each case. I have found I get confused if I separate all the various subjects such as anatomy, physiology, pathology, pharmacology etc. If it is more based around learning from lectures then you should write notes for each lecture and then condense them into a more refined and useful form for when exams come around. In general, understanding is a lot more important than memorisation, so you don’t always have to write notes if you don’t feel comfortable. It is also useful to focus on high yield information, since if you learn everything indiscriminately then you will burn out very quickly.

One exception to the understanding vs memorisation rule is anatomy. As far as I’m concerned, there really isn’t much understanding involved in anatomy. You just have to grind through it. I’d recommend using tools such as Anki for this, as you just want to get it inside your head through whatever means necessary.