NoMoreBoringNotes Podcast: Recent Episodes
NoMore Boringnotes
In this episode, we will talk about the ways, we try to beat procrastination through deadlines, ego, and accountability devices. We will also discuss our upcoming Hour of Power sessions......
Revisions can make or break your rank. If you can revise quickly, frequently, and effectively, cracking NEET-PG would be a cakewalk. But for that, you'll have to avoid the mistake I am talking about in this episode.
I wish someone had told me that you'll never be able to complete a subject and this applies to everyone, even the toppers. So, study whatever you can and don't underestimate your preparation.
Listen to the episode if you are also putting off things for later even if you know that it's important. The strategy is called, Eat That Frog.
Reading something new, comes at the cost of you, missing out on something that you have already read. Listen to the episode carefully and don't fall into this trap.
In this episode, we will talk about, why you should avoid making decisions on your own. Why you should control your emotions and follow what your teacher has taught you.
In this episode, we'll talk about the three reasons, why your GT scores are stagnant and how you can improve them.
In this episode, we will talk about, what you should focus on while revising any subject and how to avoid wasting time on unimportant topics.
In this episode, I want to share with you my favorite mbbs books. These were my go-to books especially during the final year and I have read them multiple times even after my exams. In fact, most of the posts for our Instagram are from those books only.
If you have been following our articles, you might easily guess a few of them because we have been mentioning this time and again.
Before I start, here is a disclaimer. It's totally okay if you haven't read any one of these books. The only thing that matters is your understanding of the subjects. Books are just resources. These are just the resources which we followed and recommend.
So, lets begin.
So today I'll start with an incident that happened with us during our preparation. We used to study according to the schedule of TnD Bhatia coaching classes and we usually used to get a week or so to prepare a subject followed by its test and discussion. I remember we were preparing ENT when we got a notice in the middle of the week that there were some changes in the schedule and instead of Ent, the ophthalmology test will be there. Firstly we were like how would we prepare ophthalmology in just 3 days as we had assigned a full week for just ophthal. But then we started preparing for it thinking that we will cover as much as we can. Guess what, we completed opthal in about 2 and a half days and were also able to do a superficial revision of many topics.
So Why am I telling you all this? It is because I want you to understand the importance of time and that it is us who sets the limit for ourselves. Sometimes we overburden ourselves assigning a long subject just 5 days and sometimes we waste our time studying a short subject for a full week.
What should be our strategy now?
I know many of you are feeling lost right now. Some might have just started preparing. Some might have lost their rhythm. Some are depressed that they are not scoring well.
Have you ever thought, why, you are feeling so low?
Is it because YOU are not giving your best, YOU are running out of time, YOU are falling back on your schedule?
Or is it the feeling that OTHERS are getting ahead.
Because these are two different questions.
Let's talk about them both.
The book that I highly recommend everyone is SPARK. It's written by Dr. John Ratey who is a psychiatrist at Harvard. The book is about exercise and how it strengthens our mental muscles. Apart from all the physical benefits of exercise, there are many neurological benefits of exercise that even we as medical students and doctors don't know. And no, I am not talking about the endorphin rush that you get after exercise or using exercise as a stress buster. The author has described beautifully, the role of exercise in treating depression, ADHD, and chronic stress. How exercise balances our neurotransmitters. How exercise, with the help of a miracle molecule called Brain-Derived Neurotropic Factor (BDNF), prevents neuronal aging and promotes neuroplasticity which helps to improve our learning and memory. All and all, exercise is a one-stop-shop for almost every mental health issue that we all face during our studies.
In fact, one of the reasons for starting our blog was this book only. It has given us so many insights that we just had to share it with you all. That's why one of the first blogs that we posted was on exercise only back in 2018.
Most of you have been asking us, ways to study Medicine. We will try to cover this topic in different parts. For this episode, my focus is on the undergraduates especially the final year students who are or will attend their clinical postings.
Everyone knows that your patients are your best teachers. No matter how much Harrison you read, if you cannot apply those learning in your practice, it's of no use. In our interview with Dr. Tanya, she had also mentioned the importance of going to the wards and attending bedside lectures. Those were the things that actually helped her prepare for NEET-PG in such a short time. You can watch that video on our youtube channel.
So, to learn medicine properly, you MUST have good clinical skills. You should learn and practice all the basic examinations of all the systems including the general examination. You should learn to take a proper relevant history. Whenever you are talking to a patient or examining the patient, you must sound confident and make them believe that you know what you are doing to gain their trust.
How do you build that confidence?
I know, most of you are struggling with pharmacology. Here is my take on how you should study pharma for competitive exams. Studying so many drugs is definitely overwhelming. Almost everyone preparing for exams faces problems memorizing it. I remember that even after revising pharma 5-6 times, I struggled to memorize even the basic classification of different drugs and I am sure you all can relate to it.
When I was in the final year, our professor told us how a surgeon had amputated the wrong limb of a patient. He didn't care to cross-check where the pathology was and operated the patient in a hurry and as a result, faced negligence charges. He was also barred from the OT.
He told us this because he wanted to teach us the significance of WHO's surgical safety checklist.
The checklist has three parts. Sign in which is before the induction of anesthesia, time-out which is before an incision is made and finally Sign Out.
As the surgeries are getting complex day by day, performing so many steps in the correct order with maximum precision is extremely challenging. Another challenge is to reduce post-op morbidity and mortality as well.
With the adaptation of this Simple checklist, doctors were able to reduce the post-op complications drastically.
The pioneer of this Checklist was Dr. Atul Gawande who is a breast surgeon, writer, and public health researcher. I admire him a lot and in his book The Checklist Manifesto, he has written about the whole process of how this checklist was created, what were his inspirations, what all problems he faced and how can we adapt these simple checklists to organize our cluttered lives.
Today we will talk about a very common problem that you all face while creating flashcards, which is that the process of creating flashcards and then reviewing them takes a lot of time.
Firstly please understand that if you are used to handwriting your notes lets say you watch a video, write your notes, and then move to solve MCQs adding an extra step of also creating flashcards will definitely take time. You cannot skip any step in between. So, how can you cut short your time?