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  • The way information is taught in high school  differs from college, which differs from medical  

  • school. Here's what you need to know about how  teaching and learning styles vary between each  

  • stage in your training to become a future doctor. Dr. Jubbal, MedSchoolInsiders.com

  • High school learning is terribly inefficientand that's by design. Grade school is largely  

  • a form of day care for children and adolescents  while parents are gone to work. From early in  

  • the morning until mid afternoon, you're in schooland most of your time in school is spent in class  

  • being lectured to. Homework assignments often  feel like busy work, rather than genuine efforts  

  • to teach you something valuable, and certain  classes seem completely irrelevant altogether

  • Your schedule and curriculum are both structured  and regimented, leaving little room for electives  

  • or exploring your curiosity. Perhaps you have  optionality with which physical education,  

  • or PE class to take, or maybe some selection  with the type of history class you enroll in.  

  • If you're really lucky, perhaps you get the  opportunity for an automotive workshopping  

  • class, which I wish I had a chance to do. College is your first foray into adulthood,  

  • and for the first time in your life  independence is thrust upon you,  

  • both inside and outside of the classroomYour learning will be more self-directed and  

  • independent compared to high school. Compared to  high school, you'll spend much less time in class,  

  • and there will be many more distractions  tempting you away from your academics

  • Of all the stages in training, college offers the  most flexibility in what you actually study. The  

  • major you chose will dictate what range of courses  you must take over your four years. You will still  

  • have general education requirements, or GE's,  but compared to high school you have much more  

  • flexibility with which courses you take and your  day to day schedule. You can start early, late,  

  • and even have an extra day or two off per week. When I first started college, I hated waking up  

  • early so much that I actually signed up for  the engineering level calculus to fulfill  

  • my mathematics requirement rather than the  math course designed for life science majors.  

  • The former was much more difficult than  the latter, but my desire to sleep in  

  • was greater than the spread in difficulty. On the premed track, however, there is less  

  • flexibility, particularly in the first two yearsThere are certain medical school prerequisite  

  • courses you must take, including biologychemistry, physics, biochemistry, and so on.  

  • It's only after fulfilling your prerequisite  courses, in your latter two years of college,  

  • that you'll be able to explore your curiosity  and courses related to your chosen major

  • In terms of learning environment, it's primarily  large lecture halls with hundreds of students,  

  • at least at larger institutions. But if you attend  a smaller liberal arts college, you won't get lost  

  • in large auditoriums in the same way. Do note  that several of your classes, such as English,  

  • will generally be more intimate classroom sessions  of 20 or 30 students with active participation

  • Medical school is the largest departure  in learning style. Similar to high school,  

  • there is little flexibility in what you studyand you're set on a mostly fixed curriculum  

  • and learning path. And similar to college, it's  heavily self-directed and independent learning,  

  • but to an even further extent. Interestingly, one  of the most common strategies shared amongst top  

  • scoring medical students is that they applied  pressure with surgical precision to both the  

  • like and subscribe buttons on this video. In high school, you spend most of your time  

  • learning in the classroom, and a few hours  here and there on your own. In university,  

  • it shifts towards fewer hours in the classroom  and a larger proportion of work done on your own.  

  • Medical school magnifies this to the extremewhere the overwhelming majority of your  

  • learning and studying will be on your ownoutside the classroom. This is in addition  

  • to 2-6 hours of classroom learning per day. But it isn't just a traditional large lecture hall  

  • classroom. Because medical school is focused on  teaching you to become a competent and effective  

  • doctor, there are a variety of teaching modalities  that come into play. Your first two years,  

  • termed the preclinical years, are primarily  lecture based. Your latter two years,  

  • or the clinical years, are focused on  learning in the hospital or clinic. The  

  • learning styles in each stage are quite different. Your preclinical years will be spent primarily in  

  • the auditorium and small group classroom sessionsYou'll also have various labs to teach anatomy,  

  • histology, pathology, and relevant  skillsets for the hospital or clinic

  • Historically, medical school was primarily  classroom lecture-based. But in the last  

  • two decades, more and more medical schools  are transitioning to interactive forms of  

  • teaching to improve medical students' learning. One of the most common forms is PBL, or problem  

  • based learning. PBL, common in your preclinical  years, is where you meet in small groups of 6-10  

  • students twice per week. On the first day, you'll  be introduced to a case presentation. There's  

  • a hypothetical patient presenting with a certain  concern, and you'll ask questions to work them up.  

  • There's a physician facilitator in the room as  well to make sure the group doesn't get stuck  

  • or derailed. You'll assign various tasks  and responsibilities amongst yourselves,  

  • so that during the next session later that weekeach student will teach the others what they've  

  • learned. One student may focus on the differential  diagnosis, another on the disease pathophysiology,  

  • another discusses treatment, and so on. Team based learning, or TBL, is a hybrid  

  • between classroom and small group learningYou'll attend lecture in a large auditorium,  

  • but there will be several breaks throughout  the lecture to work through problems with  

  • a few other students. This type of teaching  style is less common at most medical schools

  • There will be other small group forms sprinkled  throughout medical school. At my medical school,  

  • we had a practice of medicine, or POM coursethat was a continuous thread over all 4 years.  

  • It covered the ethical side of practicing  medicine, to communication skills, to the  

  • different types of health insurance  models around the world and so on

  • I'm a huge proponent in the value ofproper medical school anatomy experience,  

  • even more so if you're considering something  surgical for residency. In the traditional  

  • medical school anatomy experience, you'll have  between 4 and 6 students assigned to a cadaver,  

  • and you'll spend most of your first year  dissecting and learning about all the  

  • organ systems. You'll get your hands dirtyliterally, and this is one of the best ways  

  • to have a true and deep understanding of human  anatomy. There's also a prosection, meaning a  

  • cadaver that's simultaneously being dissected in  stages by the instructors for students to view  

  • as a reference. After all, sometimes there are  anomalies in anatomy, or perhaps your anatomy team  

  • inadvertently caused damage to certain structures  on your own cadaver. Doing your own dissection  

  • in combination with viewing the prosection  allows you to get the best of both worlds

  • Some medical schools forgo a traditional anatomy  experience in favor of only prosections. At  

  • these programs, you don't do any dissections  yourselves, and simply view the cadaver that is  

  • prepared by the instructors. As a senior medical  student, you may get the opportunity to become an  

  • anatomy instructor, and I'm very glad I did. It's  rewarding to teach first year medical students,  

  • and also a great way to reinforce key anatomy  prior to starting a surgical residency

  • There are also small group lab sessions  for histology and pathology, whereby you're  

  • observing slides through a microscope of various  healthy and diseased tissues throughout the body.  

  • If you're color blind, like I am, then this will  likely be one of your least favorite classes

  • Medical school isn't just about learning  information, but also learning various skills.  

  • On my first day of medical school orientationwe learned how to draw blood on each other,  

  • which also served as an awesome ice  breaker. In both your preclinical years,  

  • you'll spend considerable time in small group  workshops learning various clinical skills.  

  • This includes everything from the basics of how to  use a stethoscope to learning physical exam skills  

  • or more nuanced techniques like performinglumbar puncture to test cerebrospinal fluid.  

  • For most of the physical exams, you'll practice  on each other, but for the male and female  

  • genital physical exams, you'll have a standardized  patient. As you progress to your clinical years,  

  • you'll focus on more advanced techniquessuch as the laparoscopic surgical techniques

  • To learn how to be most effective in patient  interaction, you'll do practice or group OSCE's,  

  • or Objective Structured Clinical Examinationswhereby you simulate a patient encounter with  

  • a standardized patient. It's completely normal  to feel nerves in your first several GOSCE's,  

  • as you're being watched through cameras by  an attending physician and some classmates,  

  • all of whom will give you feedbackOver time and with practice,  

  • this will become second nature  and any anxieties will vanish

  • During your clinical years, you'll be primarily  self-directed and spending most of your time in  

  • the hospital, clinic, or operating room. Learning  is less structured, and is primarily downstream  

  • of what patients you have on your serviceYou'll occasionally be asked to prepare  

  • presentations for the attending and residents  based on patient pathologies. For example,  

  • if a patient on your internal medicine service  has kidney pathology, you may be asked to prepare  

  • a simple 5 or 10 minute presentation on the types  of nephrotic syndrome, a form of kidney disorder

  • It's common to still attend small group sessions  once per week, but these are a relatively minor  

  • part in your learning. Based on your rotationyou may have skill workshops. For example,  

  • while on your surgery rotation, you'll have some  workshops focused on various surgical techniques,  

  • including suturing and knot tying. But if you've  been following either this or my personal channel,  

  • then you know I strongly advise students to  be practicing these techniques on their own  

  • before they get to their surgery rotationsOther examples include learning how to  

  • intubate a patient, place a central lineor perform a thoracentesis or paracentesis

  • In your fourth and final year of medical  school, you'll attend sub-internships,  

  • or audition rotations, whereby your expectations  and level of responsibility are elevated. I  

  • explain these further in another video, but with  regards to learning style, it's quite similar to  

  • your third year core clinical rotations. You may  be asked to present something more substantial,  

  • and rather than just your attending and a couple  residents, it may be at grand rounds in front  

  • of a few dozen attendings and residents. The  pressure is on but you'll be able to handle it

  • Despite the variety of different learning formatsit's interesting that medical schools don't place  

  • a heavy emphasis on learning how to learnThat's the main reason I created this YouTube  

  • channel - to help you understand how to study  better. And this becomes even more important  

  • since the overwhelming majority of your medical  school learning will be self-directed, outside  

  • of the classroom. To be the most successful, you  need to be focusing on active learning methods,  

  • leveraging the times in the day when you  are mentally fresh, and strategic with all  

  • aspects of your study environment, including  whether you study by yourself or with friends

  • If you'd like to learn more about how to study  better, check out my study strategies playlist,  

  • or this other video. Much loveand I'll see you guys there.

The way information is taught in high school  differs from college, which differs from medical  

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