MedStudy 👩🏽‍⚕️

Third Year Medical Student Originals | Pre-Med Advice

[desultory-suggestions]

Hello, lovelies! I’ve gotten a couple of asks about studying so I decided to condense them into one post for you guys! I’m trying to hit a bunch of different topics so if you need an even more specific post you can send an ask! Without any further ado, have some tips! My studyblr is @spacey-scholar​

Prep

First, you always need a good base for your day! Especially if you’re studying a lot.

Make a good full breakfast! Ex. Eggs and Toast, Smoothie and fruit, Pancakes and a cup of juice. 

How’s your hygiene? Do you need to shower, brush your teeth, wash your face, condition your hair? Do it! You’ll be distracted if you feel messy!

Get dressed like it’s a normal day. Staying in PJ’s is okay! But being ready for the day seriously helps focus!

Likewise, your space should be clean. A clean space is a clean mind! Remove dishes, trash, scrap paper, and extra items. Wide down your desk, organize your pens and books. Your space should feel like your space!

Now make a list of what you need to get done! What needs to be done Now, what needs to be done Soon, and what needs to be done Later? 

Order your list how you want your day to go, and don’t put super-tough subjects back to back, or subjects that are similar exercises i.e. reading thirty pages of two different books back to back is no fun.

The Studying

It’s important to buckle down with No Distractions! If you find yourself distracted put your phone away! If you need your phone, put it on Do Not Disturb until you’re done. I also do this at night for better sleep. 

Pick the best technique for you, Pomodoro, reward-based, group studying, etc.

Play music but only if it will not distract you! If you sing along or daydream it’s the wrong music! Classical, Lo-fi, and White noise are all good! My Spotify Here has some good ones.

Use a nice journal (I don’t mean expensive!) and pens/pencils you enjoy using. I like to have a specific journal and color dedicated to each subject. 

Take notes on recorded lectures and classes, if you’re doing online classes right now try to screen record or record the audio! That way if you space out you can play it later and take notes, and you can absorb the lesson better instead of being distracted.

Don’t worry about your notes, stationary, pictures, being beautiful and your grades being perfect. Life doesn’t always look the way it does on Instagram. And the people who spend hours trying to get a good photo of their coffee are not studying! 

Use flashcards! Quizlet is good if you need premade ones! If you can save up and buy them, Barrons AP Flash Cards are the best in my opinion. Very clean, not too long, very durable, and cover all subjects.

Feeling Distracted 

If you catch yourself drifting off and getting into your head, get up and take a quick walk, stretch, or energizer. 

It’s okay if this happens, don’t guilt yourself! practice affirmation. The best and smartest still get distracted. 

If you are drifting, why? Are you hungry? Tired? Thirsty? Bored? Get a snack and some water, take a break and rest, find a way to make your studying more enjoyable. 

Remember that Motivation and Discipline are different things. Sometimes we just won’t be motivated, we won’t want to do it and it will be rather frustrating. But the cure to this is not shaming its discipline. Remind yourself “This may be hard, and I may not want to do this, but I want to reach my goals and If this is what It takes I will make it happen. 

Always do just one more page of you’re tired. One at a time and oh you did it! Maybe just one more? One more? Eh, one more just to finish the train of thought, Oh just- I’m done? Nice!

If you really can’t focus just move on and come back to this subject, you can always ask for help.

Supplementary Things

There are so many apps you can use to study, for free! My favorites are Tide, Quizlet, Focus Keeper, Forest, Flora, Egenda, SpanishDict, Photomath, and Kahn Academy. 

You can also join a study group! You may know one, but if you don’t, there are a lot of online ones! I’m in a study Discord and have been for a while! it helps a lot and motivates me to finish my work!

You can make a studyblr, but don’t do it just for the aesthetics! It’s about studying, and sometimes that gets messy! Sometimes we fail a test, we spill our tea on our notes, we cry because we don’t understand the formula. That’s the part you don’t see!

Having cute stationery can really help, as well as nice organizers and decorations for your space! I don’t have much money so I get a lot of stuff on Amazon or FB Marketplace.

Health

Remember that no matter what you are good enough. It’s okay if you fail, it’s okay if you struggle.

It’s also okay if your path doesn’t go the way you expected! Maybe you go to a different school than expected! Or choose a trade instead! Maybe you take a gap year! Maybe your passion changes! Maybe it changes six times!

Your health is always more important than your school. If you are in pain, mentally or physically, if you are anxious, exhausted, burnt out, talk to your teachers about it! You matter more than a grade.

Your best is good enough! And your best doesn’t look the same as someone else’s best! Don’t compare!

Now go get out there and study!

[somerabbitholes]

Jan 1 // started the year with a fun, productive morning doing some fantasy research

[resuscitationist]

Blunt Aortic Injury - Does Pan-scan Help? Jan 07, 2020 01:00 am Written by Clay Smith

Spoon Feed Blunt traumatic aortic injury is extremely rare and often has associated chest injuries. High-energy mechanism + wide mediastinum had poor sensitivity. The NEXUS Chest CT rule was 100% sensitive.

Why does this matter? Major injury prevalence has remained constant, while CT use for trauma has doubled. Often, the rationale for scanning the chest is to avoid missing aortic injury. Are all these CT scans helping patients?

Can we reduce chest scans? This was a pre-planned analysis of NEXUS Chest, with 24,010 patients. Of these, 0.17% (just 42 patients) had aortic injury. Of patients with aortic injury, 79% had associated thoracic injury, such as rib fractures, pneumothorax, hemothorax or pulmonary contusion. In fact, isolated aortic injury occurred in only 0.03% (9/24,010). No patients died of their aortic injuries, rather from brain injury. Over half had surgery, all endovascular repair. Patients with aortic injury on CT had similar mortality but longer length of stay. The classic way to screen for aortic injury - high-energy mechanism* + widened mediastinum on CXR - had just 76% sensitivity. However, the NEXUS Chest CT rule was 100% sensitive.

*High-energy mechanism = fall > 20 feet, MVC > 40 miles per hour, or pedestrian struck by motorized vehicle

Source Blunt Traumatic Aortic Injury in the Pan-scan Era. Acad Emerg Med. 2019 Dec 7. doi: 10.1111/acem.13900.

#trauma #thoracicinjury #NEXUS #radiology (at Trauma) https://www.instagram.com/p/B7Chg5hBj-l/?igshid=3s0f6gaakgxm

[studyingatsunrise]

Savouring the quiet moments 🌱

[weststudies-deactivated20210622]

10.06.18 Love Island is back on tonight which can mean only one thing: I’m sacrificing my biology gcse to see how the villa handles our resident 6’5 snake and how twitter handles Eyal’s cock up :) (I’m getting a 3 lmao)

[milkywaychronicles-deactivated2]

• december 10, 2019 •

finals season is upon us! here are some pictures of my chem notes (i’m honestly learning so much in this class and it’s an exhilarating experience). i am honestly so thankful for the wonderful friends and TAs who have helped me so much my first semester, and i’m hoping i can do well on my finals next week! good luck to everyone else who is preparing for finals- we got this! ✨

[lewistrationss]

22•11•19

[winntir]

No one:

Cats when they love someone:

[studylikeknope]

important reminder

the truth behind all the ‘’aesthetic’’ studying

i took this after studying for 6 hours, i was exhausted and couldn’t wait to go to bed

your desk will get messy, your notes will get messy, your brain will get messy

you don’t have to be orderly all the time

don’t let yourself be fooled by all the neat photos posted on here

[studycris]

this sounds familiar to me

[studyblr]

study tip: don‘t think about studying as something you need to do. that implies it’s some tedious process, something you can’t really enjoy, just another task ruining your day. rather, try to enjoy the process. think of yourself as someone who loves the subject, who loves studying for the sake of learning. you’re someone for whom studying comes easily, it’s just another good part of your day. if you change your identity and sense of self from someone who struggles with studying or with a particular task, it will be much easier to get done, as we always strive to stay consistent with who we think we are. think of yourself as a productive person, and it’s much easier to act like a productive person would.

[med-study]

[med-student-97]

Gender

Today, a 17 year old girl presented with the chief complaint of primary amenorrhea (never had her period). Her history, clinical findings and investigations were all quite insignificant. The doctor then sent for karyotyping and it turned out that she had XY chromosome (the male chromosome) instead of XX, which meant that she was technically male. She had what is known as Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome; which means that even though her body produced male hormones like testosterone, her body wasn’t able to react to the hormones, so in the absence of androgens, estrogen acted to create the female characteristics of the patient.

She was given a female name and raised as a girl. For 17 years, there wasn’t any doubt about her gender. But now, it turns out that genetically speaking, she’s actually a boy. This made me think about how gender is just a social construct. She would’ve had a boy name with “boy characters” if only she didn’t have this syndrome. But instead, she is just like any other teen girl with long hair and pretty nails. I don’t think she has been told of her diagnosis yet, as she’s under 18 and her parents are responsible for her but I hope she can handle it when she actually finds out the truth.

[linetteyde]

07/09/2019 - Todays studyspot ☕️ We just started our gastroenterology module, and this week was all about the liver 📚

[med-student-97]

Suturing is so much fun😍

[nprfreshair]

“The emptiest feeling that you get is at the transplant time when they take the heart out and you look into their chest cavity where something should be and it isn’t there. And that is just a feeling you never get over: just seeing that empty chest cavity. And then when the new heart goes in, it needs a moment of reflection, because somebody else gave up that heart for this person to get it. So there’s two lives on line minimally. So it is a very, very moving experience. It’s one that never goes away.”

— Dr. Henry Jay Przybylo, anesthesiologist and author of Counting Backwards

[studyblrsophie]

I spent my entire school career afraid of being wrong because I was taught that to make a mistake was embarrassing. Now I’ve discovered that making a mistake just means you are one step closer to the right answer, and everyday I have to work to shake the mindset that a single wrong answer equals failure.

[mcatmemoranda]

I didn’t know what was meant by “triangle of the shoulder,” but I guessed it was either the axillary nerve or the circumflex scapular artery. It was the latter.

The circumflex scapular artery is present within the triangular space of the shoulder. The triangular space of the shoulder is bordered by the teres minor, the teres major, and the long head of the triceps. The teres minor originates from the lateral borders of the scapula, inserts on the inferior portion of the greater tuberosity, is innervated by the axillary nerve (C5, 6), and is responsible for external rotation and stability of the shoulder. The teres major originates from the inferior angle of the scapula, inserts on the humerus at the intertubercular groove, is innervated by the lower subscapular nerve (C5, 6), and is responsible for internal rotation and adduction of the arm. The long head of the triceps originates on the infraglenoid tubercle, inserts on the olecranon, is innervated by the radial nerve (C5-T1), and is responsible for extending the elbow.

The circumflex scapular artery originates from subscapular artery, which branches from the third section of the axillary artery prior to the lower border of the teres minor, before the axillary artery becomes the brachial artery. Two arteries originate from the subscapular artery: the circumflex scapular artery, which runs posteriorly, and the thoracodorsal artery, which runs inferiorly along with the thoracodorsal nerve. The circumflex scapular artery is an important component of the scapular arterial anastomosis.

Too many shapes!

Bottom Line: The circumflex scapular artery is present within the triangular space of the shoulder.

COMBANK Insight: It is important to understand the 3 anatomical spaces of the shoulder: the triangular space, the triangular interval, and the quadrangular space.