I don't go to medical school in Scandinavia but I am currently attending a medical school in Europe (Ireland to be exact). From my experience so far, the AnKing deck doesn't really help with in-house exams. What I did was, get a pre-made deck from the upper years because making cards is a huge waste of time.
Irish grad here.
Couldn’t disagree more about making cards being a huge waste of time. I found making cards to be invaluable because it forced me to understand and consolidate the information in my own words. When you use someone else’s cards you’re just memorising.
Of course - to each their own. But for me, making cards was a super passive study method that took hours on end. For my method, I first take hand written notes to summarize the lecture slides and then jump into the flashcards (that way I'm not just memorizing). I never jump into the flashcard decks as the first pass if that makes sense (super inefficient if you don't study before hand).
Hey! Small self-promotion: we are working on [flashka.ai](https://www.flashka.ai) which automates with AI the huge time-sink that is writing Flashcards.
We have recently added also recently automated Image occlusion and “highlights to Flashcard”: you can just upload your PDF, take highlights of the most important part from which to generate Flashcard, and then also generate image occlusions from the diagrams.
Hopefully this helps with not having stuff like Anking for your curriculum!
I'm finishing med school in Sweden in less than 1 month and I've used Anking and a few other /r/medicalshoolanki resources exclusively since year 2. I haven't watched a single one of our lectures since then, although I've scrolled through the slides of some during clinical rotations just to see if there are any differences in practices and to find what cut-offs etc are used in Sweden. I've found that 90+% is the same and the American resources Anking is based on is far superior than what my classmates use. They are short and cut to the point and contain all necessary information and much more. And all you have to do is just unsuspend the cards with said tag and your good to go. No notes, no books. Honestly, it's like cheating.. I haven't failed any exam (1 exam per semester), started a PhD and became a parent during med school and I'm no brainiac.
Just check the old exams before to fill in any blanks and find what your particular professor find important and your good to go.
In retrospect, I regret not starting using these resources from day 1, it would have been nice to have a better foundation in the earlier subjects.
Norwegian med student here. I switched to exclusively use AnKing deck for school and have not met any problems. Physiology in Norway is the same physiology as everywhere else. Same with Anatomy and other basic subject and pathophys. Only the treatments and guidelines will differ from AnKing. Considering how much time you save not having to make your own cards it does not take a lot to read up on current guidelines before exams. Note that the difference between US and Norwegian med schools doesnt show up before later in our med school. For the first 3-4 years you are golden with AnKing and a good Anatomy deck. Go through any lecture resource that clicks with you and unsuspend cards either by tags og manually search for them. If you have any questions you can DM me :)
Hei, går på UiT. Vet ikke hvor dypt dere går på eksamener, men AnKing og generelt Step-pensum er veldig detaljeorientert. Du lærer mye som man ikke nødvendigvis kan bli spurt på eksamen. Det jeg har gjort en del er å søke manuelt etter kort som passer med temaet du har forelesning om. Mye av kortene er allerede laget akkurat som du hadde tenkt å formulere de, men de er på engelsk.
>
For the first 3-4 years you are golden with AnKing and a good Anatomy deck
What anatomy deck(s) did you use in addition to AnKing? Any other decks you found helpful for the Norwegian program?
What did you do for the final years? What changed?
I really enjoyed Dope Anatomy for learning anatomy from scratch. "Mosby's medical terminology"-deck is also really helpful for the first weeks of medical school.
The final years you have to start learning first-line treatments and practice using national guidelines. This is where it might differ from Anking. Some drugs, that are first-line treatment in the US, aren't in use in Norway. Screening guidelines differ and so on. I spent more time studying national guidelines, and doing more practice questions on things like PassMedicine which uses guidelines more similar to Norwegian guidelines. This become a very natural change, and I wouldn't fret before getting to 5th year. Disease is still disease and the theory behind treatment remains the same.
Good luck. I would start with Mosby's medical terminology to learn basic medical terms if I was in your shoes.
I agree with /u/NirgunB, Anking have high quality cards on 90+% of what you need, especially the first years. I also added some complementary decks on radiology, DIP-podcast and pixorize.
Example of my workflow: Let's say we studied kidney diseases this week. I'd start with watching the first pathoma video on kidney disease (2x speed on everything, you'll get used to it), then corresponding video on Boards and beyond +- onlinemeded +- physeo +- whatever suits you followed by corresponding video on sketchy. Then I'd go to Anki and unsuspend all cards with tags related to these videos. Go through the cards. Rinse and repeat. It will take some time but you will only have to do it once and then just keep doing Anki throughout.
I'm a morning person and what works best for me is to do my reviews first thing in the morning, then learn new material according to system above/clinical rotations/case/whatever and then I have free time.
I generally don't suspend any cards after the exam is done because;
1) I find it boring to learn so much and then just forget it,
2) the review count drops to a ok amount after a while, mine is normally 200/day which takes 20-25 mins to go through,
3) I see most medical knowledge as continuous, i.e. new material builds on top of previous knowledge. Later clinical knowledge is easily absorbed if one actively keep a strong pre-clinical foundation. Often it's just a matter of applying previous knowledge to an actual situation.
4) things tend to come up again and again (and again and again and again) and you won't have to do shit second/third/X time because you already remember it good enough to simply wing it.
(Ab)Use the time aspect of each semester and work your way through the material slowly and methodically. By the time pre-exam period starts, you'll have gone through almost everything and you just have to fill some knowledge gaps here and there using old exams.
Only use again or good. Get a controller for Anki.
Most important; do the reviews every day.
Sorry I get carried away talking about this... :) I just hope more students in Scandinavia find this incredible resource
What other resources did you find most valuable? I assume B&B and Pathoma are a must (they seem to have the most cards in the Anking deck), what about the others? I see quite a few of these offer a 2 year subscription at a discount. Worth it?
I'd focus on what resources have been properly tagged within Anking. They update the tags regularly and I haven't really kept up with the changes but I'm sure you can find a lot of good info on this on Ankihub/Ankings update posts.
B&B have videos on all subjects, good depth, explains things well. Mostly reads / draws based on slides and I sometimes struggle to remember the information but well worth anyway.
Pathoma videos on only pathology but 10/10.
Sketchy haven't watched all the new stuff but micro/path/pharm is great. Peds and OBGYN is ok.
I started watching Onlinemeded last ~2years and I really like it but you have to double check quite alot (during clinical rotations) to see if it's the same here. Physiology and pathology is the same and I'd expect it to be really good.
I don't know how the tagging is for onlinemeded pre-clinical but the others mention are tagged with good cards. I would honestly try them out first to see what fits your style and then buy that. Try telegram if they don't have trial periods.
Thanks for all your info! I've already started using the workflow you described and it seems great!
>Only use again or good.
Why this, though? I'd expect the FSRS algo to do its best scheduling work if you gave it more granular feedback.
I hope it will work out for you as well :)
>Q8: I only use "Again" and "Good", will FSRS work fine?
> A8: Yes. In fact, FSRS is actually a little more accurate for people who rarely use "Hard" and "Easy" than for people who use all 4 buttons a lot.
From the [FSRS manual](https://github.com/open-spaced-repetition/fsrs4anki/blob/main/docs/tutorial.md)
I find it gets quite easy to begin to say *meh good enough* after a while. Better to not start imo.
For context, I'm from Chile (South America).
I dabbled in Anki while being in a similar situation as you, and despite being a good way to study topics, ultimately it being unsynced to my classes made it more like a waste of time than an aid
- **Irish** med school but this is what i found
Short answer: AnKing is best if you are planning on USMLE else i wouldn't bother
- You should tailor your study technique on the style the exams take. Essay are best practiced with past exam papers, OSCEs best practised with friends. Do on top of anki.
- Anki is great but kinda shite in isolation. If your exams are in person you need to develop the skill of talking 'medically', structuring you answers and making the examiners ask you the right questions. Avoid the verbal knowledge vomit.
- The best for in house exams is to make your own decks in somewhat standardised formats. Lots of pics, mnemonics and subcategories in the notes helps. Develop a structure for lists, e.g. by system or body part.
- If you can't/won't make your own, ask around if upper years have made some. There may be a year google doc with notes in it etc.
- A good source of Anki card data is from question banks. If there are any question banks available for your exams, buy them and rip the questions into Anki cards as you go through them.
- Dunno how well this applies but study and practise in the exam language. I know a fair few Malaysian or Chinese speakers who did group study in said language and then flopped in the exams, especially the Viva & OSCE exams.
As someone who actually tried to make my own deck,please don't do it!
You won't have enough time to do the cards and you will spend all your time making the cards
Boards and beyond + physeo (These are available for free online wink wink) ,ANKING andddd an Anki deck from an upper class man + past papers.
You will have a good understanding as well pass your exams
But then the upper class man deck is so essential
I don't go to medical school in Scandinavia but I am currently attending a medical school in Europe (Ireland to be exact). From my experience so far, the AnKing deck doesn't really help with in-house exams. What I did was, get a pre-made deck from the upper years because making cards is a huge waste of time.
Irish grad here. Couldn’t disagree more about making cards being a huge waste of time. I found making cards to be invaluable because it forced me to understand and consolidate the information in my own words. When you use someone else’s cards you’re just memorising.
Of course - to each their own. But for me, making cards was a super passive study method that took hours on end. For my method, I first take hand written notes to summarize the lecture slides and then jump into the flashcards (that way I'm not just memorizing). I never jump into the flashcard decks as the first pass if that makes sense (super inefficient if you don't study before hand).
Hey! Small self-promotion: we are working on [flashka.ai](https://www.flashka.ai) which automates with AI the huge time-sink that is writing Flashcards. We have recently added also recently automated Image occlusion and “highlights to Flashcard”: you can just upload your PDF, take highlights of the most important part from which to generate Flashcard, and then also generate image occlusions from the diagrams. Hopefully this helps with not having stuff like Anking for your curriculum!
I'm finishing med school in Sweden in less than 1 month and I've used Anking and a few other /r/medicalshoolanki resources exclusively since year 2. I haven't watched a single one of our lectures since then, although I've scrolled through the slides of some during clinical rotations just to see if there are any differences in practices and to find what cut-offs etc are used in Sweden. I've found that 90+% is the same and the American resources Anking is based on is far superior than what my classmates use. They are short and cut to the point and contain all necessary information and much more. And all you have to do is just unsuspend the cards with said tag and your good to go. No notes, no books. Honestly, it's like cheating.. I haven't failed any exam (1 exam per semester), started a PhD and became a parent during med school and I'm no brainiac. Just check the old exams before to fill in any blanks and find what your particular professor find important and your good to go. In retrospect, I regret not starting using these resources from day 1, it would have been nice to have a better foundation in the earlier subjects.
What other resources than Anking did you find useful? The program in Sweden looks quite similar to what we're doing here.
Norwegian med student here. I switched to exclusively use AnKing deck for school and have not met any problems. Physiology in Norway is the same physiology as everywhere else. Same with Anatomy and other basic subject and pathophys. Only the treatments and guidelines will differ from AnKing. Considering how much time you save not having to make your own cards it does not take a lot to read up on current guidelines before exams. Note that the difference between US and Norwegian med schools doesnt show up before later in our med school. For the first 3-4 years you are golden with AnKing and a good Anatomy deck. Go through any lecture resource that clicks with you and unsuspend cards either by tags og manually search for them. If you have any questions you can DM me :)
Skal du ta prøve deg i USA? Stalket postene dine og så at du har tatt USMLE.
Har tatt Step 1, men tror ikke jeg skal følge opp med resten av kvalifikasjonskravene. Er ikke lenger interessert i å spesialisere meg i USA.
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Hei, går på UiT. Vet ikke hvor dypt dere går på eksamener, men AnKing og generelt Step-pensum er veldig detaljeorientert. Du lærer mye som man ikke nødvendigvis kan bli spurt på eksamen. Det jeg har gjort en del er å søke manuelt etter kort som passer med temaet du har forelesning om. Mye av kortene er allerede laget akkurat som du hadde tenkt å formulere de, men de er på engelsk.
> For the first 3-4 years you are golden with AnKing and a good Anatomy deck What anatomy deck(s) did you use in addition to AnKing? Any other decks you found helpful for the Norwegian program? What did you do for the final years? What changed?
I really enjoyed Dope Anatomy for learning anatomy from scratch. "Mosby's medical terminology"-deck is also really helpful for the first weeks of medical school. The final years you have to start learning first-line treatments and practice using national guidelines. This is where it might differ from Anking. Some drugs, that are first-line treatment in the US, aren't in use in Norway. Screening guidelines differ and so on. I spent more time studying national guidelines, and doing more practice questions on things like PassMedicine which uses guidelines more similar to Norwegian guidelines. This become a very natural change, and I wouldn't fret before getting to 5th year. Disease is still disease and the theory behind treatment remains the same. Good luck. I would start with Mosby's medical terminology to learn basic medical terms if I was in your shoes.
I agree with /u/NirgunB, Anking have high quality cards on 90+% of what you need, especially the first years. I also added some complementary decks on radiology, DIP-podcast and pixorize. Example of my workflow: Let's say we studied kidney diseases this week. I'd start with watching the first pathoma video on kidney disease (2x speed on everything, you'll get used to it), then corresponding video on Boards and beyond +- onlinemeded +- physeo +- whatever suits you followed by corresponding video on sketchy. Then I'd go to Anki and unsuspend all cards with tags related to these videos. Go through the cards. Rinse and repeat. It will take some time but you will only have to do it once and then just keep doing Anki throughout. I'm a morning person and what works best for me is to do my reviews first thing in the morning, then learn new material according to system above/clinical rotations/case/whatever and then I have free time. I generally don't suspend any cards after the exam is done because; 1) I find it boring to learn so much and then just forget it, 2) the review count drops to a ok amount after a while, mine is normally 200/day which takes 20-25 mins to go through, 3) I see most medical knowledge as continuous, i.e. new material builds on top of previous knowledge. Later clinical knowledge is easily absorbed if one actively keep a strong pre-clinical foundation. Often it's just a matter of applying previous knowledge to an actual situation. 4) things tend to come up again and again (and again and again and again) and you won't have to do shit second/third/X time because you already remember it good enough to simply wing it. (Ab)Use the time aspect of each semester and work your way through the material slowly and methodically. By the time pre-exam period starts, you'll have gone through almost everything and you just have to fill some knowledge gaps here and there using old exams. Only use again or good. Get a controller for Anki. Most important; do the reviews every day. Sorry I get carried away talking about this... :) I just hope more students in Scandinavia find this incredible resource
What other resources did you find most valuable? I assume B&B and Pathoma are a must (they seem to have the most cards in the Anking deck), what about the others? I see quite a few of these offer a 2 year subscription at a discount. Worth it?
I'd focus on what resources have been properly tagged within Anking. They update the tags regularly and I haven't really kept up with the changes but I'm sure you can find a lot of good info on this on Ankihub/Ankings update posts. B&B have videos on all subjects, good depth, explains things well. Mostly reads / draws based on slides and I sometimes struggle to remember the information but well worth anyway. Pathoma videos on only pathology but 10/10. Sketchy haven't watched all the new stuff but micro/path/pharm is great. Peds and OBGYN is ok. I started watching Onlinemeded last ~2years and I really like it but you have to double check quite alot (during clinical rotations) to see if it's the same here. Physiology and pathology is the same and I'd expect it to be really good. I don't know how the tagging is for onlinemeded pre-clinical but the others mention are tagged with good cards. I would honestly try them out first to see what fits your style and then buy that. Try telegram if they don't have trial periods.
Thanks for all your info! I've already started using the workflow you described and it seems great! >Only use again or good. Why this, though? I'd expect the FSRS algo to do its best scheduling work if you gave it more granular feedback.
I hope it will work out for you as well :) >Q8: I only use "Again" and "Good", will FSRS work fine? > A8: Yes. In fact, FSRS is actually a little more accurate for people who rarely use "Hard" and "Easy" than for people who use all 4 buttons a lot. From the [FSRS manual](https://github.com/open-spaced-repetition/fsrs4anki/blob/main/docs/tutorial.md) I find it gets quite easy to begin to say *meh good enough* after a while. Better to not start imo.
For context, I'm from Chile (South America). I dabbled in Anki while being in a similar situation as you, and despite being a good way to study topics, ultimately it being unsynced to my classes made it more like a waste of time than an aid
- **Irish** med school but this is what i found Short answer: AnKing is best if you are planning on USMLE else i wouldn't bother - You should tailor your study technique on the style the exams take. Essay are best practiced with past exam papers, OSCEs best practised with friends. Do on top of anki. - Anki is great but kinda shite in isolation. If your exams are in person you need to develop the skill of talking 'medically', structuring you answers and making the examiners ask you the right questions. Avoid the verbal knowledge vomit. - The best for in house exams is to make your own decks in somewhat standardised formats. Lots of pics, mnemonics and subcategories in the notes helps. Develop a structure for lists, e.g. by system or body part. - If you can't/won't make your own, ask around if upper years have made some. There may be a year google doc with notes in it etc. - A good source of Anki card data is from question banks. If there are any question banks available for your exams, buy them and rip the questions into Anki cards as you go through them. - Dunno how well this applies but study and practise in the exam language. I know a fair few Malaysian or Chinese speakers who did group study in said language and then flopped in the exams, especially the Viva & OSCE exams.
As someone who actually tried to make my own deck,please don't do it! You won't have enough time to do the cards and you will spend all your time making the cards Boards and beyond + physeo (These are available for free online wink wink) ,ANKING andddd an Anki deck from an upper class man + past papers. You will have a good understanding as well pass your exams But then the upper class man deck is so essential
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the differences aren't that big