How do doctors study for PG and MD?
The key to NEET-PG is Revision. I don't know about other entrance examinations but there's very little application in NEET-PG compared to the amount to things you have to remember.
Everyone has their methods: Mine was to organize everything in such a way that I keep seeing them as frequently as possible in oneplace. (Shout out to my girlfriend, Shruti Gupta, for making me understand this earlyon!)
Extensive notes have to be made for all 19 subjects (all of which are a specialty by themselves in post graduation/MD) because it's not possible to know everything about everything. I used to use a lot of colours in my notes. I built my preparation around my DAMS notes.
DAMS was instrumental in my preparation because it saved me time by prioritising my workload, giving me tools to assess myself, clearing my never ending list of doubts and showing me how good the competitionaround me was. Had I studied alone at home, this would have taken longer and I wouldn't have known how everyone else was doing around me. That's important.
Coming back to the notes, here's a typical page from my ENT notes:
The colours help me in two ways: it makes me enjoy making the notes because it stimulates some childlike fascination for coloring and it makes revision less monotonous.
Hundreds of charts: flow charts, comparisons, similar sounding names and words across subjects. It's important to correlate and compare because the more connected your concepts from different subjects will be the better your recall will be. Here's one from Biochemistry:
Squeezing more into a single page. Concise notes help in quick revision - this comes in handy during the last month/week when you see everything at a glance. A page from Ophthalmology:
Word association: Potato in ENT
Using images and figures wherever possible instead of plain words. Here's how I remember the poisons in forensic medicine:
Or how I annotated images of CT scans for Radiology:
Utilising every bit of your time. This is a photo of a flow chart comparison I was making while I got a break during my work as a house-staff in pediatrics. I grabbed a clinical note sheet and started revising protein metabolism from Biochemistry.
Detailed Timetables which you never manage to stick to but you keep trying anyway. Eventually you manage to find a sustainable rhythm.
A giant white board (donated by Shruti Gupta!) displaying a metabolic process/management in its entirety which you have to see 10 times a day as you walk about in your room. Fastest way to remember something that you have difficulty remembering.
Keep everything with you on your phone at all times. Phones are your biggest distractions, usually. Turn it into your ally. My gallery used to look like this:
It is also useful to make “ultimate” memory cards where you highlight important MCQs and keep photos with you for quick revision in the loo or in the metro.
And lastly, although I don't have photos to illustrate, make sure you stick notes everywhere in your room. It can be classification of peripheral nerves or side effects of propofol. Anything that you have a tendency of forgetting but is an important topic is something that deserves to go up on the wall/mirror/cupboard door etc.
Revision cycle:
This is extremely important. The number of times you revise is incredibly important. After the first reading which takes months (in my case it ended in mid September), start reading all the subjects again.
Second reading should take you around 35–45 days depending on your state of preparation. ( I finished 2nd reading in october end).
The third reading should take 20–25 days. (My AIIMS and PGI exams were in the middle of my third reading. Naturally, I messed up those.)
The fourth should take around 15 days. (Mid December for me)
If you get time to squeeze in another revision it will take 12–13 days. (My last revision before Jan 7th. This revision changed everything for me.)
Apart from these, the basics are always important.
Thorough reading of the text, plenty of practice MCQs and regular assessment by way of practice tests.
Doing this every day for 10–12 hours for 6–8 months was the most difficult thing I have ever done. Dealing with the hopelessness, the frustration, the sheer mental fatigue can only be matched by the profound sense of relief I feel now as I remember all this with a certain degree of fondness.
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How do doctors study for PG and MD?
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