How To Use Anki For Medical School

I'd say that one of the best things I've done in my ii years of medical schoolhouse is using Anki. I've been using it since my first year of medical school with great success. Anki has immune me to spend less time on studying, and yet I've been retaining and learning better compared to my pre-Anki times.

It has totally revolutionised my study technique, helped me memorised tons and tons of details that I ordinarily would've forgotten on a whim, decreased my stress levels throughout medical school specially and has allowed me to go through medical school on my own terms, where I'k able to travel, bring together lots of extracurricular activities, run for student council, jog regularly, and do things I love. It has also eliminated that feeling of dread I used to feel whenever an examination lurks nearby.

What is Anki?

Anki is an app created by Damien Elmes that helps y'all in learning and memorising facts. It has an algorithm build into it that allows you to implement Spaced Repetition into your learning. In simple terms, this means you'll do a carte today, and then tomorrow, then three days subsequently that, then 5 days, etc.

By showing you flashcards correct before you lot are theoretically about to forget them, this method is both constructive and efficient. Spaced repetition is a study technique that mitigates the forgetting curve of retentiveness. Using Anki helps you as it incorporates the ii near important techniques for effective learning: Active Recall and Spaced Repetition

iv Reasons Why You Demand to Employ Anki

Y'all won't have to cram during exams.
You'll salve hours and hours on learning and tin can spend that time elsewhere.
You'll retain what you have learnt over the long term better.
You'll practise meliorate in tests, especially in medical schoolhouse.

How To Get Started with Anki

I'd like to commencement with a flake of alarm: Anki has a steep learning curve, therefore it might take some time for y'all to get comfortable with it. Since Anki utilises spaced repetition, keep in mind that information technology'southward for long term learning, and not cramming. If yous simply have a week or two before your exam, I'd recommend yous to use this method by Ali Abdaal instead.

Offset, Download Anki. It's available on Mac, Windows and Linux.

I'd recommend getting the latest version, which as of fourth dimension of writing is 2.1.26.

Anki also has a mobile app on both Android and iOS, only I don't recommend starting with the mobile app as the mobile apps are quite limited in what they can exercise and were meant to be a companion to the laptop app. The price is a bit steep for the iOS version, but if you find Anki useful, do consider buying the app to back up Anki's developers. Ownership the Anki app has probably been the best purchase I fabricated in medical schoolhouse. You can also access it on your phone via AnkiWeb if y'all choose not to pay for the iOS app.

Subsequently downloading, I'd recommend installing some addons, especially the Hierarchical Tags addons. To do so, go over to the top of your screen, click View → Addons, and click Add Addons. Type in the addon number which can exist found on the addon page. The merely addons which you need for this guide is Hierarchical tags. At that place are other addons, just I'll salve that for another post.

I'd also recommend that you read the official Anki Transmission.

Navigating through Anki/The Basics of Anki

Download some decks

Next, download some pre-made decks. Head over to r/medicalschoolanki and download the decks. The gold standard for pre-clinicals and Footstep 1 is Anking Footstep 1 v7.2 while at that place's AnKing Step 2 v2 for clinical students and for those taking Stride two. There are many decks available on r/medicalschoolanki for your use. Later on downloading it, it should come equally an .apkg file. Double click it and the deck should be exported.

Recommended Anki Settings

Next, configure some of your deck settings. There are diverse recommended settings out at that place, but I'd say to stick to the ones I've shown in this post for now. I'll say that in that location'southward no setting that fits all, and the settings actually depend on what yous are trying to achieve. I'll work on a post explaining settings soon, but for now, just use the ones that I take listed. I'll make another mail on the other settings and what are the differences betwixt them later.

Click the gear bar next to the deck, and click options. For the Default settings, you'd want to utilise the ones equally shown below:

Next, configure your preferences. Go over to Tools → Preferences (Ctrl+P)

How to Apply Pre-Made Decks

In that location are some people that recommend making your own cards, merely for medical school at least, based on my personal experience, it's ever amend to utilise pre-made cards. 3 reasons beingness:

You can relieve time, it takes tons of time to brand your own cards, and I wished I could regain the time I lost making cards.
The pre-made cards that are out there are usually are of very loftier quality and helps simplify information in a very good manner.
If your lecture materials encompass more than what the pre-made cards cover, what you can practise is just do what's pre-made first, then add together on with your grade material later.

The AnKing deck that I've stated is that its the nearly extensively tagged decks out there. That means that you can easily find whatever cloth/topic you want merely through its tags. At the start, click (Ctrl/cmd+A) on all of your cards, and toggle suspend it (Ctrl/cmd+J). Suspended cards will testify up as yellow. Suspending means that the card won't testify up when you review it. Whenever you want to written report a topic, what you lot tin can practice is become to the left side of the bar, click the tags according to the topic you want, and united nations-suspend the cards that are related to the topic.

You could also make decks for each topic that y'all wish, and movement them to the decks, which is what I did for my instance as shown in the moving picture below.

How To Use Pre-Made decks alongside your lectures

The search bar in the Anki browser utilises Boolean search.
If you want to observe cards with a specific term eg; eye failure, type in "heart failure". If y'all were to search for centre failure instead, it'd evidence cards containing the term heart OR failure. What yous can do is, look for the learning objectives of your lecture for terms regarding the topic, and search in the browser using the OR function.

I would then suggest that you lot add in screenshots from your lectures into the pre-made cards for context learning.

Anki Workflow

Understand. Before you lot practice any Anki Cards, make sure that you have gotten a first-laissez passer through the fabric that y'all are learning. You need to understand the large flick of a topic before doing Anki.
Memorise . Exercise the Anki cards based on the topics you but learnt.
Apply . Try doing some question banks, or questions regarding the topic that you merely learned. Learning how to use it, even with MCQ books tin can aid solidify it.
I usually do this at the start of each cake, and I try to finish all of the premade cards for a specific topic to proceeds a basic foundation, a large pic of how the whole block is. Once that'southward done, I'll continue with making cards for my lectures. I find that having a big picture show view of a block helps me in learning lecture materials every bit I discover lectures a bit too detailed near of the time.

Some tips on how to use Anki

If there's one rule to Anki, it is that you must consummate ALL your due review cards for each day.
Y'all must do your due cards every single day for the best results. You demand to trust the spa
Report in Pomodoro sessions. Reviewing your cards can be irksome. Studying via the Pomodoro method can aid you lot stay energised and interested throughout.
The recommended number of new cards y'all should practice every solar day that is sustainable at least would exist 100 cards, 6 days per calendar week. The number volition vary according to what you have in listen, but 100 is a reasonable amount since you gotta recollect that y'all demand to do reviews too! endeavor 100 a day, for half dozen days of the week commencement. If you find it too hard or also like shooting fish in a barrel, accommodate accordingly. Another fashion of finding how many cards yous need to do in a day is to simply count how many days till you desire to go a sure deck washed, and just divide the number of cards with the number of days yous have left.
If y'all have a lot of cards to do, try doing 10 cards first/employ filtered decks. Sure, you lose out on the interleaving side of Anki, but the motivation you get from achieving small steps is more worth it IMO. The most important stride in making a habit is to make information technology easy.
An issue that arises when studying with Anki is that you tend to remember of the information equally discrete, intangible and separate facts. Therefore, you need to get a big picture of the topic first before memorising with Anki. Y'all could achieve the connections between each fact by constantly asking yourself 2 questions every bit you go forth doing your cards. Why is the answer equally such? Where does this piece of information fit into the overall big picture show? You could likewise connect the dots by doing question banks and mind maps.
Speak the answer out loud. It tin help you in memorising and ensures that you lot are actively learning the material.

What if I'thou non taking USMLE? Are the pre-made decks still relevant for me?

Yeah. Absolutely. I'd say to use pre-made cards, even if you're not taking Step, for the sole reason being that step covers the basic medical cognition adequately. For my case, I'd say pace pre-fabricated decks covers about lxx-eighty% of my syllabi. If you observe the stuff in the pre-made decks bereft, you tin always make your own cards anyway.
The adage goes such that y'all should make your own cards, but IMHO I'd go with pre-made cards. They're of better quality and probably cover 80% of your syllabus anyway. (it depends on your school, my school materials are around seventy-80% on pre-fabricated cards). The trouble with medical school is such that there's just too much info to accept in at one time, and you only have 24 hours a day. Using pre-made cards can save tons of time. If yous make up one's mind to make your ain cards, you lot're still saving fourth dimension by effective learning anyway.

Why not Quizlet?

Quizlet'due south spaced repetition algorithm requires a paid subscription, and Anki is free bar the iOS app. Plus, the amount of community support and addons Anki has is just incredible. I can't believe that there'due south a huge community of people willing to share their cognition freely.

Important Note: Use Anki as a supplement to your studying.

Don't substitute it for understanding, and do not just simply memorise the facts via brute force.

A practiced style to help to understand would exist to enquire yourself why? whenever you lot run into the answer to a card.

If you lot don't fully become information technology, it's like a tree in your head with no body – and without a torso, when yous larn something new about the topic – a new branch or leaf of the tree – at that place's nothing for it to hang onto, so it just falls away. By [developing understanding], I build a tree trunk in my caput, and from and so on, all new information can hold on, which makes that topic forever more interesting and productive to learn most

– Tim Urban

Still Don't Buy It?

Read this, this and this
Only try it for one calendar week and to see what a difference it makes compared to note-taking/highlighting/re-reading.

Farther Reading

How to Make Good Anki Cards
Ali Abdaal's Skillshare class
MedShamim
r/Anki and r/medicalschoolanki
MedSchoolAnki site
The AnKing YouTube aqueduct
Prerak Juthani
Official Anki transmission

If you have whatsoever questions, feel free to contact me.

If y'all found this helpful, please share it with others.

This is one of the showtime articles on how to utilise Anki to learn. If you would similar to acquire more, click here. Subscribe to the newsletter to go the latest updates on this topic.

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