Things I wished I knew in MD2

This post is prompted by all the new faces I'm seeing at the hospital and the fact that I've signed up to be a Peer tutor/mentor for a group of MD2s, so here goes nothing...

1. Everyone has their own golden ratio of placement:textbook/lecture study and that's alright - caveat is you do the min 20hr placement (fr I've heard of people repeating MD2 because of attendance 💀). Personally, I worked out I'm a more practical learner and things I learn opportunistically on the ward are what stick with me the most, so my ratio was more 70-80 ward: 20-30 textbook learning. There is the downside of feeling like I'm adding bricks to a wobbly pier, but honestly, uncertainty is just a feeling we have to learn to get used to in medicine regardless. Also, it's totally fine if your golden ratio changes according to which rotation you're on. 

2. Getting enough sleep is more important than cramming in one last lecture or podcast or practice qs -  to be quite frank if you can't be present fully on placement, you've basically wasted that session and you will go home questioning why you even bothered to show up

3. On surg rotations, go to theatres and ask to scrub in as much as you can, especially in the beginning of rotation even if you're not surg orientated - it's the best way to get teaching both in theatre and on wards, at least that's what happened to me on ortho and I had a great time.

4. Learn from pts - kinda of a no duh, what else are you supposed to be doing other than practicing hx taking and O/E on consenting pts, but what I mean is actually just listening to what the patient has to say. This can start of as a short/long case practice but honestly if you have the time and the patient is chatty or just looks like some company would do them good, be that person for them. 2 such pt encounters was all it took to stop me from qutting med (yet again) last year. Medicine truely is as much an art as a science. 

5. Active learning using the 1min thinking: 3-5mins info dump - if you're like me and get easily bored with reading textbook/guidelines and watching lectures, this is an amazing technique my bedside teacher taught me. Basically, get your study buddy to throw out a topic, and then you have 1 mins to think about it w BOOKS CLOSED, and then 3-5mins (depends on how mean you wanna be) to info dump as much as you can about it, and then debrief with study buddy and correct/fill in info blanks.