What and how to study MEDICINE (Theory) in MBBS final year? My ways at IOM. Davidson vs Harrisons. Should I make notes?

Visit on Youtube

Hello and welcome. I am Saroj, an intern doctor at Institute of Medicine, TU teaching hospital, Kathmandu.

Today I will discuss about how to study Medicine and how I studied it during my final year MBBS. First of all, lets talk about the books, notes, apps and other resources. We all know there are two main books, i.e. davidsons and harrisons. Harrisons is a huge book which needs alot more time and patience while davidson is a concise yet complete book. Davidson is a one stop book I must say. I used davidson as main textbook. Trust me its enough, at least for exams. I am telling you this also because the questions asked these days are approach based so you need to be jack of all topics and master few very very important topics. And you can always go to harrisons for some parts that is not very well written in davidsons like I did which includes approach to common symptoms like fever, cough, jaundice, etc. Few topics that you must study from harrisons are neuropathies, stroke. But yes if you have time and you think you should give harrisons a touch, its all upto you. But I did not do so.

I would suggest you to go through all the tables, pictures and flowcharts of the topics that you are reading because it will help you retain the information for longer period of time.

So question comes, how to begin? Have a look at your syllabus first. Then  it depends whether you make notes or not. If you can make notes, thats awesome. Do make it. It will help alot.  But I am not a person who enjoys making notes  because I used to copy whole book as my note which is again a waste. But I really enjoy studying from notes. So, what I did was I bought a review book. Dont think that only poor students study these review books. Almost everyone read it including myself because it gives you idea about how to put your knowledge into papers as sometimes you might get lost on what to write. It includes past questions and topics that are repeatedly asked in exams. But yes, do not rely completely on them.

 I started adding on important points to the review book while I was reading davidsons so that I have a complete note cum review book where I would not miss important topics as it includes syllabus, and I have important points from my book as well. After that I just went through that review book again and again. And for topics which were not there in review book but in syllabus and important, I made separate note on those topics. In this way I had notes of all topics that were in the syllabus.

You can study whatever you like, but make sure you know all the basic things first. Jumping from one book to another does not help unless you have control over your basics. Thats the main reason I was holding on to davidsons. Use highlighters, Anki flashcards, discussions with your friends, or anything but make sure basic things dont miss out.

There are 2 additional book which I would like to recommend. First one is cardiology and critical care by Prof Dr Arun Sayami as it will help u grasp cardiology better than your textbook and an ECG book. There are 2 main ECG books that I recommend, The only EKG book you will ever need By Malcolm Thaler, and ECG made easy by Hampton. I read hampton’s book. Also watch a video by dr nazeeb on basics of ecg. I will link the video in description below.

Other resources that I used were free videos by prepladder and marrow. You can download their apps and watch free videos. They are helpful. Nazeeb videos can be useful for some topics. Do not watch everything, it takes much time which you dont have. Some of my friends used usmle step 2 books as well but not me.

Lets talk about something that are additional but not optional. Yes, I am talking about most recent guidelines that you should know. There are some national guidelines like that of malaria, kalaazar, dengue, tuberculosis, hiv/aids and some international guidelines like that of Hypertension , diabetes and dyslipidemia management. You should know the management protocol and recommendations of these guidelines. Recently UpToDate is being used by many medical students. Its free for Nepal and you just have to fill in a form for it. It provides you the most recent management guidelines. I used it alot but its not an absolute necessity. Even if you dont have UpToDate, you can just discuss with your friends who use it. That will be better. And guys, dont miss about COVID, its 99% sure question you will be tested this year.

So thats it from my side for now. If there is something I missed out or you are not clear about or you have any queries, you can put it in comments below. I will make sure to help you.

Till then take care, stay safe and help others.

Thank you.