For doctors only/ how do doctors remember all the information in med school?

Question

for u doctors that have already finished ..looking back..proficent at memory skills..just rote..or just trying to understand the big picture of medicine and the body..or is there a trick to organize all the facts ..or to just group the cardiac diseases meds.and cures together,,gastric together..i mean like in the hospital environment..you generally have the recipe for chf..or arrythmias ..or strokes down to a one fits all treatment unless they are other circumstances...does it get kinda routine the basic fixes for certain things(and easier to remember or perform tx)..unless theyare outside of the box type illnesses.i mean do u start with the basic treatment for heart attack..or trauma..for example..and then modify your ..decisions based on the response.or clinical..response...just looking for insight..answers appreciated from doctors..inters..er doctors.if possible..thanks...peace...

Answer 1

Dr. Dredd is quite right--no one really remembers every single thing they learn in medical school, though I would venture to say that most of us are pretty good with memorization.  I will just add that the other thing is that not everything you cover overall is necessarily pertinent to the kind of medicine you end up practicing.  Pediatricians, for example, rarely have to treat patients having heart attacks, and radiologists are not called upon to know about the latest drugs used for treating eczema.

There is a huge amount of information out there, and no one person either knows it all or would be the right person to treat it all.

And yes, there are general protocols for certain problems when they arrive in the emergency room or when treatment begins, but very few things in medicine are "one size fits all."  What the treatment is depends on the patient, not the diagnosis.

ETA:  Yep.  It's residency where you learn the specifics of what you'll be doing as a doctor.  Dr. Dredd is an internist--what's often called "the doctor's doctor", and saying they have to know a little bit about a lot is being modest.  They treat the widest range of problems of any kind of doctor, no question.  So kudos to her.

I'm currently doing the pediatrics part of my peds neuro residency, and in year 3 I will have to spend a year on adult neuro.  Unnerving...adults have very different medical problems from kids, usually.  But you figure it out, and yes, a lot of it is knowing the basics and then knowing where to look to make sure of the fancy stuff.

Answer 2

There's no way one person can memorize everything that's taught in med school.  William Welch, one of the deans of Johns Hopkins, has this quote: "The time in medicine has long passed when any one person can learn everything there is to know."  He said this in 1897!

While you're in med school, there's a certain amount of rote memorization that's unavoidable.  I often tried to break things down into "first principles."  That is, if I could make myself understand something like how carbohydrates were turned into energy, then I wouldn't have to memorize every single step of the Krebs cycle.  Instead, I could recreate it just by understanding the metabolic process.  (It's hard to explain -- let me know if that didn't make sense.)

That worked up to a point.  Many of the things we learn about have not been totally explained yet.  So a lot of the time I did have to resort to brute force memorization.  I didn't have any one specific system for that.

As some of the other posters said, it's not crucial to have every single fact in your head to actually practice medicine.  You do need to know where to find information, and you also need to make sure you keep as current as possible with the developments in your field.

Hope this helps!  In the day to day practice of medicine, many things will become routine, but you have to make sure you don't become complacent.

Edited to add:

As to the rest of your question, there are both general specialties and subspecialties.  For instance, I'm a general internal medicine/primary care physician.  I can sum up our job description as, "needs to know a little bit about everything!"  This was a three year residency, and the training was very broad.  My cousin is a cardiologist, which is an internal medicine subspecialist.  This means that he did a three year residency followed by a 3 year fellowship in cardiology.  He's now an expert on diseases of the heart, and I would refer to someone like him if I had a case I needed help with.  On the other hand, he isn't up to date on some of the most recent developments in primary care, epidemiology, and screening, so he would refer patients needing general medical care to me.

Answer 3

It's like 2nd nature to remember most (not everything) subjects. Just study, study, study, and eventually, everything comes to mind. You'll find your nitch on how to best remember everything. You mention organizing all the facts which is good. It does all get routine once you remember everything. Even when you are an MD, you won't remember everything, you'll still have to refer to books and research. When you study, start with the basics and work up from there. You have to understand the basics before your memory will retain and understand more complex subjects. Keep focused, and keep reading and studying. You'll do well.

Answer 4

On my university course, I only learnt what I needed to learn to pass the exams. Of course, a lot of what I learnt by wrote and mnemonics have stuck, I remembered all the bones of the hand by rote.

When you get past the medical school and into what you Americans would call an 'internship' then a 'residency' you remember most of what you learnt.

Of course, you'll never learn everything... That's impossible, but when you revise what you learn, then it starts to stick.

Of course, in my A Levels, I got an A in maths, but I look at my cousin's homework and I don't understand a lot of it... All the trig I remember is S=O/H C=A/H T=O/A.

Yeah, the only things I remember in my Infectious Diseases and my Critical Care are the serious diseases and common diseases. For example, I can spot a case of malaria a mile away, likewise, I can spot West Nile Fever. Unfortunately it takes me a while to spot conditions that I am unfamiliar with. Because I was always taught 'Think horses not zebras'. Which means, if you heard hooves outside, you should think that they're horses, not zebras because horses are more common than zebras in American and Europe.

Similiarly, often doctors don't remember a lot of things that become redundant. Although, working in Critical Care as well means that I have to have at least a basic level of understanding of everything.

Answer 5

There are some things doctors don't even learn in medical school, and if they are closed minded and too lazy to research then they practice by rote, especially when they want to maximize the number of patients they see.

One example is their general lack of knowledge of about the formulas given to tube-fed patients.  They rely on nutritionists  for information about these, including which ones to use, how much to feed, and how.

The FDA does not test these substances like they test drugs, but the literature of the manufacturers lists side effects.   Most doctors don't read this information.   Nor do they know about negative interactions with drugs (such a semi-synthetic formulas and dilantin).  And since most of the patients receiving these substances are elderly, the doctors have a tendency to attribute any bad results to something else.

Answer 6

Doctors don't remember everything they learn at med school.  They learn concepts (lots of them), and application.  They learn to think like a doctor, and they learn to use the resources available to them.  One major skill that med schools teach is effective research, whether it be scientific research or researching symptoms.