 Today's video is brought to you by Picmonic. By far one of the toughest classes are the one responsible for the most hair pulling, hence the bald spot is pharmacology. But today we're gonna break down a few quick things you can do to make studying pharmacology a lot easier and more effective. Let's get into it. So step number one is to have both a forest and a tree approach. Often what makes pharmacology so overwhelming is that there's so much information, but also so many individual categories you have to remember. For example, for each medication you have to remember the name, any brand names, any dosing, how the medication works, who you use it for, side effects, and so many other factors. But to understand pharmacology well, you have to understand both of those individual facts as well as the big picture. And that's why one of my favorite ways to master pharmacology is to have a resource that can help you both master the tidbits as well as see everything together. And one of my favorite resources that I love to recommend is Picmonic. Now, if you're not familiar with Picmonic, they have hundreds and thousands of videos for every aspect of your medical journey. Today we're just gonna go ahead and touch on pharmacology. And something I really appreciate about Picmonic is that they nicely go ahead and separate based off the topic. So for example, if I'm learning about pharmacology within cardiology itself, I can click there and I can say, oh, tomorrow we're gonna learn about medications to lower your lipids or your cholesterol. Let's go ahead and watch a video about statins. Now, from personal experience as an internal medicine doctor, there are a lot of statins and a lot of things to actually remember about statins. But the nice thing about Picmonic is they nicely talk about statins all within a very short videos. This is only a minute 30. And then as you go through this video, it nicely breaks down basically into a story form where each aspect of the video is associated with a very fun and memorable image that represents something. So for example, here we have this image of this liver with this weird looking sludge representing hepatotoxicity. And you have to remember that statins do sometimes cause liver damage and it's something you have to keep in mind of your patients. And as I go further into the video, more memorable images are included. I represent and tell a story about statins that can ideally remember later. Now, each of these images represent the trees or the individual details about a specific medication. But the nice thing about Picmonic is that now you can go ahead and try to actually remember the entire picture and story together. So for example, using their review function, I can say, oh, do I remember what this individual image right here was? And I was like, oh, that's right. That's the sludge looking liver, hepatotoxicity, that's something I have to remember. In addition, I can actually quiz myself using either the images or just hide them completely and try to see if I can answer these questions. And the last tidbit or feature that I like to share is that once you watch a video and you feel like it's something that you've added into your review schedule, you can actually just add it to your own individual playlist. So if I was going through cardiology, I could add it here. If I was using it for step one or if I wanted to create a new one just for pharmacology, I could create it. Then I have a big video database with all the quiz questions from every video I've already watched. And then every time I watch a new one, I go ahead and add it to this playlist. So again, using the forest and tree approach, finding and all I want to resource that can help you find individual details, but also seeing all of it together. Super helpful. Picmonica is one of my favorite resources to recommend. And they are the sponsor of today's video. So if you guys are interested, you guys can check out the link in the description. Technique number two is to use space repetition predictably. Now, space repetition is something I cover a lot on this channel. One of my favorite techniques and tools to use is Anki. And just to show you an example, wouldn't it just be nice if all of your pharmacology topics that somebody else thought would be important were included in one place? So for example, if we open up Anki and I just pull up on one of my step one portfolios, then I can use this big pre-made deck. This is Anki that we use for medical school and the Anki deck. There are plenty you can find. If you just Google pharmacology Anki deck, you will find one that will likely go for you. So if you're in nursing school, if you're in PA school, if you're trying to be a dentist, you can find something. But just using this as an example, and one of my favorite things to recommend to students is to find these pre-made decks that they really enjoy and then find the relevant pharmacology deck either within the specific subject. So if you're learning cardiology, you could find the cards farm deck or just find the entire deck and try to move it out and make it a big deck. So for example, here, I have an actual individual pre-made pharmacology deck. And I can say every morning, I'm gonna go ahead and make a predictable schedule of doing this for 10 to 15 minutes. Often students get overwhelmed by the amount of cards that are in one of these pre-made decks because somebody has spent so much time doing this. And just to show you an example, this is a pre-made deck with 4,000 cards. So a lots of cards, but the goal is not to focus on getting through all the 4,000. Your goal is to focus on doing a specific amount or time every single day and making your pharmacology knowledge a little bit better. So in this setting, I may say I'm gonna commit to 10 to 15 minutes in the morning, maybe 10 to 15 minutes after lunch. And that'll be my pharmacology review. You can obviously make your own schedule, but doing that, I can have a timer and say, let's just try to do as much as I can. I'm not gonna focus too much on what Anki's recommending. I'm just gonna go ahead and do as many cards as possible. And so here is a card on levothyroxine or synthride used for the thyroid. And I can just continue to do these for 10 to 15 minutes. Now, depending on the pre-made cards and the deck that you use, you may have a lot of more stratification you can use to actually be able to study a specific topic. So I can go into custom study and this, and I can say, let's go ahead and review all the cards within a certain tag. And then using tag, if because somebody already made these cards, I can say, well, let's go ahead and do any cards that are related to pharmacology and cardiology. And then using these tags, and there is a lot more tags than usually are for another pre-made deck, I can say, let's go ahead and just do all of the topics that are related to cardiology farm, because that's what I'm trying to learn this week. And doing so, and this is, it's gonna show me that cards that are acceptable for that. So anti-acids, things like vomiting and going forward. Now, if you're new to Anki or if you gave it a shot in the past and it just hasn't quite worked out, make sure you check out this entire episode on how to use Anki like a pro step-by-step. I go all the way from the basics to advanced techniques. Essentially, it's the technique that I use to help me go from 10 to five hours of studying in medical school. So make sure you check that episode out. Lots of people have liked it, almost I think it's at five to 600,000 people. I've gotten lots of positive feedback for people that have seen the video on YouTube. So again, even if you've given Anki a shot and you haven't been able to quite figure it out, make sure you check out that episode and see if it'll help you on eat pharmacology or any related topic in your medical journey. Now, technique number three is to use a hit list method. Now, sometimes the hardest thing about pharmacology is that I'd get overwhelmed by the list of medications I have to know about the next quiz or test, but I just get paralyzed and anxious before actually doing anything. And so one thing that I started doing early in medical school is going very simple and creating essentially a word doc of all the medications that I needed to know. And I would put the category as one bullet point and then all the fair medications. For example, if I had inhalers because I was on the respiratory tract, I may say inhalers and then make a big list of the next 10 to 15 medications that I would need to know. And then if I needed to know something for pulmonary hypertension, I would add that as another category and then all of the fair medications that came from my slides, quiz questions, et cetera. So for example, here is a quick example of what a hit list may look like for a pharmacology block. You may have some of your initial medications that you're learning and then just adding each one you have to know in the list. Now, when I come to study, while it's overwhelming to see all these medications that I may not be familiar with, the next goal is essentially come up with what I want to know for each one. So for example, I may want to know the mechanism of action for the MLA. I may want to know who we use it for and then I may want to know common side effects. And using this as a structure, I'm like, fine, let's come up with those three bullet points for the next three to four medications or whatever I can do in the next 20 to 30 minutes. And these are things that you can use your slides, your lectures, et cetera, to fill in. So when you're going into lecture, you can essentially just add them into this section or after class, you can fill them in accordingly. But the nice thing about this is one, now you're just focused on the next thing on the list on a time basis. So instead of worrying about the eight medications I have left to do, I'm just going to move on to the next one and try to master the next thing on the checklist. The next thing that's nice about this is that once I have gotten the first review phase, if I'm coming back and trying to learn about Montelucast or Singular, then my goal is, okay, without looking at the answer. For example, maybe I could just go ahead and make all my texts white. So then it just disappears. I could have a blank piece of paper or try to talk out the answers, like, do you know the MOA? Do you know who you give it for? Do you know the side effects? And then I can just control Z or go ahead and make my texts black to essentially show myself the answer. It's a nice way, again, to collect all your information in one place and then use it as a quizzing. And if it's something that I did master because I knew all of them and I could say, perfect. Let's go ahead and just make all of this green and then move on. Let's say the next medication. And honestly, I've never heard of this one before. And I struggled with it. I can just go ahead and make this red. And it tells me the next day you come back to your review, go ahead and do your red ones first before you do the medications that you haven't reviewed quite yet. Next way to master pharmacology is to use the second brain method. Now, if you're not new to the channel, you know one of my favorite techniques to use to master something called the second brain is Notion. Quickly to explain second brain essentially means instead of trying to count on your brain to hold on to all this information, collect it into a nice database and then come back to it very periodically that you can continue to add to and review. So for example, here I have actually a database that I made for one of my coaching students, somebody who's going into residency and they wanna master everything needed for internal medicine. And so for this person, instead of forcing themselves to learn medications that they haven't prescribed, haven't actually interacted, it was like perfect. Let's make this actually usable. So maybe you're in a setting where you're gonna be treating something like hyponatremia. It's nice to go ahead and have a database where now you're gonna learn about hyponatremia. You're gonna go into this and then add all of your relevant information, any types of pictures or things that you find and then perfect. Then when you're asking yourself like, what do I use to treat hyponatremia, you're gonna come across naturally medications, dosage, prescriptions, side effects that are going to be relevant to that category. Using the second brain method, now I can go ahead and one, add those medications like salt tabs, Lasix, water restriction, which is not a medication itself, but is a treatment. I can add those into my hyponatremia section and then I can create another separate folder as she has done for things like hypotension or hypertension and then add specific medications as you're learning about it. It's much more natural use of pharmacology. So if you're somebody who is in nursing, PA school, medical school and you're learning about both the disease and the treatment, make it a very natural to the transition where you're learning about the disease and then the actual medications to treat it. So then you've already kind of connected the dots instead of trying to learn hypertension medications away from hypertension itself. And what makes the second brain method so effective is the next time I come across a medication of like, oh, there's a side effect that I actually didn't know about or I didn't actually write the dosage last time I learned it, you can find that chapter or create a new one and add it in. And this student as we've kind of created for them is essentially a checklist. So they have a schedule and every time they learn something they'd go ahead and click checkbox. And probably my favorite way of learning pharmacology is simply learning through mistakes. Often as a full-time physician, although I don't make mistakes by prescribing the wrong medication, but maybe I realized that there is a better option or a patient has a side effect that I wasn't aware of. It seems like, oh, that's actually related to this medication that you've been taking for the last two weeks. That's brand new. That is a great way. And as a student, one of the best ways you can learn through mistakes is by simply putting yourselves in quizzing and questioning environments. Whether finding a question bank particular to the class you're taking or using it all on a resource that we talked about like Pickle Honnick and there's tons out there that you guys can check out but making question a part of your daily basis. So you can use the flashcards that we talked about earlier but also start to incorporate things like practice questions where you have a lot more benefit. For example, when I do a practice question not only do I have to figure out what disease they're actually trying to tell me about but then I get to ask myself, okay, what's the treatment for it? So it's a nice twofold way of connecting against the forest and the trees altogether in one place. So for all the students that I work with, particularly the ones that tell me they're struggling in pharmacology, we make it a daily schedule to say, let's do five questions every single day and maybe two questions in the morning, three questions when you come home and then keep track of your mistake while doing the rest of the things that we talked about in today's episode. That's really where that person feels like, oh, a mastery of pharmacology is a lot more natural. I feel like I know the tidbits. I feel like I know when I don't know something and then I can use various different techniques to identify that and then come back to it on a predictable schedule. Now, if you enjoyed this breakdown to study pharmacology, then you'll enjoy this breakdown of every study strategy that's responsible for me to get 3.9 GPA. Make sure you guys check that out. If you're struggling, actually remember what you're reading. This episode is gonna help you with a step-by-step approach that is super effective. I'll let you guys enjoy those, but as always, thanks for being a part of my journey. Hopefully that was a little help to you guys on yours. I'll see you guys in the next one. Peace.