 Med school can be expensive alone, but then you add all the books, resources, supplies, and all the other random, it can be overwhelming. And so today we'll talk about the essentials that you do need for medical school as well as the most important resources that you don't need. Let's get into it. Hey friends, welcome back to channel. In case you're new here here at the MD journey, we make content to help people like you succeed on a medical journey, but doing it with less stress. So today we're going to talk about one common reason to be stressed out. And that's just the money that goes into being a medical student, being on your medical journey, because there's so much to buy in addition to that expensive tuition. And so today I want to share with you after going through four years of medical school in three years of residency, all the garbage that I bought that I really wish that I didn't. Hopefully you guys can learn from my mistakes and not to do those. But in addition of what not to buy, I also recommend some of the essential purchases that I absolutely love and recommend and I'll link all those down below. So first let's start off with purchases not to buy or hold off on. So number one are miscellaneous physical exam tools. A lot of medical schools recommend that you buy things such as an otoscope, an ophthalmoscope, a tuning fork, and unless you're going into neurology, ENT, family medicine, you won't be using those for the rest of your life. And so my first recommendation is hold off on buying those until they tell you that either you need it or you realize that maybe you can borrow it from a peer who already made the mistake of purchasing one. Because while it feels early on nice to have, I can just count on the number of my fingers how many times I've used an ophthalmoscope in my practice. And unfortunately, they're not cheap. Some of the common more popular ophthalmoscopes kits that a lot of medical students have can go upwards to hundreds to 700s of dollars and that kind of sucks if you're not going to use it. So again, only buy these tools as you realize that you need them and particularly try to ask our proclasmen if you can buy them for cheap because most of them are probably going to try to get rid of them anyways or from somebody who doesn't need it. So if you're on rotations, somebody doesn't need a tuning fork because they're no longer in neurology, practice using those and then just give it back to its owner when it's time. Number two, and this is going to surprise you, but this is an essential to recommend holding off on and that's an all in one resource. A lot of students will do tons of resources on the best resources out there. They're not really sure what to use and sometimes students will make the mistake of buying more than one and ultimately realizing that they never even have to use one in the first place. I know when I started medical school, I bought an all in one resource, a Q bank, another Q bank and a flashcard set. Pretty much all of them I use maybe like 5% of and while an all in one resource is very helpful and you may ultimately go to one, what I recommend is when you're first starting off, ideally with your first month, just try to see how much information you can get from either free resources or most importantly your class material, particularly if the test is going to come from your slides and your syllabus and overall the resources are good enough for you to do well on, maybe you don't need an all in one resource to master. In addition, if you do need a supplementary resource, there's tons of free videos and resources on YouTube and Google that you can find before paying for one. And then finally, the part that students forget is how much time they actually have available to use this all in one resource. If your classes and you're studying quite haven't figured itself out, even if the resource is amazing, you don't know how to fit in your schedule, it's pretty much useless. And so while you ultimately may go towards an all in one resource to use those first few weeks of medical school, even the first few months to truly figure out what parts and holes you need to fill in that aren't filled in by free or class material. On a similar note, resource number three that you should hold off buying is a question bank. A lot of students will get very proactive to an extreme extent and buy a question bank to prepare for both their school exams as well as boards on a similar note to a high yield resource. One, you don't know if you'll need the question bank, maybe your school provides you questions or maybe your upperclassmen have practiced that so that you can use. Two, you don't know if you have the time to do it quite yet. And so if your brand new medical student, my first recommendation is to figure out your studying without adding extra fluff to it and then realize where you need extra supplementary resources. Now, if you're new to the MD journey studying and how to master your studying in medical school is one of my favorite topics to talk about. So there's tons of free resources, including some of the videos that I'll link down below. My favorite are all my favorite study strategies that I use to get a 3.9 GPA in medical school, which I'll link down below, as well as our med school success handbook. It's a free guide, 27 pages of 30 plus tips to help you just crush into medical school and get out of the anxiety kind of rat race. And finally, essential number four to hold off on ideally not even buy is a tablet. A lot of times we get questions in the comments and DMs about should I buy a tablet as an iPad better than a Samsung? Should I buy iPad pro? And frankly, my answer is, are you asking because you feel like you need a tablet or you really use one to actually get your studying? The way to differentiate between this is most students will want a tablet to do things like annotations against their PowerPoints and take notes. But then my next question for that student is, are you going to use those notes to study? Often a student will have a PowerPoint slide pulled up in one note, you know, notability, whatever their note taking app is, take annotations during class and never come back to it until they actually have to review their material. If that's your situation, that tablet if anything is going to get in your way because you're creating notes that ultimately are not going to play into your ultimate study strategy. And often students who feel like they enjoy writing things down also find that typing things as they go through their lecture underneath their slides isn't that much of a difference, but you avoid the cost of buying an entire tablet. And again, you may choose to buy a tablet later on early in medical school after realizing, you know what, I like annotations and I'm going to use a study strategy that will complement those annotations, then absolutely go for it. We have a video down below on the top tablets that you should recommend and consider using for medical school. And before we transition into the essentials that you should buy, if you're hearing me talk about having a study strategy that's going to work for you and you don't really know what that means, you want to know what the top students do at the start, middle and end to really get the grades they want with understanding, check out that absolutely free medical school success handbook. I tell you the principles on despite what's technique and strategy you use, what should be included when you're at lecture, when you're in the middle of lecture, as well as at the very end, when you're prepping for exam. So now let's transition into the essentials that you should buy. Now number one, we're going to contradict ourselves a little bit and that is an all-in-one resource. Now, keep in mind earlier on, I said to hold off on buying an all-in-one resource, but doesn't mean I don't recommend it. In fact, it can be one of the best resources you can use if you decide on which one you're going to. I don't recommend using two or three resources at a time for the feeling of FOMO, instead I recommend finding the resource going to work for you and using that consistently and doing it with high quality. Now before we get back into the episode, I'm really excited to talk about today's sponsor, which is Kenhub. Now, if you're unfamiliar, Kenhub is an all-in-one resource that's amazing for the course of anatomy. So if you're new on your medical journey, make sure you listen up. Now, while there are tons of resources out there for anatomy, both free and paid, the part that made Kenhub stand out from the rest of them is essentially includes everything you'll need from start to finish to truly learn, master, review, and be able to test yourself and do well on your anatomy class. One of my favorite ways to recommend using Kenhub is to follow along using your course or your lab and go to the structures you'll be learning about. And then once you're in the individual section, you can go to the module that are most closely related to what you're learning about in lab and lecture. So let's imagine that you have a lecture or a lab tomorrow about the brachial plexus, which is super high yield. The nice thing about Kenhub is that it complements to any different learning style. So if you're somebody who loves reading, you can go through this module and essentially get the high yield material through just reading and their bold text. But if you're somebody like me who loves watching videos, you can watch these videos that are very short and to the point, but also very important. In addition to basic texts and videos, you also find that Kenhub will add extra bonuses such as mnemonics for things such as the brachial plexus that are hard to remember, but using these videos become much easier. And arguably my favorite part about Kenhub is the fact that each of their modules include a quiz specific to the topic that I'm learning about. So if I'm learning about the brachial plexus and then I have to go lab the next day, I can usually use their quizzes and just go to their basic ID to practice whether I know where structures are after learning through it by going through the module. And then as you get closer to test day, you can use both their advanced ID as well as a question bank, which is built in to do second and third order questions to really get a feel for both the individual facts as well as the big picture ideas to make sure you crush it on your anatomy exam. So once again, if you're on your medical journey and anatomy is a course that you need to master and it's overwhelming, make sure you check out a resource like Kenhub. I'll link it down below in the description. Our friends at Kenhub have also been nice enough to include a very generous discount. So again, thanks for Kenhub for being today's sponsor. So as you go through your first few weeks of medical school, you may realize that you're going through some classes where your class just absolutely nails it, your lectures are amazing. Let's say you have a astrology class that's just doing great, but then you get into a classic anatomy and you're like, maybe I need an all-in-one resource. Other indications that you may need an all-in-one resource or a question bank is if you're studying for an exam and realize that your professors are asking much difficult questions compared to what's including in the lecture. So if they're asking second and third order questions, maybe that's an identification that actually understand this material, a video won't help, but maybe more practice questions will. That's a sign that, okay cool, I need to buy a question bank, not an all-in-one resource. Or if you're saying, you know, I'm not really able to understand the material despite using a lecture and the second, third order questions aren't helping, then you need to find a resource that can essentially combine both learning, ideally through videos and modules, as well as a question bank using that same resource. Once again we have tons of content and videos both on the blog as well as the YouTube channel and the podcast for you to check out. Make sure you check out our links down below as well as our playlist for brand new medical students. Now essential number two is an amazing laptop. Now learn from my mistakes. I bought three laptops in medical school and that's because I was trying to be budget-friendly on the first two. First one broke within a year, second one just like flunked out, really close to an exam, super stressful. But my third laptop that I bought towards of into medical school is still the laptop that I use today and that is this beauty right here which is my HP Spectre. Now I made an entire video on my favorite laptops to use for medical school. This is definitely one of my tops right here. The two-in-one laptop I can flip it, use it as a tablet if I'm somebody who wants to write and annotate. It comes with a pen but it's super fast, super efficient, super light and essentially just does everything that I need. And again it's holding strong now essentially five years down the line and I don't feel like I need to buy only one anytime soon. So if you want that entire breakdown of my favorite laptops I'll put the entire video link down below as well as a very detailed blog post that goes into tons of more laptops and PCs and Macs that you guys can check out. But just remember if there's one place that you shouldn't skimp on money it's a good laptop that can go ask you throughout medical school and ideally even longer. Now resource number three may not seem like a med school essential that I promise you will be and those are high quality headphones. Ideally you're going to be studying in pretty much any environment whether it's a coffee shop, a library, at home and noises are going to come up. So having a set of headphones that are reliable, long battery life, as well as having the power to just do noise canceling, these are my bows. I'll link them down below as well as a video where I've reviewed them before. But they have lasted me now eight years and pretty much all I need. I can essentially not hear an airplane if I'm on an airplane and if I'm in a coffee shop. I can study for two to three hours without essentially hearing all the distractions that come around and being able to study for my board exams or a final. Essential number four to not skimp out on is a high quality stethoscope. Now I've put an entire blog post together on my favorite stethoscopes to use. Really how to know if you're having a high quality one versus a cheap one that maybe one of your family members give you before starting medical school. You want to make sure that you can have something that's both durable but most important that you can hear what you need to. Particularly on things like lung and heart exams. If you can't hear a murmur it's not a good enough stethoscope and making sure that you have something where you can differentiate between the sounds and not feel like you're dependent on your stethoscope on how good your physical exam skills are. And so earlier on in the episode where we talked about physical exam tools you don't need to buy, a high quality stethoscope that's going to last you a long time is super important. Ideally I recommend if you can to engrave it and ideally put your information in case you lose it. I've unfortunately lost two during duration of my medical school career and so despite losing two I don't regret the purchase at all I just regret the carelessness and so it's definitely something I recommend adding to your medical school essentials. If you're curious of the other essentials that I use for medical school that really just changed the game for me I'll link down below a video where I essentially go over essentially what's in my backpack and breakdown the main essentials that you can need as a brand new medical student. And if you're going through this episode and you want to help with the resources you may also want to help with important skills you need to master in medical school like how to study so make sure you check out those free resources linked down below including our med school success handbook. Again it's a free guide of nearly 30 pages of 30 plus tips on things like studying productivity managing your time as well as building your CV as well as our eight step study course for our breakdown exactly how I studied in medical school but if you enjoy this episode you're also going to enjoy this episode on exactly how I got a 3.9 GPA in medical school using all the study strategies step by step as well as this episode that completely changed the game for me in med school how I use Anki like a pro. Go ahead and check these out as always my friends thanks for being a part of my journey hopefully I was a little help to you guys on yours I'll see you guys in the next one peace