 So if you have a shelf exam coming up for your clinical rotations in this video, we'll talk about exactly how to study for them. Let's get into it. All right guys, welcome to the MD journey. A channel completely dedicated to help you succeed on your medical journey, but doing it with less stress. My name is Lakshman, internal medicine physician and resident in training. And I've been making videos and podcast episodes just like this one to help you on your journey. So if you're new here, definitely consider hitting that like and subscribe button down below. And if you're listening to the TMJ show on the podcast then go ahead and definitely consider hitting that subscribe button as well as leaving a review on iTunes. But today I really wanna talk about a simple and very effective approach for setting for your shelf exams, which when you start your clinical rotations can be very overwhelming. And it's not hard to understand why whenever you start a new clinical rotation, it's basically like learning a new language. And in the midst of trying to figure out all the clinical knowledge and be impressive on your presentations, you're also forced to study for an exam that you know is going to come at the very end. And so it's very natural for a third or fourth year medical student to be very stressed. But in this video, I really wanna give you a very simple kind of approach that works for most of the students that I worked with. Now the first thing I'll tell you that it really will be a game changer is really sticking to one resource. One thing I find that a lot of students who come to me for advice is which resource and how should I use this combination? But really I would probably ask you to just choose one. And what you choose is really up to you. If you're looking for some guidance or direction depending on what rotation you're on then definitely I recommend checking out some of the blog posts that we have on mdjourney.com and I'll also link down below a few of the videos that we also have where I tell you the top resources to use for very specific rotations. Once you figure out your favorite resource depending on your preferred style of learning I recommend that you only commit to that one. And doing this really helps simplify the amount of pages or videos you have to do depending on what resource to use that way you can really focus on number two which is to focus on your practice questions from day number one. And so similar to having one resource I also recommend you have just one question bank that you use. Most people for their clinical rotations and their shelf exams tend to use you world. There are rotations here and there that have kind of their own preferred question bank. For example, for OB-GYN you may use a UIS question bank which also does a really good job. But once you figure out the question bank you want to use make sure that plus your resource are really the only thing you're using. Now before I tell you how to use these resources in case I forget definitely check out some of the resources down below in the podcast or in the video to resources like a crushing clinical scores that breaks down every single rotation that you'll have as a third and fourth year medical student how to do well, how to impress your attendings as well as what resources and exactly how to study for them. So that'll be linked down below for anyone that's interested. Now once you've decided the resources that are going to be best for your type of learning the next thing you need to do is to be able to look at how much time you're going to be spending on your rotation that way you can understand realistically how quickly you need to be able to get through all of the texts and or question banks. So a good example of this is imagine if you had a four week block for your family medicine rotation that means you have roughly about three, three and a half weeks to get through all of your texts and questions to still give yourself a few extra days for days that you personally may not do anything because of lack of motivation or days that you can spend doing practice questions from the NBME. And my personal preference and the way I like to teach a lot of the students that I coach is your biggest focus to be able to really crush yourself exam is to be able to get through your your old questions as quickly as possible. And so using the similar approach if you did have four weeks then really in your mind you need to ask yourself how can you get through all of your your old questions for that block in three weeks or 75% of the time. That gives you an extra 25% of the time as a buffer room just in case you get behind or you can actually start using to review your weaknesses as well as the questions you've missed. And using the 75% rule will give you an extra buffer to be able to review kind of on that last week or last two weeks to study. So if you're using a four week rotation you have three weeks or if you're using an eight week rotation you have six weeks. But now the next question is how many questions should you be doing from your year old or your question bank? Now the best way to do this is once you understand roughly how many weeks represents 75% of your rotation you want to ask how many days off per week do you want to give yourself as well as are there any days where you just want to give us a buffer in case you're lazy and not motivated or a rotation just happens to have a very long day like a call day on surgery or internal medicine. Now if that number comes out to let's just say 40 questions per day that doesn't mean you necessarily have to do 40 questions every single day. In fact, you can say there's going to be some days that I'm going to be very busy and 40 questions are going to be pretty hard to pull off but other days I'm going to be able to get it and maybe I'll have one day off per week or I may be able to do more. So you can actually kind of mess around what the amount of questions you have to do on a daily basis as long as your average roughly reaches 40 questions. That's my very simplified way of giving yourself a very target goal of how many questions you have to do from your question bank every day. And if you're using another text or video resource to be able to help you for that rotation in the shelf exam, the same principle applies. Count the amount of chapters or topics that you want to be able to cover and then basically divide it by how many days you want to give yourself to read before giving yourself that final kind of stretch to review on your weaknesses, you know, review misquashions that you did on your world as well as doing practice questions from the NVME. So using this approach regardless of what rotation you're on you should be able to kind of create a sample schedule. But again, if you do want kind of more help on a step-by-step basis for all of your rotations then go ahead and check out some of the blog posts as well as the crashing clinicals. Now my final pro tip before we end this episode is really understand what the goal your learning phase for that first 75% will be. It's not about necessarily getting the highest average on your world during the practice question sessions. It's actually about making the mistakes and doing the learning as quickly as possible. I find in my experience that a lot of students who come up to me will spend an excess amount of time reading or watching the videos and then equally amount of time, you know, doing the practice questions and saying, well, there's no way I can do 40 questions in a day. Just takes me too long to review them to answer the questions. And as I kind of dive into it a little bit more I realized that they're actually kind of dealing the practice questions as if they were gonna take the real thing that day. And honestly, it's not how I recommend doing it at all. Instead I recommend looking at every single question as an opportunity to basically add a little bit of a nugget, patterns of questions of topics that you need to know for the final thing. And the best thing you can do is to be able to get that piece of information, that nugget for your final test, your shelf exam as quickly as possible. And instead of what I recommend doing is to be able to give yourself a timer, especially when you're doing practice questions and your goal should be how can I quickly answer this question? Even if I get it wrong, how can I quickly get to the explanations and the patterns that I should recognize in the clinical vignette? So then ideally the next time I see this on another future question or on the shelf exam I'll be able to identify them as quickly as possible. And so instead of just telling you what to do, I'm sure some of you guys are asking, how in the world does that happen? Well, a good way to do it is to look at your world practice questions and it should give you an average of how roughly long it takes you to answer one question. Try to see if you can approach to answer every question about half the time. So if you're spending 60 to 120 seconds doing one question and saying, well, how can I do this in about 45 to 60 seconds? You know, some questions will ideally be shorter and some questions may be a little bit longer but ideally you'll find on average you're answering the questions quicker, that way you're seeing the explanations and the thought process that you should have had when answering that question regardless if you're right or wrong. So definitely keep in mind that initial 75% of your rotation is obviously to do well on your actual clinical rotation. There's plenty of videos and resources down below on how to do that. But in regards to studying for your shelf, the real goal is to make the mistakes as quickly as possible. That way you can see when this topic or patterns of symptoms or information shows up in a clinical vignette, these are the things I need to start thinking about and that way I can answer the question correctly for the final thing. But that guys is my general approach of how to effectively study for your shelf exams. Basically how to frame your resources as well as framing your study schedule in a way that gives you an efficient kind of calendar as well as a buffer room at the very end. And hope you guys enjoy that final approach of how to view your questions and get into that perspective of how quickly can you make mistakes how you don't have to do it on the real thing. But with that being said guys, if you still want more help on your shelf exams, resources or how to do well on your clinical rotations then definitely check out the crashing clinical scores down below. Many of my students that I've gone through have really found a game changer on how efficiently they can be, how effective they can be as students and are able to impress the right people without giving excessive amounts of effort. Even if you don't check out the course then definitely check out all the free resources we have down below, including some playlists for clinical rotations as well as some of the top block posts on how to do well on each of your clinical rotations down below on the MDTRAINER.COM. But with that being said guys, thank you so much for watching or listening to this episode. If you are watching on YouTube, definitely hit that like button down below. It helps support the channel, helps support me, but also tells me that you enjoy this kind of content and you want more. If you have more questions, definitely drop them down below. Hit that like and subscribe button before you leave. Thank you so much as always for watching this video, watching this episode. Hopefully I've been a little help to you on your journey. Thanks for being a part of mine. I'll see you guys in the next one. Peace.