 Today's episode is sponsored by Kenhub. Learning for fun is often like growing a tree. There's absolutely no pressure. While you nurture the growth of the foundation and trunk and then begin to add the bits of details that ultimately make you an expert. Learning for school on the other hand, total opposite story. So today we're going to talk about how you can use that same simple tree method to help you learn something better on your medical journey. It's the same method that I use to help me get a 3.9 gp in medical school. Let's break it down. Now to understand how the tree method works and how to properly apply it, we have to first understand why normal typical lecture approach doesn't work. Now whether it's your first class of the week or your 10th, you already know you're going to get firehose with a bunch of information at one time. So at this point you're really hoping for two things. One, that your lecture goes slow and two, that your brain works fast. So as soon as the lecture starts you start doing your typical note taking system of writing, typing, highlighting, whatever it may be to create notes that ideally will be useful when it's time to go home. And fast forward in an hour later you're actually proud of the art that you now call your notes. But internally you're also starting to feel this anxiety grow because you know some of it's already starting to unfortunately look confusing. And if it's confusing now, it's sure going to be confusing in a week or two weeks from now when you have to start studying the coils or the tests using those notes. And that sheer amount of information of those big topics, the details, the charts, the bullet points, what do you really need to know and how do you master it? Well that's exactly where the tree method comes in. Now there's really two ways you can do this, the traditional method and my personal favorite, the Q&A tree method. I'm going to show you both step by step using a sample lecture exactly how to do this. But the goal ultimately is exactly the same, learn in both pieces as well as in organized fashion. So kind of demonstrating the first traditional method, we're going to take this example lecture that I've used from medical school for quite some time on these YouTube videos. This is an example video on e-fifth. And so this will be your traditional PowerPoints of lots of words, lots of data, and it's just busy. If you don't know anything about this topic, it can seem a little bit overwhelming and multiply this by three or four lectures that you may have a day in medical school. It can be a lot. So let's talk about how you can take a lecture like this and break it down piece by piece into something that's easy to learn from when it's time to go home. Now the first part for really any lectures to understand what are those big ideas, those big branches and trunks that you have to make sure you master before focusing on these little pieces of details and facts. And if you're not sure what they are, often they end up being the highlights or the headings of a lecture. So for example, here we're talking about ephib. So epidemiology is kind of one of them in the first few. These first few slides are talking about just people who get ephib. The next ones are kind of signs and symptoms and then basically how to diagnose somebody. And then we talk about workup, which goes with any disease. And then finally you get to a predictable part about treatment and the different ways to treat. So even as I'm looking through these slides, all of these are talking about treatments, but there's specific parts about treatments that they're breaking down even further. So I'm already starting to see an idea of where my trunks are, where my little branches are, and then those tiny bits of details that would end up being the leaf in this tree. So for this lecture, if you're somebody who likes taking notes through an outline, I may just take a word talk and go ahead and write my big trunks and branches that I would want to know. So epidemiology, we talked about symptoms, we talked about workup, and then we talked about management. These would basically be the branches that I would want to know and master. Now within each of these, as you can see from the slides, there are even more breakdowns. You may be able to see them through kind of individual bullet points that have more bullet points underneath them. So for example, they talked about the path of fizz of how somebody ends up getting AFib and then who's affected. Those are kind of categories. And then all these little bullet points would be going under this section. And now if I go to the next slide, we're talking about data, which we can come back to later. We're also talking about how to classify it, right? So different types of AFib. And then if we're looking from this slide, I can already see that they're just talking about related diseases and causes. Now when you're first making your tree method, you may find that at the very end there's going to be duplications or redundancies and you can take those out. But this is kind of an initial structure of what this tree will look like. Here's my big trunk for epidemiology. And here are all the things that they want me to make sure that I master by the time that I review this multiple times. Now if we go to the next truck, we talk about symptoms. So I have kind of the more basic symptoms and so, you know, classic presentation, maybe one of them. But on this next slide, we're talking about not only symptoms, but kind of more pathophys of who's affected and then risks downstream. So for example, I can see risk of strokes, risk of CHF and just dying in general. So those may be things that they want me to master on those sections. Now if I get into workup, we're going to go ahead and learn some basic workup and I can already see EKG workup, Echo workup. Now if I go to the next slide, I see a busy table and chart like this. And if I'm not familiar with AVID nor have I taken any notes or gone to lecture, this is going to be a lot. So I'm just going to make sure that kind of keep this in my mind and ask myself where this is going to go or if I need to create a new branch for this by the moment, we're just going to keep going. And now we're going into management treatments. And so we can see that there's going to be multiple different categories. So first is going to be prevention. And then next is going to be treatment. And then we can see how in treatment there's already a rate treatment and there's going to be a rhythm treatment. Now this is kind of an initial pass of the lecture. You can easily do this before going to class or maybe the five or 10 minutes before your lecture actually starts presenting to understand what pieces of details and categories you're going to be focusing on before anything really starts. But now we want to make sure that we get those extra bits of branches and details that we haven't quite gotten yet. So for example, if we just stay just in the management section, we can see how there's a score called a CHADVAS score. Maybe I need to know that. So stroke risk, scoring, and then it talks about anticoagulation. So clearly I'm going to have to know something about that and I can see what else they end up talking about. So here is more of a CHADVAS scoring that they're talking about. And here they're talking about the different types of treatments. And so I'm sure that I can either spend time now or understand that when I get to this anticoagulation section, there's going to be many bullets within them. So for example, when we use warfarin versus one of these other medications, so dox, indications for each, and the same thing for the rate and the rhythm. So I need to know drugs I can use and the same thing for the rhythm. And we can see that quickly as I'm scanning, I'm seeing treatments that are more like therapies versus just meds. And this is what we're getting through just an initial pass of the lecture. So you can do this on the spot as your lecture is presenting, or you could do a little bit of this beforehand and then add this. Now keep in mind that this framework, this tree has room to grow just like any piece of learning does. But now I know that if I'm going into lecture, these are the things that I'm paying attention to. And thus when I come home, I'm going to make sure that do I know the basic management of taking care of somebody with AFib before I start worrying about the indications for each specific blood thinner that they may have to take. If I don't know that they need a blood thinner to treat AFib, then I can't answer these questions. So you can already start to see how a tree method makes you focus broadly first, and then gets into the nitty gritty. Now the decision to create an outline of a tree method like this, either before class or during class is completely up to you. It's a personal decision. If you're somebody who is a fast typer and you can do this on the spot, go for it. You're somebody who has a professor who talks really quickly or somebody who just has very busy slides like this one is a great example of just lots of words. You can barely read some of the smaller texts. That may be useful to just spend a five or 10 minutes per lecture beforehand, either the night before or the morning up to create the structure. That way you're just ready to type in the details versus the individual parts. Now when lecture comes, you can go ahead and add the parts of the bullets that are there. If you identify more individual branches that help you kind of compartmentalize some topics even better, even, you know, you can go ahead. So for example, here on this slide, we're talking about workup. And if we're just looking under basic workup, we have a bunch of things listed out. But maybe the professor goes into more details about each of those or maybe a few of them. So maybe they are mentioning a few things on the HMP or they're mentioning why TSH is something important to check. Or maybe they mentioned what you may want to look at on terms of their electrolytes to see if that's the cause. So you can basically go ahead and add those small branches and those leaves, those details as your professor is talking for your future reference. And just as one more example, if we're going to this part that's about treatment, this really busy slide here, we can see that they talk about a variety of drugs, but maybe your professor doesn't care that you know all of them. He'll say like the main ones that I want you all to know are amiodarone and sotolol. The main treatment that I care for you guys who know is actually none of them. But if you have to remember one, here's the one that you'll have to do. That makes it easy to go from a really busy slide like this to this is what they consider to be important. Doesn't always happen that way. But if it does, you can go ahead and create a note that's much more succinct and brief for you to review from later. Now once you finish lecture and you have an initial template and the format for your tree method, how in the world do you actually review this to improve your retention before that quiz and test? Now before we get back to the rest of the episode, let's talk about today's sponsor we just can't have. Now on my medical journey, easily one of the hardest classes, but arguably the most important course to master was anatomy. It's essential to master for any future doctor and medical professional. But with the sheer amount of information plus the practical connections that you need to make to understand the functions, relationships, pathology, it easily becomes one of the hardest courses to nail down on your medical journey. And that's where today's sponsor Kenhub comes in to make that a whole lot easier. Now think of Kenhub as a high power search engine plus a learning tool for anatomy all in one place. 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So if we go back into this example that we have here for AFib, basically you have to make sure that you understand the big ideas before you go into the individual branches. It doesn't matter if I can memorize amiodarone and sodalol, if I don't know that those are rhythm treatments that are an option for managing AFib. And so the first thing that I'll do is if I'm getting to the part where I'm asking myself, Lux, how do you treat AFib? I need to know, okay, there's a few ways. First, there are some preventative things that you have to do, like getting them on a blood thinner based off a scoring system. We'll talk about that in a second. If I can mention that I have to control the rhythm of their heart, then I can say a few options for their rhythm include drugs like amiodarone or sodalol. If I can't mention rhythm as being a part of my treatment option, then I can't go up to those parts of details being the individual drugs. Thus, whenever you're learning, focus on asking yourself questions like, what's the epidemiology or the pathophys of AFib? You'll start to say, okay, this is how it works. Here's the pathophys. These are the people who are affected. Here are the classifications. And here are the related diseases and causes. In each of these, you can ask them as questions. So what's the pathophys? Is AFib who's affected? And if you can do them, then usually I love color coding things because it helps me kind of have a visualization of how well I know something. So if I know the pathophys and I know who's affected, but maybe classifications because all of that nomenclature is new for me, I may have to say it's a yellow. I need to come back to it. But related diseases and classic presentations of an AFib when I'm reviewing them and I'm not looking at what's listed below, I've nailed down. And the pathophys in terms of how somebody becomes symptomatic with AFib, like I don't quite get, I'm going to put a red. And so now when I'm done with the entire lecture, I can figure out where I want to start in terms of reviewing things the second time. Or if I ever come back to this lecture again in the weekend or before a quiz or test, I'll already know where to start first versus trying to go to the greens. You want to make sure you make those reds into yellows, yellows into greens. And ideally all of it is just mastered by the time that test comes around. Now, this is what we call the traditional tree method. You can use this. It's very simple. You have very effective and honestly, you don't need a word doc to do this. You can do it on Notion. You can do it on your notebook. You can even do it below the PowerPoint that you're taking the notes from or on the side. If you're using one note or any of the other apps where you can type or write next to them. But next, we're going to go into my personal favorite of how to transition a typical tree method into what we call a Q and a tree method to make it super effective. Now, the main difference between a traditional method and a Q and a tree method is basically what it sounds like. Instead, you're going to take each piece of detail and take it into a form of a question. So if I was creating this format, I would basically do what we kind of practice with with a traditional format. My notes would look like this. So what is that bidi-miology path of fizz of aphid? And I would make this into a question. Sometimes I'm lazy and I don't even write the full question. I know what path of fizz question mark means basically means luck tell me what the path of fizz is, who's affected, that's already a question, classifications. And then you can, if you want to be more full and complete, what are the related diseases or causes in question mark? And if there are specific things that the professor mentions, maybe he says paroxysmal aphid is the most common, you can say most common type. And these are just individual quizzes within a bigger piece of category. That way, again, if I know the classifications, then I can say what is the most common type? Symptoms, question mark, classic presentation, question mark, you can write bigger sentences if they help you kind of remember what the question you were trying to go for. But you can say what diseases or outcomes are you at risk for? And then what is the basic workup? EKG findings. And then there was a mention on the slides about things that you happen to your left atrium. So I can put a question there. Sorry, that should have been under echo, but same thing. And same thing for management. So war friend, who can get it? And I'll just put that in the second thing. Same thing, who can get it? But now you guys can see how we've taken notes that you just come back home and read and tried to review, but there is a good tendency of just reading them to now notes that are meant to ask you questions before you move on. So if I physically can't answer the question out loud or on a right board of what the epidemiology of AFib is, I can't master it. And thus I will color code this yellow or orange. And I'll try to master that first before I go into these individual questions. The biggest issue with going through any lecture is we try to understand the details as best as possible with the same focus and quality that we do the big topics. But really you want to build that foundation first. And so I can't tell you what the overall workup of AFib is. I really don't have any business telling you those left atrial findings on an echo. It's silly to know the six millimeters or whatever measurement, but not know that you have to do an HMP, TSH, electrolytes and EKG. So you want to make sure you get those overall big points down first before you go further and further down your tree. The same thing with management. So asking yourself, what are the core goals of management, right? So that may be something that I write as a smaller branch as part of management. And if I can't understand that I need to focus on prevention and treatment, then I have not successfully answered that question and thus I can't move on. So now when I'm coming home and say, okay, well, actually you have to make sure that you have to understand that there's preventative focuses on AFib as well as actually treating the AFib itself. And then if my question is about treating, I have to say, okay, well, there's a rate and rhythm. If I can't tell you about both of them, I can't go individually and tell you about the drugs that I would use for rhythm. Doing it this way, again, avoids having the phone mode. I need to understand these pieces of details or this random piece of fact, learn the big pieces of foundation, turn them into questions to really help you focus on what the goal is of the question you're asking. And this way you can't BS yourself or convince yourself that you know something if you can't answer it out loud or put it on a whiteboard. Now I've talked about the Q&A method outside of the tree method in a prior episode, which I'll link down below and put it right here as well. But just remember that the entire option of using the tree method is to really just break down your learning and to learn this first. And ideally doing it in the QDA format helps you guide and move down that flow even further. And the more you do that repetition using color codes or flashcards to indicate this is what I suck at, this is what needs more attention, it'll be better and better at your learning and it'll just feel like learning for fun without the pressure of the greater score that's coming with it. Now if you enjoyed this method, go ahead and give it a shot. Let me know in the comment section how it works for you. But if you feel like you're just struggling so much on your journey that this is not going to be enough to help you, let's make sure that we help you. There's a few options that we have. You can go ahead and check the link down below to get our access to our free Med School Success Handbook. I talk about tons of step-by-step strategies and advice on how to study better, be more productive, including my own method of how I study in medical school, so that'll be linked absolutely free down for you guys down below. And if you're really struggling with your grades, I recommend one or two things. One, just check out our study program that breaks down the same six steps that all of our coaching students go through to help you understand here's what I'm doing wrong, here's what I can do better, here's how to improve my grades and repeat the process over and over again just like a top student was. Our level up your studying program will teach you exactly how to do that. That'll be linked down below. Again, all of those resources are available to you and there's no pressure to select any of them if you're not interested. But if you did enjoy this episode, you made it to the end, I would appreciate a like on the video if you're watching on YouTube tells me that you enjoy more content like this. Let me know in the comment section what questions you have. And as always, my friends, if you did enjoy this episode, then you'll probably enjoy this episode right here on all the methods that I used to get a 3.9 GPA in medical school, as well as this method right here on 20 minutes that you can do to improve your retention on pretty much anything you're learning. Go ahead and check out those two. And as always, thank you so much for being part of our journey. Hopefully we're a little help to you guys on yours. We'll see you guys in the next one. Peace.