 So do you want to learn how to use first aid for step one? In fact, what if I could show you a simple strategy that can help you memorize the entire book without wanting to pull your hair out? If so, stay tuned. All right, guys, welcome to the MD journey. My name is Lakshman, internal medicine resident, helping people just like you succeed on their medical journey with less stress. You're new to the MD journey. We're putting out two videos just like this to help people on their medical journey. So consider subscribing down below as well as hitting that like button and notification bell to know when our videos go live. In this video, I want to give you a few techniques, three specifically on how to best use first aid for step one. And after going through this video, if you feel like the tips helped you out, then go ahead and check out our ultimate guide on the blog, which I'll also link down below. It's about 5,000 pages on how specifically to use first aid. And after that, if you enjoy the tips in this video, then consider checking out the full ultimate guide on thendjourney.com, which is thousands of words of tips and advice exactly how to use first aid. Let's get into different methods you can use to learn first aid. Now, I know first aid is stressful to use because let's face it, it's both real useful, but also at the same time, useless. It's full of information that seems high yield, but for many of us, we just don't know how to connect ideas because it may be the first time we're learning it. So it's a little overwhelming and we're not sure when to use it, how to best use it. And like I said, full details on the blog post, but I want to give you three techniques that will help you enjoy the process as well as improve your retention for first aid. So one of my favorite methods to learn and master first aid is to use the book, but then use pre-made flashcards to help test myself and solidify my knowledge. Many of you may be familiar with Ankydex as well as specific Ankydex, such as Bro and Cephalons or Zonkydex. These are specific sets of flashcards that individuals have made based off of the information from first aid. So if you're somebody who's struggling to learn and memorize first aid, I actually encourage you not to use the book too much, maybe use it on the first pass to get an idea of what the information is. So for example, if you're on a cardiology block, go ahead and read a few pages of the cardiology section. Usually the way first aid is set out is that the initial few pages are very intro related. So for example, if you're on cardiology, you may be learning a lot of physiology and basic principles that are involved in cardiology before you get into the pathology and stuff. And so then what you can do is you can go ahead and find the related flashcards based off of the information you've already learned and saw for the first time and put them in a specific personal deck and continue to add them over time as you go through the book, you start to add flashcards. And this is a nice fun way to memorize things as well as understand relationships because a lot of first aid is a combination of tables and diagrams and really you have to understand how all of them interplay versus just memorizing individual facts. Now method number two is what I call the high yield detector. Essentially what this means is a lot of you may be struggling with understanding what's high yield and low yield in class. And you're also trying to figure out how to study for step one. There's just a lot of things that are occurring and the stresses you have. So one of the best techniques you can use is when you're preparing for a class, when you're about to start a new class, I recommend start skimming through some of the initial sections of that specific block. So if you're again doing cardiology, look through the material of cardiology to realize what does first aid cover? Because that's going to indicate to you, this is important, this is something I need to both know for my class as well as step one. And this can help you when you're note-taking as well as when you're preparing and reviewing for exam. Because now that you've seen what's high yield on first aid, whenever you're reviewing a class syllabus or lecture slides or a PowerPoint, you may not be focused as much on the details. Instead, you're going to look for those repetitions of material that used to be on first aid and also show up on your class material. Those are definitely what you would be considering high yield. And then you can use other techniques to focus on learning those, getting the highest grade possible, also doing well and preparing for step one at the same time. And then later on, coming back to those little bits of details that maybe you didn't catch the first time around. So if you're somebody always asking, I'm not sure what's high yield or what's important, you can use a high yield resource for step one, like first aid, use that as your reference and then use that to guide what you consider to be important for your class material. And before we get into tip number three, which is personally my number one favorite, quick favor, if you're enjoying this video, if you're enjoying the tips, go ahead and support the video as well as the channel by hitting that like button. That's truthfully honestly, any small form of support really helps the channel as well as this video. So go ahead and smash that like button. But let's get into tip number three and met the number three. And this is what I call the calendar system. Now it goes down into a few steps, but step number one is you wanna go through the specific material for a specific organ block. So we'll continue to use cardiology for this instance. Essentially what you wanna do is you wanna look through all the different major tables and diagrams and kind of give them a title. So you may have a diagram about the starling curve. You may have a diagram about the different types of you know, cardiomyopathies. And you may have a table about something else. Essentially what you wanna do is you wanna create a list of all the different diagrams and major categories that first aid may talk about. You can honestly just use the title that they use in their graphs and their tables. Now the second step for you to do is you wanna go ahead and assign yourself specific days to do three out of five of those topics. You can go down the list, you can randomize them if you want. But essentially Monday I may do initial and basic physiology table that I may have found in first aid. Day two I may do the anti-arithmic drugs in the specific table. And essentially what you're doing is you're using your favorite study technique to remember just one table at a time. Now the third step to this process is as you're going day by day learning just three to five of that list of first aid topics. What you'll do is then you'll also start moving the specific flashcards in an Anki deck like Brozen Cephalon or Zanki into a personalized Anki deck. So you made yourself kind of create a schedule for each topic in first aid for a specific block. You go through it daily and then you move that specific topic from a pre-made deck into Anki. Now you have something you can review, you know doing just five to 10 of those flashcards. You can make yourself review and you can keep adding to them throughout the organ system in that block there. Now the reason I love this approach so much is a very systematic way of remembering first aid without looking at the 30 pages you have to memorize. You're just looking at three tables today, three tables tomorrow. And then in addition of adding the Anki method to it and adding a personalized step one deck, the nice thing is is that as you go from one organ system like cardiology to then pulmonology, then renal, that card and that deck of step one cards is going to increase. So you can constantly just quiz yourself by doing maybe five or 10 a day keeping yourself fresh and again, memorizing step one material from first aid that really like you're forcing yourself to do it. Before we end, I also want to give some honorable mentions because there are some methods that many people recommend that are effective. These include things like annotating alongside your class material and other resources into first aid. So then when you go setting for first aid for your actual step one exam, you know a couple of weeks from the test day you just have to use the book. You know I deeply don't have to flip back before it's between different resources. So as you're going through different resources like pickmonic or sketchy or Patelma or physio, you can go ahead and take those notes next to the respective sections and then you have a nice kind of collection of all of your personalized notes and all of your metaphors and analogies to help you memorize things. And as a bonus tip as many people do for step one with their first aid books, essentially make or copy into a binder by adding some whole punches and removing the binding, putting it in a binder and one of the best things you can do and I don't see a lot of people doing this is that you can put it into a form of a binder but then you can add your individual pieces of paper through them in between each page, write your notes and your analogies that way you can reference what first aid is recommending as well as your own kind of reminders of how to understand that concept. So that way when you come back for your dedicated prep you have a full binder of material and that's really all you have to force yourself to remember and learn and review. But those guys are my top techniques and strategies on how to use first aid for step one. Again, if you enjoyed these tips check out the full Ultimate Guide on theamdjourney.com and if you want more tips on how to do well on step one there's a full playlist that I'll link at the very end of this video on all of the different tips that I have on this channel to help you on your step journey. And then finally, if you want a blueprint, a step-by-step approach that me and many of the students of the MD journey have used to get a 250 or above that you can consider also joining the Step One Academy I'll link that down below as well as put at the very end of the video but thank you guys so much for making it to the end for watching this video. Again, if you haven't done so already show your support and quickly just hit that like button again, it really helps channel the video and keeps me motivated for putting more videos just like this for you guys. And again, if you haven't also subscribed to the channel consider hitting that button and notification bell because we're putting out two videos just like this on a weekly basis. So with that being said, I'm gonna stop babbling as I always do. Thank you guys so much for joining me on my journey. Hopefully I've been a little help to you on yours. I'll see you guys in the next one. Peace.