Tag Archive: eResourses

Picmonic: A Cursory Review

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May 5, 2015

When I heard about Picmonic, I actually let out a little yelp of excitement and anger. Excitement because I wish I had such a tool while I was in the first and second year of medical school; anger because I thought about building just such a company about a hundred times but never went through with it. Picmonic was developed too late for my first years of medical school, but I keep hearing great things about it from our medical students. Because of all the buzz, I recently downloaded their trial software to test it out and I am impressed. The idea behind Picmonic is to develop absurd images in order to help memorize difficult to understand concepts. Each Picmonic image contains a number of important pearls that should be memorized. Picmonic walks the learner through the image to highlight each pictoral 'mnemonic'. The staff at Picmonic were kind enough to send us their image for clindamycin [shown below]. In this way, any time a student is placed in a situation (in the hospital or on an exam) where he/she must remember these important concepts, the absurd image will pop right into their head, increasing memory recall.

Increased memory retention using absurd images is actually a well-known phenomenon in teaching organizations. In fact, the best memorizers in the world often use abstract and absurd imagery to memorize lists of random words and numbers. The developers at Picmonic openly state that their software increases memory retention by "300%" and may increase scores on exams by "50%". These numbers seem a bit outrageous, but they recently published their results in a peer reviewed journal (pub med link) and they seem to have some evidence to support their claims. Thousands of medical students are using their software and I have never heard anyone unhappy with the purchase. Some use it far more than others, but everyone who purchases the resource appears to be quite happy. Of course, the utility of this type of device is likely more useful to those students who are more visual, but its effect on memory retention is likely to be universal.

If you haven't tried it out, go to their website, www.picmonic.com, and download their free trial. This is a great resource.

Tags: Step 1, eResourses, study tool

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FREIDA: Also a Great Resource to Compare Specialties

Categories:

Choosing a Specialty, Specialties, The Match

December 31, 2012

by Andrew

FREIDA Online is a fantastic resource for any medical student. I recently wrote about how students can compare individual residency programs using FREIDA's various different variables. The database is not limited to comparing individual training programs; it also allows students to compare different specialties.

The "Specialty Training Statistics" section provides basic statistics about training in each specialty. Variables presented for each specialty include:

Number of residency programs in the US
Length of training programs
Average number of interviews performed by each residency program
Total number of residents
Gender Gap for each specialty
Average number of faculty per resident
Average number of work hours per week for each specialty
Average number of days off per week (THESE LAST TWO ARE VERY IMPORTANT! COMPARE SPECIALTIES!)

LINK HERE

The "Graduate Career Plans" section of FREIDA provides information about the careers plans of each of the medical specialties. Variables presented for each specialty include:

Percentage of residency graduates pursuing further training
Percentage of last year's graduates who are in private practice
Percentage of last year's graduates who are employed in academic settings
Percentage in the military
Percentage employed as basic scientists
Percentage who are unemployed

In each case, the statistics are taken from the most recent graduating class and the database is updated each year.

LINK HERE

Read these data carefully. I found that the "Hours Per Week" section was very useful and very realistic!

Tags: eResourses, salary, websites

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FREIDA: A Great Resource when Applying to Residency

Categories:

Fourth Year, Residency, The Match

October 31, 2012

by Andrew

Applying to residency is equally exciting as it is stressful. I found myself searching for any information I could find about different programs and what made each program different. During my hours of searching I found that the AMA’s site, FREIDA ONLINE, was one of the most useful resources.FREIDA is an online database of all ACGME regulated residency and fellowship training programs. The FREIDA database is searchable by specialty or by state. The amount of information available for each program is truly staggering, here is just a short list of some of the information you can find out about each training program:

Program director name and contact information
Length of the program
Institution and hospital affiliations
Size of the residency
Number of applicants interviewed
Number of faculty
Average work hours
Weeks of call per year
Amount of didactic lecture
Salary information
Vacation weeks
Benefits information

Now that I know the inner workings of my residency, I looked back at the FREIDA profile to see if the information is correct, and I can vouch for the database, it is spot on. They provide an analysis of the averages of many of those statistics for each specialty. So, you can compare the ‘hours worked in a week’ of a program you are interested in with the national average. Click here to access the ‘training statistics’.

Tags: Interviewing, eResourses, websites

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The Most Recruited Medical Specialties

Categories:

Residency, Choosing a Specialty, Dermatology, Emergency Medicine, Family Medicine, General Surgery, Internal Medicine, Neurology, Ophthalmology, Pediatrics, Psychiatry, Radiology, The Match, Urology

April 25, 2012

by Andrew

Now that I am in the first year of residency I am beginning to think about landing that first real job. As a Transitional Year resident I am heavily involved with the Internal Medicine residents at my hospital. I found out very quickly that these internal medicine residents are HIGHLY sought after. In fact, many of them receive job offers on a weekly, or even daily basis. The jobs that are in highest demand for internists are outpatient primary care and inpatient hospitality. Many of my senior residents are being offered salaries between $200,000 and $300,000 along with many benefits including loan repayment. There are even some offers higher than $300,000 for less desirable locations! This is in a stark contrast to the ophthalmology job market that I will face, where starting salaries are low and it is terribly difficult to get your foot in the door.

Recently, I came across the Merritt Hawkins database. Merritt Hawkins obtains information about starting salaries and benefits for newly graduated residents. I speak about their great physician salary database in my Ultimate Guide to Physician Salaries. However, their database also contains a list of the 20 most recruited specialties in medicine. The list may shock you! The ability to find a well paying job right out of residency is NOT AT ALL correlated with the competitiveness of the specialty. Case in point: family physicians and general internists are the two most highly recruited specialists in medicine!

From Merritt Hawkins

This list represents the Top 20 most ‘requested physician searches by medical specialty.’ The numbers represent the number of times Merritt Hawkins was used to recruit a person from the respective specialties (Merritt Hawkins full PDF including physician compensation data is available here for free). So, when you are deciding on a specialty, don’t forget that competitive does not equal good job placement. In fact, many of the least competitive specialties are very high on this list (pediatrics, psychiatry, family medicine)

Tags: 3rd year, competitiveness, eResourses, jobs, salary

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Preparing for USMLE Step 1

Categories:

Step 1, The Match

April 24, 2012

by Andrew

I recently read a great article about preparing for the USMLE board exams an another great medical student website called Medical Student Insider. The author is a soon-to-be psychiatry resident from UCLA name Mike Frazier. Any time you hear or read advice about studying for boards you should always take it with a grain of salt; this is because we all study and learn differently. However, after scoring above a 250 of Step 1, soon-to-be Dr. Frazier's words pack quite a punch!

Highlights from the Medical School Insider Article:

USMLE Step 1 is the most important factor in determining your competitiveness in the match.
USMLE World is KING. I totally agree! After completing 2,000+ USMLEWorld questions, I sat down at the real Board exam and felt like I was just doing more USMLEWorld questions. They prepared me perfectly.
First Aid for the USMLE Step 1 is a priceless book. Buy it early, use it your first two years, and then devour it while studying for Step 1.
Set a Goal!
Create a study schedule to help you achieve your goal.

Read the full article to see what else Mike Frazier says about studying for Step 1.

Tags: competitiveness, eResourses

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Pre-operative Clearance Checklist

Categories:

Residency, Family Medicine Rotation, General Surgery Rotation

February 6, 2012

by Andrew

A frequent question in the outpatient setting is whether or not a patient is optimized for surgery. There are a number of things that a physician must check in order to properly send a patient back to a surgeon with a gold star. I recently used the Johns Hopkins Internet Learning Center (HopkinsILC) to study the basic pre-operative evaluation and I highly recommend it (requires access from your school or hospital, many hospitals have access, ask your librarian). There is a great review pdf available from HopkinsILC which details some of the highlights of the lesson. Below I will summarize some points from the pdf. To learn more, you should ask for access to HopkinsILC, it is a great resource.

If the patient has any active cardiac issues, surgery should be postponed. This includes…

Recent myocardial infarction (<30 days)
Active cardiac disease (unstable angina or worse)
An uncorrected arrhythmia
Severe aortic stenosis

The patient must be able to complete 4 or more ‘metabolic equivalents of task’ (METS). This includes

Climbing a flight of stairs
Walk for 30 minutes
Play tennis, bowling, or other more intense sports
Able to vigorously clean a house (scrub floor, move furniture)

There are a few medications that must be stopped prior to surgery. Some examples (not an exhaustive list) include…

If the patient is on blood thinners (coumadin) or anti-platelet drugs (plavix, lovenox, etc) these may have to be stopped and the surgeon will have to be part of the discussion
Diuretics, ACE-inhibitors, and ARBS are usually held
Oral hypoglycemics are usually held for 1-2 days
Insulin is usually decreased by 50%
Sedatives are usually held

Again, here is the link to the pdf explaining the above points. And here is the link to the HopkinsILC website.

Tags: eResourses, study tool, websites

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American College of Radiology: Appropriateness Criteria

Categories:

Residency, All Rotations, Radiology, eResources

February 6, 2012

by Andrew

Have you ever wondered what imaging test should be ordered for your patient? What radiologic test would be most beneficial in this situation? What imaging test should I order first? If a patient comes in with a painful knee, should I get an x-ray or go straight to MRI? If a woman comes in with a non-tender breast mass should I get an ultrasound before the mammogram? These are difficult questions; luckily The American College of Radiology (ACR) has our back! The ACR publishes a fantastic online resource they call the “Appropriateness Criteria” which details the best imaging tests for nearly every presentation.

http://www.acr.org/ac

They website allows the user to choose between a variety of organ systems (e.g. women’s health, urology, gastrointestinal). In each organ system the user can then choose a specific complaint (e.g. breast mass, hematuria, dysphagia). For each complaint, the ACR then allows the user to choose what specific patient presentation is occuring (e.g. 35 year old woman with a new breast mass vs. 35 year old woman with a mass seen on mammogram vs. 70 year old woman with a new breast mass). In each circumstance, the ‘Appropriateness Criteria” explains what is the best radiologic test to help diagnose the patient’s problem. They explain in detail the advantages and disadvantages of each test (MRI, CT scan, ultrasound, x-ray, etc) for each specific problem.

The criteria are updated every few years, the most recent data comes from 2009. One of the best parts about the ACR Appropriateness Criteria can be found at the end of each section. Not only do they make suggestions about which tests will be most useful in diagnosis, they also provide a literature review for EVERY SINGLE patient complaint which outlines what research and studies they are using when making their suggestions.

I HIGHLY RECOMMEND this website. In fact, there are few resources that I can recommend higher. I have used this many times and they intricacies and precision of the criteria still surprise me. There is NO BETTER RESOURCE available to determine which imaging tests are indicated for a specific patient presentation.

Tags: eResourses, websites

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Dealoz: Textbook Price Comparison

Categories:

Pre-Med, Preclinical Years, eResources

February 6, 2012

by Andrew

Throughout college and medical school I had to buy thousands of dollars worth of textbooks. During my first year of medical school I came across the world’s best textbook website: http://www.dealoz.com/. DealOz allows you to search all available websites, auction sites, book stores, and online sites for the textbook you are looking for. All you need is a title or IBSN and DealOz will do the rest of the work. If you have every used www.kayak.com for flight tickets, DealOz works the same way by comparing all available options.

After inputting the book of choice, DealOz will compare all of these locations and report back to you the lowest price available. You can search for all available books, or you can choose to search only for ‘new’ books. DealOz will then link you to your seller of choice. Try it, you will like it. I have saved hundreds of dollars using their website.

Again, here it is

http://www.dealoz.com/

Tags: eResourses, websites

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Internet based paging system

Categories:

Third Year, Fourth Year, eResources

January 18, 2012

by Andrew

howstuffworks.com

If you need to send numeric or text pages to medical students, residents, or attendings Telepage Web Pager is the best website. Most hospitals have a built in method to text page anyone with a hospital affiliation. However, this web based paging system allows you to page anything you want to any pager in the country. Try it, it’s free!

http://www.telepagewebpager.us/

Tags: eResourses, rounding

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The Best Free Software For Students

Categories:

Pre-Med, Preclinical Years, Third Year, Fourth Year, eResources

November 13, 2011

by Andrew

If you are anything like me, you will do anything to avoid paying thousands of dollars for the next Adobe product. After ten years of higher education (and at least 4 to go!) I have tested hundreds of software packages; in this post I will list the best free and open source programs I have found. Learn to love open source software…and you will soon learn how to spend those thousands of dollars you saved! My software list will certainly not be a comprehensive list of all the great open source programs. For a complete list of free software programs I have three recommendations.

The best resource is sourceforge.net which is a nearly complete collection of all reputable free software.
FileHippo.com is a free website that lists hundreds of free software packages by category
schoolforge.net is a compilation of hundreds of free and open source software programs that is easily searchable.

WEB BROWSER

Google Chrome is a no-nonsense, super fast web browser. Here is just one reference proving Chrome's speed superiority (from cnet.com). For mac users, Safari is a distant second. While I used to enjoy Firefox, it takes nearly twice as long to load web pages than Chrome. We all know how terrible Internet Explorer is.

WORD PROCESSING, PRESENTATIONS, SPREADSHEETS

OpenOffice is a well known counterpart to Microsoft Office. The free software includes a fully capable word processor, a presentation organizer, and a fully loaded spreadsheet tool. In essence, you get Word, PowerPoint, and Excel for free. An added bonus, you can save any file in OpenOffice format OR in the corresponding Microsoft format so there will never be compatibility issues.

CALENDAR

My love for Google products will now show through. Google Calendar is simple and highly effective. You can merge nearly all online calendars into your Google calendar account. You can send yourself reminders using email, phone call, or text message. You can list recurring events in any imaginable patter (e.g. same date each year, 2nd Saturday of March each year, etc.)

IMAGE MANIPULATION / GRAPHIC EDITOR

1. Gimp is a professional image editor with a student's pricetag. This free program comes with nearly all the bells and whistles you would find in the newest version of Adobe Photoshop. The user interface is not idea and takes some getting used to. However, with a price tag of $0 this is a great piece of software.

2. I have heard great things about Paint.Net. I must admit, I have never used it because I have spent so much time using Gimp that I don't need anything else. However, it is worth a try if you are looking for more free graphic editing options.

AUDIO EDITOR

Audacity is a free, open-source program that facilitates the recording and editing of all audio and sound files. I often use it to make my own 'radio edited' song versions.

PDF READER AND WRITER

Foxit Reader is far better than the free Adobe Reader. It requires far less resources when it is running on your computer, and it provides free mark-up tools including text editing, highlighting, commenting, and basic geometric shapes.

PDF CREATOR / CONVERTER

CutePDF Writer is the free version of CutePDFs vast line of products. The free writer allows you to convert any image, document, or screen shot to a PDF. I use this product all the time. I save documents as PDFs and place them on my thumb drive rather than printing everything out.

ANTIVIRUS SOFTWARE

There are actually quite a few free antivirus options out there. Many of the web giants (Google, Yahoo, MSN, etc) have their own free antivirus software. My personal favorite is Avast!, which the program that comes with GooglePak. Just be sure you click on the FREE version, as they have other options.

PERSONAL FINANCE

Mint.com allows users to track all bank accounts, credit cards, loans, and investments in one place. The software is similar to costly software like Quicken, but is free and is web-based: which means you can check your information on any computer, any time.

BIBLIOGRAPHY, CITATIONS, REFERENCE MANGER

The best resource in this category, I must admit, is not free. EndNote is a must-have resource for research and reports. It is user friendly and will save you hours of time by automatically plugging in your references and bibliography. There are a number of free programs that try to mimic EndNote's features. Some are good, but after trying them I ended up purchasing a student edition of EndNote because it is so much better. Here is a list of free bibliography and reference managers. Or you can check out the wikipedia page which compares all reference managers, free and non-free.

STATISTICAL ANALYSIS

R (The R Project for Statistical Computation) is a free text-based statistical computational software program. It is not for the feint-hearted. The learning curve is steep, but once mastered, this free software provides all the tools to run any statistical analysis, graph, or plot.

LaTeX EDITOR

Not all LaTeX editors are created equal. WinEdt is a clean editor without the frills of other programs. I have used this software for 5 years and I have never had even one problem (something that can NOT be said about most LaTeX editors!) The free version will frequently ask the operator to purchase the full version, but it is never required.

BRAINSTORMING AND MIND MAPPING

XMind assists individuals and teams in keeping track of ideas and goals. If you have never used mind-mapping software, you need to start. XMind creates the prettiest visual map, but there are other options that work just as well. FreeMind is another great one.