typical Anki screenshot

I finally managed to register for the USMLE Step 3 after going through all the hoops that the NY State Department dishes out for physicians. Now the only thing left is to learn the material for the test. The test itself is a two-day exam with clinical scenarios relating to general medicine. It’s run by the National Board of medical examiners, but is actually administered by the folks at Prometric. (I’ve taken MSCE’s and IBM AIX licensure exams by them in the past, as well as Step 1/2 exams).

I haven’t decided how to prepare for the exam. I haven’t purchased any books yet, nor have I the urge to. The exam itself was $690, and the NY State Dept charged me $735 to make sure I’m not a villian.  What a rip.

However, since I’m not necessarily in the mood to do any group studying, I might try to use some spaced-repetition software to help some of the material sink in my head.  Spaced repetition memory is neither a novel nor cryptic concept. It simply means that the more you see something, the more likely you are to remember it. It’s all about registration and recall. We do it when we learn languages–you probably used flash cards in the past. That’s all there is to it.

Supermemo was one of the first softwares that I had used for electronic flashcards. There was a Palm version [whose website appears defunct now], that you could load onto your PDA and study on the go.  The two new open source flashcard programs that I like are Anki and Mnemosyne. They both work well, and have an intuitive algorithm to show cards that are less familiar more frequently so that you can learn them. Both of them can be used on a flashdrive; Anki has an iPhone/iPod Touch port as well. There are plenty of premade decks available online to use; most of them are for languages. I think the authors originally wrote them to learn Japanese.

If I ever get a chance to write up my flashcards, they’ll be available for download on this website. The downside to all of this? Time and motivation. Ah yes, inertia at its best.

computing usmle, work