#seniorcycle2

Print a list with all  the surgery and medicine lectures. And a list of the surgery book chapters, get a calendar and plan this on paper.

I’m sharing with you here the plan I used; it allows you to go over the material almost 3 times until the written exams.

1-First review:

Aim of this review: to give you a general idea about the topic, to establish a base that you will later reinforce. This will take the most time because you are reading the material for the first time, if there’s anything that you need to look up, notes to add to the lectures, then do so now.

Time needed: about 3 months, plan to finish it by new year’s.  

Material used: Medicine lectures + Surgery books and RCSI surgery lectures.

Does it matter what I study first or in what order?

Not really, divide the material you have the way you like. You can do all of surgery followed by medicine or alternate. In general, I gave one month for Surgery. For medicine, I did a system a week (of cource this is not fixed, some systems will need more, others only couple of days).

2- Second review:

Aim of this review: To learn and go over the material you have already read before, this is the time you will focus on the important points, the criteria, the classifications to make sure you remember them. You can start at this point quizzing yourself, using the TOSCEs and the questions at the end of each lecture.

Time needed: about 2 months, plan to finish it before march

Material used: Medicine lectures + TOSCEs, Surgery book + Case based surgery lectures.

3- Third review:

Aim of this review: To go over the IMPORTANT points only + Emergency lectures (very very very very very very important) + Sub-I forms. Not the time to review everything from scratch, you have already done that twice. Things you noticed came up in previous years, important criteria, important numbers or definitions and so on.

Time needed: 1 month (basically until you final written exam)

Material used: Lectures + Surgery book + past papers and TOSCEs

Disclaimer: This is not a perfect plan and will not work for everyone, but it worked for me because I tailored it to my own style of studying. Please do the same and set it at your own pace, it’s up to you whether you want to do 1,2,3 or 4 reviews.

Remember to keep time for yourself, breaks within a busy day and free weekends to enjoy every now and then.  

The next post “Daily routine” will be the last one in the series of (SC2 start up guide). Posts will then be directed towards SC1.

Exam prep posts will be up in due time.

Feel free to drop any question or suggestion at the ask section.