How Hard is Med School?! | ER Doctor's POV

I promise you if you were to memorize that entire book you would most likely get a perfect score on your board exams hey what's going on guys welcome to another video it's been a while since I've been making content pretty regularly so I'm trying to get back into the habit of making more videos for you guys if you guys didn't see my most recent video essentially I'm out here living in Michigan just started my emergency Medicine Residency about 3 months ago um everything has been going extremely well I'm loving the e are I'm loving what I'm doing um so if you guys have any questions about emergency medicine or about residency drop them in the comments shoot me an email I will get back to you guys but if this is the first time we're meeting my name is Michael AKA Dr merer I'm a first year ER resident and in today's video we're

going to be talking about kind of the hardest year of medical school and the reason I wanted to make a video about this is because I was talking to my buddy who's in medical school right now and he's currently second-year medical student and I was reminiscing on medical school in all of the different years and granted medical school is difficult but I would say each year you'll realize that there's different things that make it difficult if that makes any sense but after talking with him and after kind of reminiscing of my experience in medical school I think it's safe to say that your second year of medical school might actually be the most difficult and I'm going to talk about why in this video but before we get into that I want to quickly thank kenhub for sponsoring today's video but more on them a little bit later on so like I said every year of medical school comes with different challenges and difficulties every year you know you get a little bit more responsibility knowledge and you're required to know just a little bit more in general and if you're not super familiar with you know

all of the different years of medical school the first two years you know you're in the classroom you're studying you're reading you're taking a lot of exams you're really just build building up your general knowledge of medicine and then comes the second half of medical school which is your third and fourth year which is completely in a clinical setting whether that's in a hospital or a clinic but overall you're seeing patients and that's really when the real learning of medicine begins it's also important to know that your third and fourth year medical school is really when you start applying the knowledge that you learn during your first and second years and so as you guys can only imagine that will come with its own stressors you know seeing p patients talking with them being able to listen to them and extract information from your patients that will help you know come up with a differential diagnosis and you may be asking yourself well that seems you know pretty difficult so why are you saying your

second year of medical school is the most difficult and I think everyone's going to have you know a different opinion you know not all of you guys are going to think your secondy year medical school is the most difficult but I think if you know take a step back and look at Medical School you know in a comprehensive way there's a lot of stress that you're going to experience as a seconde medical student making it what I think is the most difficult year you know going through medical school I always heard that your second year of medical school was actually easier than your first year until I became a seconde medical student and I was like that is complete BS second year medical school was so hard for me and it's because you start to really dive into complex medical conditions treatments it's no longer the basic sciences and basic anatomy and all of the basic foundations of medicine it's generally when you start to dive into disease processes and how to manage and treat those now on top of you know doing all of that and learning all of those different things you're also tasked with you know teaching and mentoring firste medical students you're going to different lab ABS clubs that will help you kind of learn what specialty most interests you you'll start to be integrated into leadership positions within your medical school now on top of all of that you're also going to have to start worrying about your third-year medical school rotations and how to start preparing for those and then I think the biggest thing and the most stressful thing is you're going to have to start learning how to prepare for your first set of board exams so as you guys can see there is so much more that happens your second year that you just don't really experience your first year or even your third or fourth year of medical school like I said every single year of medical school comes with its different challenges and stressors but I just think your second year you're still so new in the process of all of these different things that the stress actually just feels a lot worse than when you get into your third and fourth year by the time you become a third and fourth year medical student you're used to you know being stressed out all the time and you're much better at managing that stress and being more organized now I will say there is a great resource out there that I highly recommend which is

actually the sponsor of today's video kenhub guys is an amazing all-inclusive Anatomy resource so if you haven't heard about it yet this is definitely something you're going to want to look into because it's going to help you guys really Ace your Anatomy exams during medical school it's going to also help you guys prepare for the anatomy sections of your board exams now kenhub actually just rolled out with their new physical Atlas that you guys can take around to your different Medical School classes to your clinical rotations it's going to help you guys stay up to date on your anatomy And if you guys are thinking of going into even a surgical sub specialty they will pimp you guys and ask you so many questions about Anatomy so it's going to be vital that you guys stay up to date on anatomy and that's where Ken hub is really going to shine for you guys now kenhub has two options they have a basic and a premium option but either way if you guys use my discount code which is down below in the description you guys will save 10% now the great thing about kenhub is they have hundreds of hours of video lectures to help you guys really solidify your Anatomy knowledge you're not going to be going through this all alone you're going to have certified professors teaching you the complex topics of anatomy so once you guys go through some of those lectures you read a little bit through the Anatomy Atlas then you guys will be ready to do the hundreds and hundreds of practice questions that kenhub is famous for and these are really going to be key for you guys to be successful on your Anatomy exams now the one thing that I really think is awesome about the kenhub atlas is it has QR codes throughout the book where if you scan the QR code it's going to take you to their online portal where you guys can study that topic and do practice questions on that specific topic there are so many other additional Fe features that I think are awesome about kenhub but this video is too short to go over them all so stay tuned for my full comprehensive video where I will also be giving out six discount codes where you guys are going to be able to access kenhub completely for free now guys this is only one resource that I think is going to really benefit you guys especially as a first and seconde medical student and it's really going to make your lives a whole lot easier so definitely check out kenhub and drop a comment down below if you guys have any additional questions so like I was

mentioning one of the most difficult Parts about being a seconde med student is preparing for your board exams whether that's step one or complex level one that is a big stressor that is going to be looming over you guys your entire second year um there's a lot of resources out there that will help you know how to best study for those board exams or when to start studying I have personally made videos on that topic so definitely go look on my channel for those videos but this is the first time you guys are taking a very serious uh medical licensing exam and it's the first of three board exams that you guys are going to have to take you know there's step one two and three and you'll be taking those you know all the way into your first year of residency and I'm currently in the position where I trying to figure out when to start studying for my complex level three exam so I'm not even out of the woods yet I'm still you know dealing with that stress on top of taking care of patients in the emergency apartment on top of continuing to learn you know medicine so the stress never stops and it never you know decreases or gets easier you kind of just learn to manage it better luckily as a second-year medical student your board exams are now pass fail which is a great stress reliever the board exams are not super difficult and if I was to give you guys any one piece of advice it would be to learn the step one book the first a book you know as well as possible because the more you know from that book the better your score is going to be I promise you if you were to memorize that entire book you would most likely get a perfect score on your board exams so honestly that would be my biggest recommendation and my biggest key to success on doing well on your first set of boards now however you go about learning that book that is completely up to you guys there are practice questions there are flashcards um there's simply reading the book highlighting you know memorizing it but I always tell my mentees and my friends that the more you know that step one book the better you're going to do so if that means using the book to also study for your med school exams then you know do that the other stressful thing

about second year like I mentioned was you know starting to set up your third year rotations and for most of you your schools will take care of that and for some of you like myself you know I chose to set up my own um I don't recommend that especially if you don't have the proper connections um but if it is an option um I'd be more than happy to talk with anybody you know about setting up your own Medical School rotations but that does add a component of stress because for a lot of you you're going to have to move away from wherever your med school is at to you know wherever your third year clinical rotations are at because usually they're not in the same city and for a lot of you this might be the first time that you have to leave your hometown and kind of go and be on your own and so besides all of those kind of

external stressors those additional stressors that come with being a second-year med student the content itself you know during your seconde medical school is pretty difficult at least in my opinion it was difficult for me um it's a lot of complex U medical topics that are primarily just tested on your board exams and you're really going to have little to no experience with them in the real world as a practicing physician um but for some reason our board exams dictate what is taught in our medical schools which I think is a very poor way of going about medical education um but that's a whole another topic so it makes medical school learning not the greatest and not the most interesting because you're not really focusing on the common things that you're going to be seeing you know on a day-to-day basis in the hospital or

in the clinic and kind of on a side note I always recommend to medical students to focus on the treatments of these medical conditions because I feel like medical schools kind of do a poor job of teaching the actual treatments because you're not really tested on treatments on your first set of board exams so that's really why they don't go into that as much but once you become a third-year medical student you're in some way expected to know some basic treatments you know of some easy bread and butter um you know medical diagnosis for example you know how do you treat a basic UTI you know what are the most common antibiotics used for UTI what are alternatives if people have allergies to those antibiotics so these are kind of things that kind of go untaught in medical school in some sense um so I would encourage you guys to learn these things on your own when you're going through different pathologies in your medical school class classes it's going to make you guys feel more prepared once you become a third-year medical student so honestly

guys to end this whole video because I could talk about medical school for hours and to be honest you guys have made it this far you guys are all going to become doctors so don't let the little things stress you guys out um you guys are all fully capable of doing well in your classes of doing well on your board exams and as second-year medical students nobody really expects you guys to be able to take care of a patient even as a first year ER resident my attending physicians barely expect me to take care of my own patients which it's funny because it seems like you hear that every single year but it's like at some point you need to be able to take care of your own patients which I feel like I am fully capable of taking care of probably 85 to 90% of the patients that I see but I think it's funny that I've heard that every single year of training that people just don't expect you to take care of patients even though that's what we are being trained to do so hopefully that gives you guys a little bit more Comfort um that nobody's going to expect you guys to really know anything as a second-year med student just focus on doing the best you can you know enjoy life don't focus on getting you know the top grades in your med school class I would highly recommend you know do your very best make time for friends and family make time for yourself you know watch a movie take a break you don't need to study all day and in fact as you guys have all heard you know space repetition is the best way to study so if you're not taking breaks you're not giving yourself time to forget the stuff you're studying and that space repetition is not actually kicking in so you do need to take breaks in order for space repetition to actually have an effect on your brain but yeah guys those are my tips I think you guys are all doing a wonderful job if you guys have any questions if you guys are feeling stressed or just need advice my email is down below feel free to shoot me an email we can talk through things drop a comment in the description below guys check out kenhub because I think it is a really good resource for you and I hope to see you guys in my next video