For those that don't know, after the first two years of medical school, every student takes the first step in becoming a licensed physician. Although technically not really a board exam, that's what it's called colloquially. I just took it. It wasn't a pleasant experience.
The way to imagine this test is to think of everything that you learned throughout college. And I mean everything, even down to the smallest little details from your freshman biology class about mitosis and meiosis. Then add on top of that, two years of med school, which is roughly the equivalent of four years of undergrad in terms of credits. After studying that impossibly large amount of information, you get to take a 280 (USMLE) or 400 question (COMLEX)* test that makes sure your basic medical knowledge is there. A few weeks afterward, you get a 3 digit score that residency directors will use to judge you when applying for residency. Fun stuff.
At any rate, boards are a big deal. They're kind of like the BAR exam, but for doctors. It's a super stressful time filled with much anxiety, lots of memorizing, tons of late nights, and more anxiety thrown on top of it for good measure. So how do you tackle the beast? Honestly, that depends on how you study, but this is how I did it. I still don't know my scores yet, but I feel like I did well enough that it could work for others too.
First off, I accepted the fact that there was no way that I was going to remember everything that could be on this test. It's frankly impossible. After accepting this, I was a little relieved, but not enough to stop studying entirely.
The second thing that I did was planned out how I wanted to go about studying. I'm an active learner, which means that reading textbooks without doing something active doesn't help me a whole lot. My typical day during my dedicated study time consisted of 4 hours of "book work" in the morning, roughly 4 hours practice test questions in the afternoon, and then a couple hours of videos at the end of the day covering the information that I went over in the morning. You're probably thinking, "Wait a second. He just said that reading doesn't do it for him, yet here he is saying book work. He must not know what that means." By book work I mean that I read out of a lovely book called First Aid for an hour, then I would "test" myself by standing up at a white board and writing down everything that I remembered from my reading. I would skim through the pages to see the different topics and then write down. If I didn't remember something, I would re-read that section. Thus, it was more active and my reading time had to be focused reading. Otherwise I wouldn't remember anything when I went to write down.
As I said earlier, my afternoons were filled with practice questions. I used a couple question banks (Combank and UWorld) to test what I had learned in the morning. Both of these banks allow you to choose the topic to be tested on. For example, if I read the cardiovascular section in the morning, I would get my cardio for the day by doing cardiology questions. Doing these questions was probably the most beneficial part of my day. The benefit basically comes down to this: you don't know what you don't know. By focusing on the questions and the explanations provided by the question bank about the question, I was able to hone in on my weaknesses. It's kind of a brutal and somewhat discouraging way to learn things, but very effective. Getting your rear handed to you via questions about something you thought you knew well serves as good motivation to keep studying, but it is a little depressing. That being said, I (and all my friends) found practice questions to be extremely useful.
The last thing that I did was set aside a day to relax every week. In my case, that day was Sunday. I would go to church with my lovely wife and son, and then relax with them the rest of the day. Having that day off made the biggest difference for me. It doesn't make much sense, but having one day off every week helped recharge me and was something to look forward to at the end of the week. It was so nice not having to think about the different gene mutations in cancers or what specific diseases look like under a microscope. I even started to notice that Mondays tended to be my most effective study day. Go figure.
Anyway, this is what the last two months of my life have looked like: lots of sitting in a chair, writing on a white board, and practice questions, followed by a nice respite on Sunday.
* There are two different licensing exams based on the type of medical degree that you're pursuing. If you're an MD student, you must take the USMLE (United States Medical Licensing Exam). If you're a DO student (like me), then you must take the COMLEX (College of Osteopathic Medicine Licensing Exam) and you can choose to take the USMLE if you want to or if you're slightly masochistic like me.
