[Applause]
how many times a day did you take out
your phone to Google something that you
vaguely remember it’s always some very
small consequential facts to you at that
moment and it’s embedded at the back of
your brain now I checked my browsing
history and on the average workday I
Google about 60 factoids a day so I
might sound a little excessive and I
might seem a little anxiety prone or I
might just be a medical student I’m a
third-year at Baylor College of Medicine
and throughout the years of our training
we continuously commit these small but
very consequential fast to memory in
diagrams like these every single label
and connection counts because well every
single one of them can cause disease
every single one of them can be a threat
to the health of a patient and this one
is a scientifically accurate diagram of
what my brain looks like sometimes so
how do you remember all these you can
always try crash cards that’s the first
method we usually turn to it’s pretty
simple a straight board it gets the job
done most of the time and it just
becomes a giant game of patching right
but flash cards are the definition of
two-dimensional right you flip from one
side to the other side and information
can be three or four or five dimensions
really information can have if you think
about it as many dimensions as it wants
so there have to be better ways to
remember this one alternative that I’m
sure many of you are is not device so
here are two examples the one of course
on the left
we’re preferable because it’s shorter
and features a free animal and the one
on the right a little more wordy and
roundabouts but you know whatever helps
right another idea that we have is a
common Association so this is when you
associate something that you’re trying
to learn what’s something that you
already know by heart for example here
you can connect the normal cardiac
pressures with the values of a nickel a
quarter and a dime but these methods
still are limited by how little
information you can really compress into
each memory hook or each snippet and if
the problem with flashcards like we said
was that they were very two-dimensional
and why don’t we try something a little
more 3d
it’d be something like these diagrams or
flowcharts right so on one hand you can
go through and make flashcards for every
single one of these connections and
memorize by brute force or you can learn
the system it’s a lot more compressible
that way so I’m sure you’re all thinking
wow I would love to spend that time
memorizing those tidbits of information
what can I sign up for my school what
four plus years of memorizing day in and
day out can get exhausting and so many
times during the last three I kept
saying to myself what am I doing here
what are we accomplishing really what’s
our goal and for a good one and a half
years I really didn’t have any good
answer it was then that we started
clinical rotations and this is a chance
for us to compress all those flashcards
the mnemonics the diagrams and to real
patients and real diseases more
imporantly you stick all the theoretical
medicine
of pace and that’s really invaluable
it was those cases those narratives that
I witnessed that really made the medical
knowledge more memorable and in those
cases that we wrote up or presented
I remember those details exactly from
their presenting signs and symptoms
their diagnosis and treatment and after
seeing series of patients we can
identify trends and identify healthcare
issues for example at our flagship
County Hospital
we often see the lack of access that
many populations still unfortunately
face immigrants refugees the homeless
the uninsured and this is important
because I believe that it is also our
responsibility to be on the lookout for
wide-ranging health care issues and not
just to care for the patient who happens
to be directly in front of us at that
time so I got into the habit of writing
these out when I saw them I really just
wanted to tell their stories and try to
cast light on those issues I hand and by
narrating them the facts became a lot
easier to remember so there’s a lot of
room for creativity here luckily
nowadays there are so many methods
through which to tell our stories right
so you can write and we can prevent and
we can create in so myriad ways we’re in
an age where really the sky’s our limit
advocacy telling those stories and
trying to make them heard is what really
made those facts stick with me and so I
believe that this is the best method to
remember and this applies no matter what
feels you’re in right always uncover
those issues
that are most important to you and
narrate them and we all have it in us
because if you think about it we all
witness things that no one else sees and
it’s easy to narrate when those
narratives are handed to us and not only
do we eat well attention where attention
is due we look at the added benefit of
having the facts stuck in our memory
without the painful memorization of
looking back and forth through
flashcards but let’s take this back to
the goal that we started with which was
memorization sometimes those narratives
aren’t just handed to us sometimes we
have to make our own and not only can
those techniques help us in the advocacy
of important issues I think that they
can also help us with the plain
memorization of hard facts very mundane
items so let’s take an example with
something that I think is pretty
commonplace a grocery list let’s say
that you promised your hungry friends
that you were gonna make them hamburgers
because you were trying to be a nice
person
and you put this off a little bit so you
only have strip for one all right time
for one trips to the grocery store so
you can’t forget anything so you have
our essential hamburger supplies and
some random items throw in all right
let’s start with a mnemonic we look at
the first list the essential items that
we talked about you can see that we can
take a mnemonic chop with some of them
right or cheese hamburger patties onions
and pickles and chop of course reminds
me of cooking so it ties into the theme
making better memory hook that leaves us
with three more items on our essential
now we can take a shortcut and just say
our chef is making a BLT in in there but
the purpose of demonstration let’s add a
little more narrative in other words
more action like a process now it looks
like a chef it’s having up some
vegetables you know maybe like what you
would use to make a casserole and from
what I understand they’re making
casseroles that are simple because you
left up and do all the work so all you
have to do is bake it and time it and
leave it that right so easy and L which
is on tomatoes and Liz that creates a
process and more of a story within all
right that leaves us with only the four
random items I talked about so let’s get
rid of gummy bears by making our your de
Fora headless chef a bear and I know
that gummy bears are pretty essential to
my diet so you know I want to Center
that is the narrative that leaves us
with only three more to account for well
let’s think about this logically since
we’ve been obviously doing that all
along it looks like our chef is maybe a
grizzly bear so it makes sense that
maybe he’s making this casserole for the
Grizzlies State Fair
and I really like this one because the
mnemonic actually sounds like the words
but it’s ghost and pork because Lee
sounds like great with the jira sound
state sounds with kind of sounds like
sea salt it’s strong as some cheese
sounds and fair of course both one
syllable words start with F and Edwin R
so we have our school story of our
gummybear chef who’s talking
chopped any for cheese hamburger patties
onions and pickles and making a
casserole which she will bake in time
and leave or on tomatoes and lettuce to
bring to the grisly State Fair for
grapes sea salt and flour well I
wouldn’t really recommend doing this
with all of your grocery list for the
handy things that you really need to
memorize on the go
I believe that narrative techniques can
really help so let’s go back to the
bottom line whatever you do and wherever
you are take those important issues the
things that really matters you can
create a narrative to remember them and
if it’s an issue of importance then tell
others about it you should advocate for
it and I think that will find that
memorization of the facts will then
become the easy part
[Applause]
how many times a day did you take out
your phone to Google something that you
vaguely remember it’s always some very
small consequential facts to you at that
moment and it’s embedded at the back of
your brain now I checked my browsing
history and on the average workday I
Google about 60 factoids a day so I
might sound a little excessive and I
might seem a little anxiety prone or I
might just be a medical student I’m a
third-year at Baylor College of Medicine
and throughout the years of our training
we continuously commit these small but
very consequential fast to memory in
diagrams like these every single label
and connection counts because well every
single one of them can cause disease
every single one of them can be a threat
to the health of a patient and this one
is a scientifically accurate diagram of
what my brain looks like sometimes so
how do you remember all these you can
always try crash cards that’s the first
method we usually turn to it’s pretty
simple a straight board it gets the job
done most of the time and it just
becomes a giant game of patching right
but flash cards are the definition of
two-dimensional right you flip from one
side to the other side and information
can be three or four or five dimensions
really information can have if you think
about it as many dimensions as it wants
so there have to be better ways to
remember this one alternative that I’m
sure many of you are is not device so
here are two examples the one of course
on the left
we’re preferable because it’s shorter
and features a free animal and the one
on the right a little more wordy and
roundabouts but you know whatever helps
right another idea that we have is a
common Association so this is when you
associate something that you’re trying
to learn what’s something that you
already know by heart for example here
you can connect the normal cardiac
pressures with the values of a nickel a
quarter and a dime but these methods
still are limited by how little
information you can really compress into
each memory hook or each snippet and if
the problem with flashcards like we said
was that they were very two-dimensional
and why don’t we try something a little
more 3d
it’d be something like these diagrams or
flowcharts right so on one hand you can
go through and make flashcards for every
single one of these connections and
memorize by brute force or you can learn
the system it’s a lot more compressible
that way so I’m sure you’re all thinking
wow I would love to spend that time
memorizing those tidbits of information
what can I sign up for my school what
four plus years of memorizing day in and
day out can get exhausting and so many
times during the last three I kept
saying to myself what am I doing here
what are we accomplishing really what’s
our goal and for a good one and a half
years I really didn’t have any good
answer it was then that we started
clinical rotations and this is a chance
for us to compress all those flashcards
the mnemonics the diagrams and to real
patients and real diseases more
imporantly you stick all the theoretical
medicine
of pace and that’s really invaluable
it was those cases those narratives that
I witnessed that really made the medical
knowledge more memorable and in those
cases that we wrote up or presented
I remember those details exactly from
their presenting signs and symptoms
their diagnosis and treatment and after
seeing series of patients we can
identify trends and identify healthcare
issues for example at our flagship
County Hospital
we often see the lack of access that
many populations still unfortunately
face immigrants refugees the homeless
the uninsured and this is important
because I believe that it is also our
responsibility to be on the lookout for
wide-ranging health care issues and not
just to care for the patient who happens
to be directly in front of us at that
time so I got into the habit of writing
these out when I saw them I really just
wanted to tell their stories and try to
cast light on those issues I hand and by
narrating them the facts became a lot
easier to remember so there’s a lot of
room for creativity here luckily
nowadays there are so many methods
through which to tell our stories right
so you can write and we can prevent and
we can create in so myriad ways we’re in
an age where really the sky’s our limit
advocacy telling those stories and
trying to make them heard is what really
made those facts stick with me and so I
believe that this is the best method to
remember and this applies no matter what
feels you’re in right always uncover
those issues
that are most important to you and
narrate them and we all have it in us
because if you think about it we all
witness things that no one else sees and
it’s easy to narrate when those
narratives are handed to us and not only
do we eat well attention where attention
is due we look at the added benefit of
having the facts stuck in our memory
without the painful memorization of
looking back and forth through
flashcards but let’s take this back to
the goal that we started with which was
memorization sometimes those narratives
aren’t just handed to us sometimes we
have to make our own and not only can
those techniques help us in the advocacy
of important issues I think that they
can also help us with the plain
memorization of hard facts very mundane
items so let’s take an example with
something that I think is pretty
commonplace a grocery list let’s say
that you promised your hungry friends
that you were gonna make them hamburgers
because you were trying to be a nice
person
and you put this off a little bit so you
only have strip for one all right time
for one trips to the grocery store so
you can’t forget anything so you have
our essential hamburger supplies and
some random items throw in all right
let’s start with a mnemonic we look at
the first list the essential items that
we talked about you can see that we can
take a mnemonic chop with some of them
right or cheese hamburger patties onions
and pickles and chop of course reminds
me of cooking so it ties into the theme
making better memory hook that leaves us
with three more items on our essential
now we can take a shortcut and just say
our chef is making a BLT in in there but
the purpose of demonstration let’s add a
little more narrative in other words
more action like a process now it looks
like a chef it’s having up some
vegetables you know maybe like what you
would use to make a casserole and from
what I understand they’re making
casseroles that are simple because you
left up and do all the work so all you
have to do is bake it and time it and
leave it that right so easy and L which
is on tomatoes and Liz that creates a
process and more of a story within all
right that leaves us with only the four
random items I talked about so let’s get
rid of gummy bears by making our your de
Fora headless chef a bear and I know
that gummy bears are pretty essential to
my diet so you know I want to Center
that is the narrative that leaves us
with only three more to account for well
let’s think about this logically since
we’ve been obviously doing that all
along it looks like our chef is maybe a
grizzly bear so it makes sense that
maybe he’s making this casserole for the
Grizzlies State Fair
and I really like this one because the
mnemonic actually sounds like the words
but it’s ghost and pork because Lee
sounds like great with the jira sound
state sounds with kind of sounds like
sea salt it’s strong as some cheese
sounds and fair of course both one
syllable words start with F and Edwin R
so we have our school story of our
gummybear chef who’s talking
chopped any for cheese hamburger patties
onions and pickles and making a
casserole which she will bake in time
and leave or on tomatoes and lettuce to
bring to the grisly State Fair for
grapes sea salt and flour well I
wouldn’t really recommend doing this
with all of your grocery list for the
handy things that you really need to
memorize on the go
I believe that narrative techniques can
really help so let’s go back to the
bottom line whatever you do and wherever
you are take those important issues the
things that really matters you can
create a narrative to remember them and
if it’s an issue of importance then tell
others about it you should advocate for
it and I think that will find that
memorization of the facts will then
become the easy part
[Applause]
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