For Anatomy, the thing I came to learn as I went through my first 2 years is that the more anatomy you do before the session the more beneficial the session is for you and the more you learn. I used to try and make notes on all the anatomy for a particular week before the session, sometimes it was hard and I only managed part of the week’s content but the more I did the better it was for me.
I practically used TeachMeAnatomy.info for absolutely ALL of my Anatomy. In my opinion it was at exactly the right level and depth and it covered pretty much everything I needed to know at medical school (plus, it’s broken down so nicely and is so easy to understand). As I read through the relevant teach me Anatomy pages I’d type up notes on it and add in diagrams (both from TeachMeAnatomy and other images that displayed structures well from google). Sometimes if I found a topic confusing or couldn’t visualise it I’d use some YouTube videos to help me out. I’ve written a blog post with some of my favourite/most used channels in my first 2 years. At this point the purpose of compiling this huge document of Anatomy notes was to give me a vague appreciation for the topics that we would be doing this week, I wasn’t intending to learn it now.
After that I’d go to the Anatomy session, try to soak things up. Once specific things were mentioned parts of my notes would ring a bell so it helped to consolidate what I had written. There were also little bits that might have been mentioned in the session which I hadn’t incorporated into my original notes, so I’d go back and add those in afterwards. I’d also go through our online anatomy workbook and add in extra details from there. Once I had a full set off of typed notes I went and started to learnt it!
I used to make flashcards on absolutely everything and sometimes I’d make quick “sketchy” summaries. You can read my blog post on the way I used to study in my pre-clinical medical years to get a more detailed insight into the way I’d studied anatomy over those two years and which other methods I experimented with.
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