“I’m very regular, doctor”
Jul 26, 2008 in Study
As a working man/woman you will spend most of your week, like me, giving anaesthetics. Some days you will be on call long-days, some days you will be on call nights. Depending on your rota this may or may not be called on-call anymore. You could technically be working a partial or full shift, but for the purposes of this blog, I’m going to refer to on-call when you work outside the hours of 8am to 5pm.
Unfortunately you still have to read, mark, learn and inwardly digest a whole host of information, in preparation for what one of the Consultants I have worked with insisted on referring to as
“a little test”.
Slap.
One of the things that will make your life easier in setting out to study is setting aside regular time to read. Now personally I’m not much of a revision planner, and I don’t go in for those large wall charts people at college used to have in the run up to the exam. (They used to be elaborately coloured and precisely drawn, and took up more time to plan than it took to revise, I believe).
In any case, the point I’m trying to make is that you need to set aside time.
I had the luxury of 1/2 hour in the morning on the train and 1/2 hour in the evening on the train, in which to read a book or journal article, do some MCQs or listen to a podcast, which meant that of my 2-3 hours a day, 1 hour was conveniently scheduled for me, as there was not much else I could do!
If you don’t have a commute, or you drive, however, this makes things a bit more tricky. You need to sit down with your rota and significant other and decide when you are going to work. Plan out what evenings you are going to cook (use our recipes!) and which you are not. Perhaps get together with friends to both learn together and share the cooking. (Choose friends who have a large dining table and a dishwasher, for maximum efficiency here!)
The important thing is to make a schedule about when you are going to study, not necessarily what it is exactly you are going to study, at least, not until the point where you are about to sit down. (Although having said that, of course, you do need to make sure you cover the knowledge…)
