Conversations About ADHD in Med School Part 1 Lectures in med school: you know they're essential. You know what's discussed will be on the exam. And, vitally, it may be something you need to save a life one day. But, if you're struggling, it might seem impossible to actually learn during lecture — especially if you're also navigating medical school with ADHD.  In this new podcast miniseries, Conversations About ADHD in Med School, host Ryan Orwig and Mike, a former STATMed student, discuss the various ways learning in med school is complicated by ADHD. In this episode, they dig into the potential difficulties of learning in lecture. They discuss issues with impulsivity, distractibility, and inattention, as well as strategies to mitigate them. "You feel guilty because you just wasted a whole day. You know you're going to have to get the information somehow, and you know how hard it is to catch up. You're tired because you've been fighting to pay attention for six or eight hours. You're angry and exhausted because everyone else just spent the same hours you did, but now they get to dinner, they get to go out and hang out with their friends. But you're trying to catch up and finish that eight hours. And you're not even close." - Dr. Mike

“One of the lesser-known issues that the average person might not immediately associate with ADHD, working memory is the aspect of your memory that everything has to pass through on the way in and pass through on the way out. You can think of it as a workbench — or a chalkboard. There’s limited room, and that space will fill up. When more information comes in, it pushes out the old stuff.” -Ryan Orwig  In episode two of our podcast miniseries, Conversations About ADHD in med school, host Ryan Orwig returns with Mike, a former STATMed class participant, to discuss issues with working memory and how this can impact med students with ADHD. “I didn’t even know it [working memory] was a thing. You just kind of compensate through your life. You use sticky notes or write things down, or find ways to compensate without really knowing what working memory is, that it’s a problem, or that it can cause problems.” — Dr. Mike

Conversations About ADHD in Med School: Part 3In episode three of our podcast miniseries, Conversations About ADHD in Med School, host Ryan Orwig returns with Mike, a former STATMed class participant. They dig into how issues with executive function can negatively affect students with ADHD. During this conversation, they discuss what they term "executive dysfunction." Ryan and Mike also share strategies med students can use to mitigate these issues.  "I think executive function issues are probably the widest and biggest of all the ADHD issues. With being a first-year student, even getting tasks completed, getting papers done, getting notes mapped out, and getting the lectures done [is extremely difficult]. Because your brain is always running and you always want to be focused on something else when you really have to stop and focus on one thing for an extended amount of time is probably the most difficult time. Trying to finish up whatever thing you're working on at that time because your brain always wants to skip to the next thing." Dr. Mike

Conversations About ADHD in Med School: Part 4It's happened to the best of us. You've got a laundry list of things to do, but before getting started, you sit down for a second and glance at your phone. Then, suddenly, it's 3 hours later, you're hungry, you're confused, and you've inadvertently memorized three TikTok dances. (Maybe that last part is just us…) But, the point is, your day got away from you. When this happens occasionally, it's not that big of a deal. However, if you keep finding yourself 3-hours later and very little to show for it, you may have a problem. Issues with time management and ADHD can go hand-in-hand, and the strategies you've used previously may not be cutting it anymore. In the fourth episode of our podcast miniseries, Conversations About ADHD in Med School, host Ryan Orwig returns with Mike, a former STATMed class participant. They share how issues with time management and ADHD can derail medical students as they study or take boards. During this conversation, they share specific strategies med students can use to overcome these issues. "I think time management is probably one of the biggest problems [with having ADHD in med school]. You're fighting against time. You've got a set amount of hours between one test to the next. And so, you know you have a set amount of work that has to be put in, in that set amount of time. But that's the fight against time because your ADHD is making you want to do other things. So, when you should be studying, you're looking at your phone, watching videos, and doing anything else besides studying. And it's a constant fight against time that you're wasting and losing." - Dr. Mike

Uncommon Pathways Episode 1Although the shortest distance between two points is a straight line, that’s not always the path that a career in medicine follows. Host Ryan Orwig speaks with STATMed alumni who share their uncommon pathways to their dream careers in our newest podcast miniseries. In this episode, Ryan and JT, an orthopedic surgeon, discuss challenges he faced in his journey to becoming a surgeon. JT recounts the issues he faced when struggling with boards. He also digs into the hurdles his relatively low scores caused when trying to get into a super competitive orthopedic surgery residency. "When I found out what my Step 1 score was, I was freaking out. And so, of course, I would ask people, it's like, man, you know, is this even worth it? Is this even worth doing? Should I just try something different altogether? And you know, almost universally, people told me, and this is what I tell people now, your step score shouldn't completely define you or dictate what you do. And so if this is something that you really, really want to do, and you know that beyond a shadow of a doubt, you should just go for it, and you should make every effort to make yourself a good applicant, despite the fact that you may not have the best test scores." - Dr. JT

Uncommon Pathways Episode 2Host Ryan Orwig speaks with STATMed alumni who share their uncommon pathways to their dream careers in this podcast miniseries. In the first episode, Ryan and JT, a surgeon, discussed the challenges low boards scores could cause when pursuing a competitive field like orthopedic surgery.  In this episode, Ryan is back with JT, an orthopedic surgeon, who shares how the STATMed Doctor Study Skills Course changed the way he prepared for exams. Here, JT shares the biggest takeaways from his quest to learn how to study more effectively. From the importance of frameworking to transforming his study sessions with retrieval practice and managing workflow while studying, JT shares his top three lessons learned. How To Study Effectively In Med School and For Boards "I would say the overarching thing was that I was very passive in how I would study. So that meant just reading or rereading material that I had read a thousand times over and just thinking, okay, well, maybe it'll stick this time. Or if I just keep reading this, it'll get imprinted into my subconscious. I realized it's not good because it's not intentional. And so what the study skills scores taught me was that you have to intentionally engage in the material, and the way you do that is by testing and retesting. So, instead of just reading through a passage, article, or review book, I had to framework this out. Like, I would have a blank, and it would be "name these three things associated with this fracture pattern." And instead of just rereading them, I would have to say, okay, I actually have to recall what these three things are." - Dr. JT

Uncommon Pathways Episode 3Host Ryan Orwig speaks with STATMed alumni who share their uncommon pathways to their dream careers in this podcast miniseries. In the first episode, Ryan and JT, a surgeon, discussed the challenges low boards scores could cause when pursuing a competitive field like orthopedic surgery.  In the third installment of our Uncommon Pathways podcast miniseries, Ryan is back with JT, an orthopedic surgeon, who shares how the STATMed Boards Workshop transformed how he approached board-style exams. They dig into the importance of implementing test-taking strategies that yield results and the benefits of identifying test-taking issues.  "What frustrated me was that I didn't have words to articulate the mistakes that I knew I was making. And so it was like, finally, I can identify the problem, and once you identify the problem, you can do something about it. And so y'all gave me this lens through which to identify my problem. And a big part of that was misreading and then twisting what the question was asking. And I would realize I was answering the wrong question like it was right in my head because that's the question that I was answering, but it's not the question on the test. That was a big error for me that I realized pretty early on." - Dr. JT

Study Groups Episode 1Love them or hate them, study groups can be a big part of many medical students' study strategies. In this podcast miniseries, we dig into the pros and cons of study groups and systems to implement to maximize the productivity of a group. In this episode, host Ryan Orwig sits down with Dr. Jim Culhane, Assistant Dean for Student Academic Success Programs and Professor of Pharmaceutical Sciences at Notre Dame of Maryland University School of Pharmacy. In part one of this miniseries, they discuss the pros and cons of study groups in medical school.  "My take on it is that study groups can be an effective tool in your learning toolbox if they are run appropriately and if we use some best practices. Unfortunately, often when I work with students, helping them plug up the canoe and bail water, I find out that the study groups they belong to aren't terribly effective. And because of some of the things they're doing in the study group. So I think it's a double-edged sword in a lot of ways. There is a mixed bag. It depends on how you use the tool." - Dr. Jim Culhane

Optimize learning in your study group with these strategies  Joining a study group sounds like a logical way to prepare for exams in medical school. You find a group with your peers, show up, study, ace the test. Rinse and repeat. While that seems like a sure bet, that's not quite how it usually works out. To get the most out of them, study groups require forethought and a little bit of strategy.  In this episode, host Ryan Orwig sits down with Dr. Jim Culhane, Assistant Dean for Student Academic Success Programs and Professor of Pharmaceutical Sciences at Notre Dame of Maryland University School of Pharmacy. Part two of this miniseries discusses the strategies med students can use when setting up a study group for success.  "I think it's really important for people that are joining a study group or forming a study group that they're really honest with themselves and with one another about what their goals and objectives are. Because some people are looking for that emotional support group, some are looking for a social group to join. Some people are just: 'hey, I don't care as long as I can pass this class. That's my primary objective.' And then you've got the gunners; they want the A no matter what. If you all don't have at least one shared reason why you're there, that can really lead to a lot of discord, I think, amongst group members. I like your idea of setting the stage first. That's the way things are gonna be." - Dr. Jim Culhane.

Strategies and techniques to optimize your time in a study groupIn this episode, host Ryan Orwig is back with Dr. Jim Culhane, Assistant Dean for Student Academic Success Programs and Professor of Pharmaceutical Sciences at Notre Dame of Maryland University School of Pharmacy. Part three of this miniseries digs into study group best practices.   "If you're doing any kind of application practice, whether you're in a study group or by yourself, again, simulating exam conditions is key. You want to put a time limit on solving the problem because you're not going to have all day on an exam. You want to make sure that you're attempting to solve that problem without any types of learning materials available. So that means notes, textbooks, similar types of problems. A lot of my students, when they sit down and do practice problems or practice sets, and they'll have their notes and their resources right next to them. And you know, it might be okay when you're a novice learner, and you're still trying to figure out how to solve some of these problems. You can learn an awful lot more from your failures and mistakes, right, than those successes. I think that's a huge part of problem solve." – Dr. Jim Culhane

We can help you figure out what’s next after a failed board exam  “Help! I failed my board exam… can you help me?”  We hear this - or a version of this - statement nearly every day. So, if you’ve failed a board exam, you’re absolutely not alone. And, you’re not necessarily looking at the end of your medical career. At STATMed Learning, we work closely with students who have failed the COMLEX, NAVLE, USMLE, or other medical boards exams.  In this episode of the STATMed Podcast, Ryan Orwig and David LaSalle dig into how STATMed Learning can help students who have failed their medical boards. They break down what students can expect from the STATMed Boards Test-Taking  Workshop and the Boards Study Skills Course. “Just to be clear, I think sometimes it’s easy to think that what we’re talking about is that we’re going to teach you some “hacks” to get past the test-taker, to read the mind of what they’re doing, to “beat the test”. That’s not what we’re talking about. These tests are not something where we can institute two hacks, and all of a sudden our scores are improving. This is really about learning about who you are as a test-taker, historically. We have identified about 15 individual bad habits that people implement while taking tests and working on a test. Most people aren’t doing 15 things wrong, most people are doing maybe four or five things wrong, and of those, they’re doing two or three things wrong all the time, and that’s what is costing them the majority of their questions. So that’s what the Boards Workshop is about; [discovering] the two or three things you’re doing wrong, how to spot them and what to put in place of that behavior. It’s in-depth, it’s intense, and it’s super effective.” - David LeSalle

New Podcast Miniseries Answers Your Top Questions About Studying and Test-Taking In Med School  In our newest podcast miniseries, we dig into the most common questions we get asked about studying and board-style test-taking in medical school. In Part 1, we dig into a top question we hear all the time: “With regards to medical board exams, are good test-takers born, or are they made?” We examine the “nature versus nurture” argument to see if bad test-takers are born or made.  “When we talk about test-taking at this level, I'm not interested in test-taking tricks or deductive reasoning strategies. That stuff is all invalid in my book. Test-taking at this level should be about cleaning up the test-taker's ability to interface with and show what they know on boards. Being a good test-taker means you consistently plug into a question and read it accurately, without adding or losing key information while drawing the correct inferences using the parts of what you know. In some manner, the good test-taker narrows the choices by eliminating options that are partially false and then choosing the safest remaining answer choice.”

For the Ask STATMed podcast miniseries, we dig into the most common questions we get asked about studying and board-style test-taking in medical school. In Part 2, we look a little deeper into the nature versus nurture discussion and determine how to tell if a missed question on a test or medical board exam is from a test-taking miss or a knowledge miss. In this episode, we explore specific test-taking issues like working memory limitations and the binary test=taking mentality.  “My view is test-taking methods, won't cover or bridge these knowledge gaps. Test-taking does not hack the test. Test-taking is about cleaning up the user interface so you can clearly show what you know, but you have to know enough. And that's addressed, through augmented streamlined study methods.” - Ryan Orwig

Use these strategies to get the most out of lecture-based learning Between the speed of lectures, the excessive cognitive load it requires, and the possibility of disorganized learning materials, lectures in med school can be tough — even for smart students. On this episode of the STATMed Podcast, host Ryan Orwig is back with Dr. Jim Culhane, Assistant Dean for Student Academic Success Programs and Professor of Pharmaceutical Sciences at Notre Dame of Maryland University School of Pharmacy. They dig into some of the factors that can make lecture-based learning in medical school so difficult – and discuss some “survival skills” students can implement. “You can't control the type of material that they're giving you, or how they're presenting it, or the speed at which they're presenting it at. But what you can control is how you interface with that material. And that's really why I like a lot of the techniques and approaches that you teach.” - Dr. Jim Culhane

The STATMed Way to Approach Medical Boards Prep  In this episode, host Ryan Orwig is back with Dr. Jim Culhane, Assistant Dean for Student Academic Success Programs and Professor of Pharmaceutical Sciences at Notre Dame of Maryland University School of Pharmacy. They dig into strategies students can use to prepare for medical boards. Here, they discuss strategies to implement when preparing for medical boards.  “You've got two real tracks or approaches to board prep. You've got the study component to it, where you're interfacing with the materials that your school provided or that you purchased. And then, you've got the practice question side where you're actually, going to mimic the exam or in the test-taking environment, in that way. And they cross over, they overlap, but they are two separate entities.” - Dr. Jim Culhane

Strategies bad test-takers can use to prep for medical boards Just like you wouldn’t practice basketball drills to improve your soccer skills, it’s important to approach prep for medical boards so you can “train the way you want to play.” In this episode, host Ryan Orwig is back with Dr. Jim Culhane, Assistant Dean for Student Academic Success Programs and Professor of Pharmaceutical Sciences at Notre Dame of Maryland University School of Pharmacy. They dig into more strategies students can use to prepare for medical boards, including using practice questions and the partial true/partial false strategy to prep for medical boards.  “But if you're hurrying, picking the first answer that looks right, if you're missing key words, if you know  that you're that kind of test-taker because all through pharmacy or medical school or veterinary school, you're constantly complaining to your professors, ‘I picked the first answer that looked right’, or’ I missed this important phrase in the question’, you're the type of person that better slow down a little bit and utilize your time resource a little bit more effectively.” - Dr. Culhane

Strategies for approaching test-taking on medical boards the STATMed way It goes without saying that a lot rides on your medical board exams. And before you even get to the point of taking the COMLEX, NAVLE, (or the exam for your field), you have to pass your med school exams. That’s a lot of pressure, especially for self-professed bad test-takers.  In this episode, host Ryan Orwig is back with Dr. Jim Culhane, Assistant Dean for Student Academic Success Programs and Professor of Pharmaceutical Sciences at Notre Dame of Maryland University School of Pharmacy. They dig into test-taking on medical boards and in the classroom. In part one of this two-part podcast, Dr. Culhane details the process of exam creation while Ryan shares STATMed’s meticulous approach to test-taking.  “If you’re going to do the Boards Workshop, we’re not going to fix your test-taking. I’m not going to go in and plug holes. We’re going to tear your system down to the ground. We’re going to bulldoze that sucker and build in its place our very rigid, very meticulous system.” - Ryan Orwig

More Strategies for approaching test-taking on medical boards and in the classroom the STATMed way You know that a lot rides on your med school tests and board exams. The pressure can be immense, and it only gets worse if you have test anxiety. But bad test-takers don't have to give up the dream of med school (or vet school, a Pharm D program, or a related career). STATMed Learning can help. In this episode, host Ryan Orwig is back with Dr. Jim Culhane, Assistant Dean for Student Academic Success Programs and Professor of Pharmaceutical Sciences at Notre Dame of Maryland University School of Pharmacy. They dig into test-taking on medical boards and in the classroom. In part two of this two-part podcast, Ryan and Dr. Culhane examine test anxiety and the psychology of behavior changes for bad test-takers.  "This is a fact of human nature. Behavior change is hard. It takes time. It might take one person five days, and it might take somebody else 15 days, it might take somebody else 30 days. It might take somebody five hours of concentrated practice, and it might take somebody 30 hours of concentrated practice. You just don't know. But this is why it's so important to have the knowledge, and have access to the practice questions, to be able to actually train." - Ryan Orwig

The struggle is real. Not for all med students (or vet, Pharm D, or PA students). But for the students we work with, medical school can be tough — sometimes it's even the first time a student has struggled academically. In our newest podcast miniseries, recent STATMed Study Skills Class alumni share the events that led them to take the Class and how it transformed their approach to studying.  In this episode, Ryan sits down with six recent STATMed Study Skills Class students from different schools, different regions and at different points in their careers who all had one thing in common: they were struggling in med school, PA school, or on the boards. In part one, we meet each of the students who share their reason for taking the STATMed Study Skills Class.  “I was on the brink of failure. I sat through two meetings on my performance and issues within the classroom. The first was patently unhelpful. On the second, I took command and decided to discuss a leave of absence instead of going through the specificity of that course. I found STATMed after doing a thorough search of what’s available within the marketplace. ...I had emailed a couple of them for information and got back quotes that were absolutely outrageous on the hourly fees. And I thought well, I don’t really want to spend $5,000 on a contract for tutoring when I know that I don’t need to be taught what’s going on in the classroom, I need to be helped with what’s not sticking for me. …I typed portions of vignettes of my story directly into Google and found a testimonial of one of your former students that was my story on the page. I thought okay, I could have written this story, so this is the place I need to start.”  -Elise, a first-year medical student

From mapping to memory palaces, STATMed Alumni share the skills that have transformed their studying habits If you’re struggling in medical school (or a related field), the tools you’re using may be working against you. If you’re relying on reading and re-reading material or continually listening to lectures but not getting the results you’re looking for, the issue could be your tools and strategy. In part two of this miniseries, Ryan is back with six recent STATMed Study Skills Class. In this episode, they share which of the skills learned in the Class have most impacted the way they approach studying.  “After going through the homework sets you’ve been giving us and diving into the maps and memory palaces, I, personally, have seen my brain change and be able to store and retrieve information more quickly and easily than I ever have in my entire academic career. And I think that’s the biggest game-changer. I’ve seen that I have way more potential than I think I do, and that’s what makes it most exciting about using this as one of the tools.”