Audio Learning for Step 1

The beauty of listening to audio to study for the boards is that it unlocks several hours of “studying time” previously unavailable to you. Your mileage may vary though, as you must be a good auditory learner for this to work.

Personally, I listened while…

• Walking
• Doing dishes or other chores around the house
• Getting dressed
• Working out

This allowed me to reclaim at least an hour every day of lost time and use it for studying. I found listening while walking a familiar route to be the most memorable, as I found myself associating certain facts with certain locations on my route, making it easier to remember them.

I recommend downloading a bunch of podcasts on your phone or iPod, getting a good pair of headphones with a “remote” button on the wire that lets you play and pause the music, and listening at 1.6x speed or so.

I used the following sources:

• Pathoma audio. Some say that you can scour the underpants of the internet to find it. Pathoma is certainly worth buying, however, as the book and the video lectures are essential for boards studying.
• Goljan audio. Ed Goljan, MD (a.k.a. Poppie) is a hilarious hematopathologist who is straight out of Brooklyn. Several years ago, he gave a series of boards review lectures to an international audience. Someone recorded them, and they are available for download at the following link: Goljan Lectures.* Here’s a backup. Goljan does a good job at complementing Pathoma and focusing on a few slightly different topics. He also blends in more material about clinical management. Additionally, whereas Sattar is “just the facts, ma’am” in Pathoma (aside from a few mnemonics), Goljan’s podcast is chock full of funny anecdotes and mnemonics, making it quite entertaining. You’ll hear tons of stories about his grandkids, and about crapping on someone’s lawn during a marathon race, among other old yarns. Though the material is becoming a bit dated, the fundamentals don’t change, and Goljan is a master teacher.

  

• Audio from your school. If you have podcasts available, use them! I downloaded several from mine; I will look into the copyright situation to see if I can make them available here.

Enjoy the extra hours you now have to study thanks to audio learning!

*I found this link thanks to shortwhitecoats.com, which hasn’t been updated since 2015 but has a lot of good articles to help you choose a speciality.