Last week my ACL case was canceled, so I had the opportunity to go to grand rounds. I haven’t been in months, but I try to get there when I can. (Free CME)
So, I head down with our new PA Student, and the woman presenting was speaking on pancreatic cancer. I don’t have a whole lot of interest in pancreatic cancer specifically, so I was expecting to be B-O-R-E-D .
Anyway, it turned out she that she was a fantastic speaker – here’s why: (side note: you should be using this stuff too…)
• Her slides weren’t busy. She just put a few bullets points up in large font. (Man, I love bullets)
• She used her slides to cue her memory and help you follow along.
• She put up an anatomy slide of the pancreas with all of its adjacent structures. Then walked through the anatomy using it as cues for symptoms and why they would occur. She didn’t need notes, she just needed the mental cues.
• She made a bunch of mistakes, but just laughed at herself and kept moving forward. She used those mistakes to connect with the audience. She wasn’t robotic; she was a person sharing about a topic she knew a lot about and really enjoyed.
It was refreshing to see, and we learned a lot. Alright, I did get fidgety at the end, but overall it wasn’t too bad.
Now, part of the key to her success was that she was intimately familiar with her subject material. She knew it backward and forwards. She didn’t have to THINK about it. She didn’t have to translate it. She just knew it.
Picture knowing your time’s tables as you move through a math problem vs. stopping to think…
(3X3)-47 = X
In your brain, you see 3×3 as 9. You don’t stop to calculate it. You don’t pause and pull out your calculator.
How about this one:
(29*87)+47 = X
That one is much different, right? It doesn’t have to be, but it is. It isn’t any harder to learn 29*87 than it is to learn 3×3. You just haven’t done it.
The same goes for the medical content that you’re supposed to know. Man is it easier if it’s at your fingertips compared to if you really have to think and work to remember it. It’s easier if it’s just part of your brain like your phone number or how to cook your favorite recipe. The first time was hard, but now it’s just part of you.
There are a lot of ways to keep that information right up front, but one great one is…
The Final Step.
But, an even better one is The Final Step 2.0
I stopped all sales on the first edition because the second edition is so close to being ready and it is awesome!!! It’s nearly double the size. Did you hear that?! DOUBLE. You can use this thing for a coffee table. I can’t wait for you to see it.
But I’m only printing 200 copies in the initial run. Once those are gone, I’m shutting down sales. I’m certain there will be few small kinks to work out, so I want to get a handle on those before continuing to produce them.
That being said, this edition is going to come with some sweet bonuses and I can’t guarantee that TFS 2.0 will ever sell as one book again. I’m already thinking about breaking it up into two volumes and rearranging some things, but I can’t say for sure.
Anyway, if you want to all but guarantee that you get access to a copy of this memory tune-up on paper, you’ll want to get your name the early bird list.
Sign up here and you’ll get a special link before it goes on sale to the general community. (There also might be a small discount code involved.)
Brian Wallace