Learning should be a democratic process not an autocratic one.

Hassan S.

I attended Rutgers University for my undergraduate biology degree and went to a Caribbean medical school after that. I have completed a competitive Residency at Tower Health in Pennsylvania, where I was involved in academic activities including teaching medical students. I am currently a practicing second year Pulmonary and Critical Care fellow at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. My early unconventional experience in medical education allowed me the opportunity to focus on social learning. My former classmates and I focused on making things simpler for each other to understand. I believe this cooperative learning and back and forth encourages a more robust grasps of complex topics. I can offer my insights on difficult to understand problems and unconventional ways to see through them.

The critical care setting is the purest application of anatomical and physiologic principals. I would like to share my insights on these topics and their practical application. It’s about building a small base of knowledge that takes root on memorizing simple rules and your understanding is built on that base.

I am a visual and hands-on learner. I think a great many of us struggle to make sense of scientific words and concepts. Most of these concepts are easy to understand when they can be simplified in plain language. All the models of standardized testing discourage that simplification. The explanation in question banks remove the understanding of concepts and boil them down to rote memorization. I think there is a better way. I found when I learned and taught these concepts in past in simple language, I was able to achieve 99 percentile scores with USMLE exam all three times.

Simplification is key, avoid memorization when you can and where you can’t, categorize it. A few hours of organizing your learning process is all you need.