Apparently, my podcasting days aren’t over… Who would have guessed a bioweapon would bring us back together? You could have guessed. If you understand the Medical Mastermind Community has always been about authentic leadership. From our research on disadvantaged students, to mentorship development programs culminating in the Bronze Outreach Award from my medical school.

Thank you. Thank you for your support, and if you’re new to MMC – you owe a tremendous debt to the members that came before and built it up. Sadly, the membership software I’ve used for 14 years is no longer supported and it’s causing errors I can’t fix on the site. My project site is officially broken, after being available for free – with regular new sign-ups – for the past several years.

Are you ready for something new? No matter your specialty, your patients are no doubt fearful and anxious. Their hypertension and fatigue are off the charts and not responding to non-adrenergic mechanisms.

It’s not about burnout anymore

Folks, it’s time for our young leaders in medicine to rise to the challenges our world is facing during these trying times.

That is why I’m announcing the PTSD Academy Podcast on this channel – and some you have already answered. I’ve got at least one person from the good ‘ole days of the MMC to come back on for another interview, but on my new channel. At least, that’s all I can commit to right now. I am a little busy, as you know.

Ever wonder what happened to the people we interviewed years ago? I’m extending invitations again for follow up, only this time it’s different.

Join the cause and prevent physician and student job dissatisfaction, burnout, depression and PTSD.

Tell your patients that can’t sleep to try out my free PTSD music therapy page. This is where I play live, improvisational guitar to help you fall asleep. Yes, I’m so sleepy on the guitar I’ll have you and your patients snoring.

So, shall we bring back the MMC?

Let me know your thoughts.

Episode 63: Dr. Dan responds to a listener question after he’s stressed because he failed most of his very first round of med school exams. Learn the techniques that can save your grades.

Step 1: Quit doing the same, failing study technique over and over, trying harder each time. If it’s not working, it’s insanity to keep doing it.

Step 2: Watch the Speed Reading in Medical School video course and go straight to the grid that shows the different types of material linked with different study techniques.

Step 3: Listen to this podcast to see how to short-cut Dr. Dan’s Study System to get results fast, when you really need them in the first semester of medical school.

Episode 62: Learn to distinguish types of study material and the study technique that it best suits.

How to Study Anatomy

To learn how to study anatomy like a medical student and beat your peers on undergrad, you need to find someone who’s been there – done that. Look no further. Doctor Dan slows down the steps that busy medical students take in order to teach you EXACTLY how to study for anatomy.

I can tell you that this personally helped me quite a bit while I was getting my Nursing Degree Georgia. There were several things that I struggled all throughout my studies, but it was those first few steps and trying to get used to the hectic pace you are expected to operate at that threw me off the most. Of course, later down the line a few things proved difficult even while already used to things, but still. Getting your foot in the door is the first step. I hope this helps you.

Types of Study Material

Anatomy is aGRAPHIC type of material, not really narrative, process-oriented, or minutia-based. Therefore, you can use the following study approaches (explained in the podcast above):

Drawings, graphic books

Posters

CD/Online graphics with an exam mode

*OLD SCHOOL – blank paper covering the book labels

YouTube/Google a student summary

Show Definiteness of Purpose

Look for opportunities to teach the material or be a prosector and come in early to prepare your dissection before class.

Listen to the podcast episode on Definiteness of Purpose for more inspiration.

Episode 61: Dr. Dan answers a listener question about how “easy” it is to maintain a relationship as a premed and as a medical student.

Relationships in Medical School – transcript

 Pre-Med Relationships

Welcome to the Pre-Med Podcast. I’m your host, Dr. Dan. Today, I’m asking a listener question about how easy was it to maintain a relationship with my girlfriend during the pre-med years and during medical school. I want to first point out a couple of important life tips regarding choosing your mate, if you’re not already in a bond, because I can think of a few specific examples where I tried to date somebody or I was meeting somebody, trying to evaluate whether or not I wanted to be in a relationship with somebody when I was an undergrad, and I can remember a few choice quotes or experiences that happened that clearly pointed out that this was not the right person for me. I elaborated on this a bit more at Basementfloodcleanup.

Sometimes, it’s easier to point out what’s not working rather than really being totally assured in what is. I can remember one specific instance where I was talking to a female and she found out that I was pre-med and wanted to go to medical school and she made the comments, “Oh I guess you would make a terrible boyfriend then.”, but it was kind of funny but I was glad she said it because it told me what was on her mind. That’s a very self-centered comment to make. You should know that there are some dangers to Phenylpiracetam and people who take it. Learn about it’s side effects.

The Doctor’s Spouse

I took from that and other lessons in life that if I’m really sure about a path and I know that the Pre-Med Podcast and Medical School Podcast listeners are deadset on becoming physicians by and large. Some of them, their spark to going to medical school gets restarted by listening to the sound of my mesmerizing voice, right? I get emails like that every week. I’m not just being silly. I know yourselves, you’re a very inspired group of people.

Well, if you’re trying to date someone and they don’t share that support with you, they can be a distracting thing. I think it’s safe to say that if you’re not already in a committed relationship and you’re playing the field or shopping around, don’t rush it obviously, but if that person is not going to be able to help you with your journey or support you through the ups and downs of a medical education, then you can look at it like that person’s not the right one for you.

Follow Your Own Calling

If you feel driven towards this path of going into medicine, then you’re looking for things to fall in place. Even if it is something as remotely related to medicine as designing face masks (that you get on www.accumed.com/n95-mask-for-sale-respirator-safety-face-mask-z1.html), then hold onto it! They don’t always for us, but when it comes to choosing a mate in life, it’s important that that person be a support help for you, and even if they don’t necessarily want to choose a medical education path, if they love you, they can demonstrate that by their actions.

Make Sure It’s Love

I will point out there, the love is not just emotion or infatuation or eroticization, anything like that. Love is a sustained, committed course of action that you’re going to be by someone’s side and support them and taking interest in their interests. That is a healthy relationship if you have nothing else. Of course, I’ll throw God in there for sure, but if you’ve got a relationship built on those principles where you’re looking out for each other, then it’s not going to become a needy game of me, me and me and self-centeredness.

I was fortunate to have found a girlfriend while still a pre-med that shared that interest and was supportive, but we didn’t talk about it a whole lot and so I[...]

Episode 60: Carly was interviewed the night before medical school. Listen to her story of triumph and encouragement for others.

Meet Carly. A brave and bright student about to start medical school – TOMORROW!

This insider perspective is priceless. Listen to the podcast above…

Episode 59: Learn about the coming “MMC Mobile” and the seven stages of your clinical career that it will infuse!

Seven Career Stages TRANSCRIPT

Career stage number one, I call Mastermind Study Techniques. Before you ever get into seriously being ready to apply to medical school, you have to be a pretty organized person. You have to be doing pretty well. Many people that are successful doctors found that that came either somewhat natural or they were smart enough to surround themselves with people that rub off on them in a positive way and they didn’t party too much or they had a family that was a doctor and so they picked up a lot of that through tacit knowledge that is unspoken.

For a lot of us, though we’ve had to work very hard to keep up with the academics and with a mentorship and support website like mine, I hear a lot of people that are struggling out there, lots of people do, many don’t need help, professional help like me but some do, so Mastermind Study Techniques. One reason I got my email newsletter list over 3,000 subscribers was by offering a free speed reading one-on-one video that was popular for a long time and I’ve noticed it’s not really popular anymore.

I think it’s because people in what I call the YouTube age where everyone wants free advice on YouTube and then wonder why it doesn’t work have forgotten this principle that you get what you pay for. If you’re not willing to overcome that barrier of paying a fee, the higher the better, the less serious you are about following through with the results.

If it’s not painful for you and you don’t have to give something up for it, how much are you going to respect it or work for it, because at the end of the day, the Medical Mastermind Community and anything else in life that’s worthwhile is going to cost you work in time and effort. The YouTube culture, for a few years, saw people just going through the next video to learn a tip and shortcut things. The Medical Mastermind Community is here to tell you there are no shortcuts to career or job satisfaction.

If you want to be a doctor and you want to accomplish your goals, you’re not going to find a shortcut, so I really likely going to price tag on the website for that reason because I don’t like talking to people to just want something for free and aren’t satisfied, because they aren’t motivated to do the things for themselves. It’s not that I can’t help them. I’m helping you now if that happens to be you by telling you to quit doing that because if you don’t change that part about you, later in your career path, you’re going to realize that that’s a problem and so focus on your work ethic if you’re having that issue.

There are now 12 videos that I have combined all under the Mastermind Study Techniques. The old organization of the website had these videos scattered in four different places and I didn’t realize until I was re-doing this website that that was pretty hard to find, so thank you for your feedback Justin.

Basically, you’ve got about seven study videos that walk you through the Five-Step Study Method and Speed Reading, all that stuff is in there as well as how to guarantee your results with your feedback loops and basically giving you self-practice test way early and advance of the test to have time to adapt your study approach. [Inaudible 00:15:42] study techniques to force themselves that’s my favorite video of all them, so that’s about seven of them.

The other five are studying in the clinical science years. We’ve combined content that applies for both undergraduate premed students and medical students that are in their third year and beyond, even residents could benefit from that. In fact, these lectures that I put in there, I teach to interns when they come to our residency program. I teach those to doctors in their first year of training after they graduate from medical school. These are taught in a universal fashion. It doesn’t really matter what year you are in college or medic[...]

Episode 58: Today, I’m talking about the top 10 stressors experienced by freshmen college students.

Biggest Stressors PreMeds Face Every Day

 Of course, these same stressors do persist throughout all of your education, not just college but medical school and beyond as well. However, I think it’s important as I do more and more research, to go earlier and earlier in the process to get a better understanding of just who wants to be a doctor anyway?

This topic today was inspired by 2 purposes. One, I recently gave that publication that I practiced with you guys in our previous podcast in which I outlined the stress of exams and the evidence-based behind different interventions for stress on the Medical School Podcast. I presented that to a group of second year medical students and it’s right now, February of 2014, and this is a period where they really ramped up in preparation for the first major licensing exam. It comes up in the summer in about June every year where second year medical students take an exam to get … it’s the first of 4 … to get their license to practice medicine.

That content covers the first entire 2 years of medical school is by far the largest volume of information covered on a single exam and just about you have ever covered in your life up until that point. The MCAT stress in many ways is a little worse just because they are intentionally testing how you think, not what you know. At least, for the licensing exams, you’ve taken the class before. For the MCAT, you kind of can’t take the class. Yes, you take your prerequisites, but they’re going throw you in the scenarios and test how you think. They’re very, very good at it.

This study … the other thing that … I should say that the other thing that inspired this podcast episode was a recent publication in the psychiatric annals in December of 2013. It’s about these top stressors and resilience in college students. In this study, there was a sample size of 644 freshmen in college from 7 different universities in United States in the east. It’s a pretty good sample size, right? They administered a couple of instruments to them that could measure stress and asked them about what the different stressors were. Then they also had some questions designed to look at resilience and what the students felt were their strengths.

I’m going to go ahead and read what they said their top 10 stressors were. I’m going to focus more on other data presented in the study, specifically about different categories of behavioral, social, and health changes that are experienced. I summed up the human experience of these particular stressors and gave you a clearer picture of the impact these type of stressors, and perhaps, the way you navigate them. Whether you’re going to do good or not with each of these top 10 stressors, how that impacts your life.

The top 10 stressors beginning with the top 1 was completing homework. Number 2, making good grades. Number 3, studying. Number 4, meeting my own academic standards. Five, procrastination. Six, a heavy workload. Seven, writing assignments. Eight, too many responsibilities. Nine, meeting deadlines. Ten, not enough time to relax.

Doesn’t that sound like our life? You see how these stressors are pervasive, that they don’t really go away? This is a pretty sophisticated study that had a lot more granular detail besides these things, but it’s so interesting to me that if we stopped the podcast right there on the top 10, you’d already have enough information to paint a perfect picture for pre-med. Probably at the top of the list, for number 1 for the pre-medical student, you had put fear of not getting in a medical school or maybe other subservient goals such as a low MCAT score or a low GPA. Those things that, at least, you believe are closely tied to MCAT and GPA, not necessarily true if you’ve been masterminded appropriately and h[...]

Episode 57:

The Best PreMed Majors transcript

“This is the Pre-Med Podcast, episode 57. I’m your host, Doctor Dan. Today, I’m talking about the best undergraduate pre-med major, then and now.

For many years, I’ve always said that you should stick with a major as an undergraduate that you are passionate about, something that you really enjoy. Doesn’t matter if that’s art, and it has no interest or career direction, that is at least getting just a bachelor degree of art by itself. Definitely what worked for me is no longer my advice, which was some topic of interest … mine was honestly biology … that you would be dedicated enough to actually finish the degree. In other words, I was really only getting the degree to get into medical school. I just wanted to be a doctor. It was that simple. You can visit this site for more information about medical licences.

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Over the cascade of research and the years through the process, my advice has now changed, and so I needed a formally updated podcast on this subject. Most likely, you already have a major selected, if you’re in college. For many folks, you may have changed it more than once. That is a pretty common experience. A colleague I work with that is a doctor states that she chose her major because it was the fastest way to graduate. That’s not a bad strategy. Unfortunately, if she hadn’t got in to medical school, or had problems in residency or beyond, there would be nothing to fall back on.

Today, I’m going to outline what I feel like are the best undergraduate pre-med majors, at least some major considerations for you as you select a major for undergrad. First, a little background data. Two thirds of all medical students have an undergraduate degree in one of the sciences, biology, chemistry, even engineering can be counted in some statistics. Most of it is biology or the chemistries, such as biochemistry, maybe even physics. Those account for the largest individual accounts of particular degrees. One third of all the medical students have a liberal arts degree, and that would include all other categories that are basically non-science-based. Could be art, history, geography, you name it, political science is in there, other types of humanities.

Then the numbers really begin to trail off. I have done a research paper that has literally, out of a couple hundred people that filled out one of the studies that I did, I have a paragraph underneath the data section in one of the tables outlining all the different majors. Literally, medical students have every kind of major in your whole course catalog.

I don’t want you to get the idea that you need to change your major based off of anything I’m saying in this. Talk to your career counselor or your pre-med advisor, if you have one. Otherwise, consider these tips that I’m about to go over.

I do still stand by my guns to think that, hey, if you were just trying to get into medical school, you really should pick a degree that you feel like you can excel in. That takes into account the particular university you’re selecting. A lot of times, universities are chosen based on their geography and how close they are to family and friends. That’s why I chose mine. I honestly don’t think I could have hacked it at a big school. I wouldn’t have fit in a major combine that puts out 100 pre-med graduates every year. I don’t know how I would have fared in a larger environment. Consider the fact that you could probably get better grades at an easier school. If that’s the best you can do and you know it, you might strongly consider that.

That said, a small unknown school or university out there, if you got straight-As from there, that’s not necessarily going to carry as much weight as somebody that went to a harder school that has low-As, high-B average. The experience is different. The preparation for medical school is different, specifically in the types of standardized test questions that they use. When you get to medical sc[...]

Episode 56: How to make audio recordings that are custom MCAT recordings specific to your particular needs.

Download transcript: MCAT Notes

Personalized MCAT MP3’s

This idea came from a recent email I received from a MasterMind member and I wanted to read it pretty much in its entirety and comment on it and then go step-by-step with exactly how to make these audio recordings. Keep in mind that when I was a Pre-med we didn’t have all the digital technology even ten plus years ago such as exists in phones and digital recorders now. They came along in medical school of course, but at the time I was a Pre-med, I actually used one of those mini cassette recorders.

I had a job where every weekend for two years straight from Friday afternoon at five to Monday morning at eight o’clock I was on-call for a three-state region to go and draw blood at nursing homes. Those were sick folks that couldn’t wait ’til Monday and they were difficult sticks. It was good clinical experience to hone my bedside manner and develop a rapport often with people that I would only meet once. While I was in the car driving all over the place, many hours every weekend usually, I would listen to the audio notes that I had made from the week before. I was a biology major and I would collect lots of them.

MCAT Recording Technology

The technology advance has made that a lot more efficient now. In other words,  I wouldn’t have to listen to an entire cassette. With digital technology, you can make each individual question or lecture or whatever passage you have to memorize an individual digital file that can be deleted as you go through it.

So, let’s go ahead and get started. I’m going to read this email to you. I’ll leave her name out. She says that she is one year post-undergraduate working full-time and finding it hard to prepare for the MCAT with frequent fifty-hour weeks. She’s working more than full-time at a job a year after graduating from college. She’s taken two Kaplan courses, first the basic Kaplan MCAT prep course and then the advanced course, but not made it past the content portion into practice tests due partly to crippling anxiety, which she describes as not feeling prepared and afraid of low scores.

Pre-Med is the Time to Experiment

I’ll pause there and say that undergraduate and MCAT preparation is a time to experiment with this idea of doing practice questions and practice tests before you feel comfortable. This is sort of like the minor leagues in baseball. Medical school is the big show, it’s the big game. The whole thing is designed around, “You are never going to feel comfortable and ready to take a test, you have to test yourself often and early before you are ready.” This only way you’re going to know if your study technique works and you need to do it in advance enough so that if your study technique is not working and your grades are not improving like you want, there’s still left some time before the test for you to adjust your techniques again.

Blame Your Study Technique

As I’ve stated previously in other podcasts, don’t blame yourself and beat yourself up if your grades aren’t where you want them, blame your study techniques. All of these things I’m alluding to here are wrapped up in several hours of study technique training that I had in the Medical MasterMind Community. So, we touch in on that right now. She’s stuck at that step.

The email goes on to say, because she purchased an MCAT audio learner program and listened at work, but it’s not the best. There’s some really good news that she’s going to say in a moment about in her job she is able to listen to audio recordings, perfect candidate for the Medical MasterMind Community podcasts and the Pre-med podcasts and such. She downloaded all she could from iTunes and listens to them every day at work. They give her motivation in con[...]

Episode 55: Learn the most common age range and mentorship exposure duration that increased medical school admission rates by 93% at Functional Medicine Associates.

Download transcript: Study finds 93 percent increase in medical school admissions 55 Matriculation

The End is in Sight

Today’s episode is about the research study that showed an increase in matriculation that is acceptance into medical school.  I’m about to give some facts that need a little bit of a warning.  You may notice a little bit more of an edgy flare to the podcast.  That’s because I’m nearing the end of all of my training and a senior resident which I’ll be in a few months is going to be a person to give it to you straight.

The pressure is lessening and almost over.  The end is in sight.  That very long path to becoming an independent license practitioner, that physician that you’ve always dream of being is getting brighter and brighter with every day and the frustrations and headaches along the way come out.  There’s sort of an edginess to the senior resident and that’s kind of right where I am.  It’s a unique time for the Medical Mastermind Community and it’s a time we’re capitalizing on.

Getting in to Medical School

Let’s talk about the matriculation of medical students. Firstly to get into any reputed medical institution, it’s essential to score beyond exceptional on the gamsat, especially if it’s an Australian, British or an Irish university you want to get in. In the last two out of the three last podcasts have highlighted a couple of other studies that I’ve done with the Medical Mastermind Community and one of them had a population that was sort of not seeking help.  It was that University of Houston’s American Medical Student Association Premed Chapter that I dealt with.  That was the very first contact with Mastermind Research.  I did not know it was really going to turn into the Mastermind Community at that point.

They weren’t having trouble. They weren’t having struggles.  They had a premed club of pretty successful folks that had people from their premed club get accepted into medical school every year.  I’m sure many of them are in now are finishing.  The other study was looking at intentional selection of folks in medically underserved areas, kind of opposite ends of the spectrum.  Those without a lot of resources or access to larger university campuses or premed advisors that could give them appropriate guidance.  The literature supports what you already know that there are bad premed advisors out there in the world and I am talking about faculty.  I’m probably talking about your faculty.

Who really gets accepted?

The point is that this study needs a little bit of warning that I’m going to go ahead and read the raw data to you, but then we’re going to go back and interpret it and do a little subset analysis to get sort of a proper perspective.  Just like the last one that showed that the Mastermind Community access increased GPA and MCAT scores within one year which is quite an accomplishment in itself.  There was a separate Mastermind cohort recruited in a similar way.  It’s the underserved population as I defined it previously in that podcast.

The outcome measure in this study is matriculation into medical school.  It sounds great to raise an MCAT score.  It sounds pretty good to raise the GPA especially if you’ve had Cs or Ds in the past, but what do you really care about as a premed at least in terms of your career.  The only thing you care about is getting into medical school, so that’s what this study was focusing on is matriculation.  Did you get into medical school?  Yes or no and so we recruited some folks.  Let me just jump straight to the results, similar study one year access, fill out the survey for the Mastermind Community and we have followed them and have done serial surve[...]