Don't hurt anything that has a name

Main menu

Post navigation

Organizing Notes in Medical School and Residency

Among my other educational roles, I have the real pleasure of teaching embryology for the Baylor College of Medicine MS1 class. Recently, while visiting with students before a lecture, I happened to see a set of notes on several of the students’ laptops. They had the slides from my lecture with additional notes, all organized to study efficiently. I asked them if they would mind sending me information so I could post it here since I thought this might be useful to other medical students.

The following is a guest blog from Samuel Buck and Sara Fish, both first year medical students at Baylor College of Medicine with assistance from Sam Rogers, an MS3.

There are several apps that make studying easier in medical school. In retrospect it would have been great to know about this the first day of class, so I’m happy to share them now. I use OneNote and EverNote but there are other apps I know other students use like Growly Notes. Here’s the key notetaking apps (and a few others):

OneNote – This is the program that I use for notes during class. Using OneNote, you can import entire power point presentations (even the notes at the bottom of each slide) into a single document and add your own notes and drawings as well. OneNote allows you to organize all the lecture materials and slides in one place. Word documents, powerpoints, PDFs, images, and Excel sheets can be placed in tabs in your “notebook”. From here, you can easily navigate, add your own notes and text, highlight, or draw on the slides. I usually use the draw functions to add arrows to radiographic images or to circle important points on slides. I usually organize my notes by subject but other students organize by date, with tabs for each block, each week within the block, and day of the week, and individual note pages for each lecture that day. Other students organize notes into separate digital “notebooks” by block or by course (i.e one for embryology, one for anatomy, etc) The most convenient thing about OneNote is that all of your notes are synced to a Microsoft SkyDrive (their version of the iCloud) so that you can access your notes on the iPad and phone. If I’m studying and ever need to consult my notes from class, I can just take out my iPad or if I’m on the go, my phone and reference the lectures or notes in a really organized fashion. Having OneNote on my iPad let’s me review notes when I am on the bus or in other situations where it’s hard to get your computer out. This is one feature that Mac users with Growly Notes (basically the OneNote equivalent) do not have since there is no Growly Notes app for the iPad. One of the most useful tools in OneNote is the find function. You can type in a keyword and OneNote will search your entire notebook and show you every instance when that word is used. This is very helpful because a huge number of documents can be scanned at once. Since many concepts in our classes overlap, it helps to make connections between subjects. For instance, if something is mentioned in embryology and you feel like you have heard that word before, but you don’t know where, you can search it and find the lectures in which it was previously mentioned.

Here are links to additional “tutorials” on using OneNote in medical school from the University of Kansas and UT Health Science Center in San Antonio that will give you more details on using OneNote to organize your studying in medical school.

One of the most useful tools in OneNote is the find function. You can type in a keyword and OneNote will search your entire notebook and show you every instance when that word is used. This is very helpful because a huge number of documents can be scanned at once. Since many concepts in our classes overlap, it helps to make connections between subjects. For instance, if something is mentioned in embryology and you feel like you have heard that word before, but you don’t know where, you can search it and find the lectures in which it was previously mentioned.

EverNote – Although there are some students who use Evernote to organize their notes in medical school, I found that format is not really conducive to good organization of notes. I do really like the mobile layout of the app and I use EverNote extensively for “every day” note taking. Grocery lists, work out programs, random ideas, to do lists, jotting down an email or name I want to remember. One thing I really like about EverNote is that when you make a note, it generates a time and location stamp for the notes.

Growly Notes – This is probably the most popular note taking program for our class because it is made for Apple computers. I personally don’t have any experience with it as a PC user, but it has a great organization format as far as I can tell.

DropBox– Online file storage and sharing service that is very useful for sharing study materials between students. Our anatomy buddies group uses this extensively to share quizzes and study guides. It is a really great service, and DropBox will load thing directly to and from your personal DropBox, which is very convenient . One thing to remember is that it’s not HIPPA compliant, so if there is any patient information, it shouldn’t be put in DropBox

Google Drive – Not to be overlooked is the tried and true Google Documents. Whether it be study guides or notes, it’s hard to beat the convenience of Google Drive if your goal is mass editing and sharing. Sharing the link to your document is easy, and it can be set up so that anyone who views the document can also edit it. Just like DropBox, this isn’t HIPPA compliant, so don’t share patient information.

TurboScan – This is an app that takes pictures of documents and turns them into PDF files that you can email to people (or yourself) or upload to DropBox. I do this for all class handouts to have an immediate digital copy of any paper items we get in class or study groups. I can email files to myself and post them into my OneNote documents. I also use this app for personal finances. I take a picture of my receipts from grocery shopping and going out as well as my bills so that I can better budget myself and keep track of purchases.