Colleagues:

Most people, including physicians and other professionals, have folk theories about how we learn. In fact, there is a fashion sweeping the educational world that basically says "people learn in different ways, so we have to have a variety of teaching and study methods". While there is a kernel of truth, almost self-evident truth, to this observation, it also masks the fact that psychologists have discovered several robust principles to learning that go against conventional thinking.

Since physicians and physician assistants, our clients, must prepare for a career of testing and certification maintenance, we’d like to share these evidence-based findings:

1. Retention is improved if you change the venue or location where you are studying, even just going to a different room or moving between office and home.
2. Study more than one related skills or concepts at the same time, rather than just one skill or concept.
3. There is little or no evidence for so-called "visual learning", "right-brain versus left-brain learning" or "teacher style" impact on learning outcomes. Other than a possible placebo effect (i.e., believing your own suppositions), these concepts don’t pan out when evaluated experimentally.
4. Retention improves if you space out your study sessions, instead of cramming them into one weekend or some other artificial schedule window. In parallel with this finding, cramming may help you do better on an exam given "tomorrow", but, if the exam is next week or later, then spacing our your study sessions will be a better means of retention.
5. Testing, actually pre-testing, where the results matter is a powerful means of preparing for the actual test. In other words, if you can make the pre-test a contest, perhaps among colleagues, or reward yourself with minor monetary incentives, or even earn CME credits while you pre-test, you will do better on the real exam than those who avoid pre-test challenges.

As the distributors of Med-Challenger, a proven test-preparation curriculum, we are well aware that the pre-test is a potent key to passing the real test. Of course, all of these factors are interacting with each other simultaneously in the real world. Human factors such as fatigue, physical and mental health, and environmental conditions (how hot the room is, whether you had to drive thirty miles in traffic to the test) play a role as well. But, all else being equal, it is within your power as a professional to prepare an evidence-based study plan, rather than one based on wishful thinking or folk wisdom.

I’ve got copies of the original summary report in the New York Times Science Section from September 13, 2010, available on request.

Robert E. Sweeney, DA, MS
CEO

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