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A Message To
New Medical Students… Dear Accepted Medical Student, Welcome to the medical profession! Yes, although you have not yet proven yourself in the medical curriculum, acceptance to medical school is best viewed as entering the medical profession itself. Based on my 36 years in medical education, I feel that it is in your best interest to adopt this sense of professionalism even while you are a physician-in-training. This is because every physician who has ever lived knows that medical practice is a lifelong quest to know more and apply better. To that end, I have designed a program that will help you develop skills that will serve you well beyond the basic science years in the curriculum. I would like to convince each of you that learning in medicine is not simply a matter of being smart, but also a matter of developing skills. Everyone readily accepts that learning of the skills for the physical examination, for surgical procedures, and for many other medical procedures is a natural part of a medical education. Experience with premedical and medical students, with residents, and with physician faculty has shown that we can add integrative, higher order thinking skills to that list of skills. I also have found that, in spite of substantial GPA and MCAT scores, few medical students enter medical school with a conscious awareness of these higher order thinking skills. I know that this is an exciting time for you as you leave premedical education behind and prepare for your formal medical education. This excitement helps to empower you, but it also makes you vulnerable to misconceptions about medical education. There are numerous sources of advice, ranging from friends already in medical school to information available on the Internet, and even to books on success in medical school, often with conflicting information. Thus, I have decided to offer this program in order to help channel your energy into skills that will help you adjust quickly to the demands of undergraduate medical education. For those who are still at the premedical level, and also for those who are at more advanced levels in medical education, this program is an efficient way to learn about SuccessTypes principles and strategies.
This program is based on work on learning styles in medical education done here at TTUHSC and published in my book, “SuccessTypes for Medical Students: A Program for Improving Academic Performance.” This book is now available to you free online in the updated version, “SuccessTypes in Medical Education.” I expect that you will be surprised and enthused with what you are about to learn. Be warned that this course, while it will facilitate long term memory, is not about memorization or test taking skills. Instead, it is about you as a learner. You will come to understand, better than you ever have, what your learning strengths are and how they relate to the way you need to learn in medical school and in medical practice. I think that the most interesting thing you are about to discover is that the way you prefer to learn, your “learning style,” is correlated with the specialty you will prefer and even the way you will prefer to communicate with your patients.
Sincerely,
John W. Pelley, PhD
Now please click here to begin your medical education. |