Picmonic for Medicine App

[Abbull]

Has anyone personally used Picmonic as a study tool while in PA school? 
 

 

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[jzh0002]

Yes! I am currently 4 months away from graduating. I started using Picmonic about 2 months into didactic year because I was looking for an easier/more efficient way to learn pharmacology. I found SketchyMedical first and then found Picmonic afterwards. I didn't purchase sketchy and bought picmonic instead because the videos were a lot shorter. Honestly, if Picmonic only had pharmacology, I still would have paid full price for it. It was a game changer for me. And it also made studying pharm something I looked forward to. As I started Clinical Medicine and we started getting into disease states, I would have Picmonic pulled up during lectures so I could hone in on the most important point for each topic we were covering. I have been on 3 different challenge bowl teams in the last two years of PA school, finished 1st at my state conference in 2018 and 2019, and finished in the top 10 at the AAPA national challenge bowl in 2019. The audiovisual learning style of Picmonic and Sketchy really do help with long term memory. It's really helped me establish solid scientific foundations that have allowed me to excel during my clinical rotations as things begin to fit together more and more. It's personal preference for whether you want shorter videos vs longer/more in depth videos, but in my opinion, the shorter videos offered by Picmonic are much more useful than Sketchy in didactic year when there is information overload and you have to be very efficient with your time. After the first year, when you have a much better understanding of what you do and don't know, you can spend more time on topics that you've struggled with; at this point, I think Sketchy or Osmosis would be more beneficial than the first year when you don't really have time to review your lectures/PPTs and spend time listening to Sketchy/Osmosis explanations for everything (because it will feel like 80-90% of the information is new). 

Almost half of my cohort of 70 used Picmonic at some point or another, and the cohort behind me had even more people that purchased it and are using it. I highly recommend it for didactic year of PA school! Let me know if you have any more questions about it.