How to use Sketchy for boards and WHY I love this resource!!
At the moment, Sketchy is having an amaz back to school sale: 20% off with code B2S20 at checkout!! Click here 🙂
What’s the hype around Sketchy?
Sketchy is hands down one of my ALL time favorite med school resources!! Sketchy’s videos are engaging and very different from any other resources you typically use in med school. I even considered my time watching Sketchy videos as pseudo “break time” because it’s more enjoyable and entertaining than the standard studying techniques.
Now I’ll tell you why Sketchy works and how I used it to master micro and pharm for boards!
Here is an example of a sketch for antiarrhythmic drugs. These drugs can get super confusing, but Sketchy’s vids DEFINITELY helped.
Sketchy has cartoon videos with visual mnemonics built into each image to help you remember ALL the high yield details. In the image above the heart is illuminated at the top and bottom signifying that class 1C antiarrhythmics treat both supraventricular and ventricular arrhythmias.
Associating images that you can visualize with the high yield information for boards was so helpful for me. If I could remember these sketches I could remember a LOT. Pharmacology was my highest scoring section on most of my NBME practice exams and I attribute a lot of that to using Sketchy!!
I used Sketchy for pharmacology and microbiology. Sketchy also has pathology and biochemistry videos! I wish I had used the biochemistry videos, because this was my weakest unit going into dedicated.
How I used Sketchy:
When I first started using Sketchy, I didn’t use it alongside Anki and I had a little bit of trouble remembering what each symbol in a sketch represented. I started using Sketchy alongside Anki right before my second year of med school and that made a big difference in my recall of the symbols in each sketch! I used the ANKING med deck (which is free) alongside Sketchy for both micro and pharm.
For those who don’t use Anki, it’s helpful to rewatch each Sketchy video multiple times, so you can really get down the symbols in each sketch. You can also look over Sketchy’s Review Cards that display the final sketch in an image, you can hover over each symbol to practice your recall of what it signifies. Sketchy also has a feature to create quizzes through their website! I have found that testing my recall is so key for me to really master a topic! Whether you use anki, make your own flashcards, or use the Sketchy Review cards or quizzes- make sure you test your recall on all of the Sketchy symbols to get the most out of this resource!
I watched all of Sketchy micro and pharm at least twice before taking step 1 and some of the videos that were super high yield at least 3 or 4 times! A lot of the micro-videos are super short and easy to get through quickly, and some of the pharm videos are a bit longer like 20-ish minutes.
Now that I’m in my third year I will start using Sketchy’s step 2 resources. I will share more about them throughout this year!! Sketchy step 2 has videos for Peds, IM, Surgery, and Ob-gyn.
As always feel free to DM me or comment on this blog post if you have ANY questions about Sketchy or studying during your first/second year!!
Click here to check out Sketchy’s website!!!
Thank you Sketchy for sponsoring this blog post!