Boost Board Prep During Busy Rotations: Study Smarter, Not Harder

Maya Brooks

Hello everyone, and welcome back to the AI Med Tutor Podcast. I’m your co-host, Maya Brooks, an AI-generated avatar of a fourth-year medical student, here to bring the student perspective to these conversations. Today we’re talking about something every clinical student faces at some point — how to study during busy rotations without burning out.

Dr. Randy Clinch

And I’m Dr. Randy Clinch, a DO Family Medicine physician and medical educator. If you’re on rotations right now, you already know that your days can be unpredictable. Some days you walk into clinic thinking it’ll be a normal shift, and suddenly you’re handling a full panel of patients, charting, follow-ups, and a stack of tasks you couldn’t have seen coming. You get home tired, mentally overloaded, and wondering how you’re supposed to prepare for boards in the middle of all that.

Maya Brooks

That’s exactly what this episode is about. Because the truth is, your clinical days can actually support your board prep more than you might think — not by adding more work, but by transforming the work you’re already doing.

Dr. Randy Clinch

Right. Today we’re going to talk about how to make your clinical experiences strengthen your board readiness, how to use the structured study cycle even when time is tight, and how to protect your limited study time from passive methods that feel productive but don’t actually move your learning forward.

Maya Brooks

Let’s start with something simple but powerful. After a full day in clinic or the hospital, take just a minute to mentally list the conditions you saw. You can even jot conditions you're seeing down as you go throughout the day. It doesn’t have to be anything elaborate. Just think through your patients. Maybe you saw someone with COPD, someone with chest pain, a couple of patients with diabetes, maybe a new diagnosis of shingles. Whatever it was, that list is your bridge between the clinic and the boards.

Dr. Randy Clinch

Then take the next step: ask yourself, “If I were a board question writer, what would I ask about this?” This is one of the most effective ways to build durable memory. You’re linking a real patient — someone whose story you’ve touched — to the patterns you’ll see on board exams. For COPD, maybe you think about what distinguishes chronic bronchitis from emphysema. For chest pain, you might ask yourself what findings separate unstable angina from an NSTEMI. For shingles, maybe you think about post-herpetic neuralgia or contraindications for the vaccine.

Maya Brooks

I remember a day on my internal medicine rotation where I saw a patient with new-onset atrial fibrillation. I walked out of the room thinking about how the question writer would test me on this. Would it be about the CHADS-VASc score? Would it be about rate control versus rhythm control? Would it be about anticoagulation choices? And that simple reflection turned the case from “just another patient encounter” into something I genuinely remembered days later.

Dr. Randy Clinch

Exactly. The clinic becomes your classroom. And the patients remind your brain that these are real patterns, not random facts. You’re anchoring your learning in lived experience, and that accelerates memory formation in a way that flashcards never will.

Maya Brooks

And the best part is that it doesn’t take extra time. You can do this in the hallway, walking to your car, or while taking off your white coat at the end of the day.

Dr. Randy Clinch

Now let’s talk about what to do once you actually sit down to study after a long day. First, lean into the structured study cycle we talked about last week. Even a short set of timed, random questions keeps your brain in exam mode. The goal isn’t to get through as many as you can. The goal is to experience the question style, test your reasoning, and identify what needs attention.

Maya Brooks

Random questions help you see the things you already know, which boosts confidence, and they show you what’s still shaky. And when you get something wrong, the key is not assuming it’s a knowledge problem. Sometimes it’s timing. Sometimes it’s anchoring bias. Sometimes it’s misreading the stem. The ARW — that active review window — helps you figure out the why behind the miss. Check out last week's podcast episode for a brief breakdown about the structured study cycle and how to apply that.

Dr. Randy Clinch

Alongside random questions, add a small set of focused questions from the prior incorrect questions in your lower-performing areas. Use the filters in your question bank to drill down to the specific topics you want to select select among your prior incorrect questions. It's important to focus on questions, not flashcards. Flashcards can be helpful for certain facts, but they test recognition, not application. On test day, you’re given a vignette and asked to analyze it. That’s why working through actual questions, even in small batches, is far more valuable after a busy day than going through a stack of flashcards.

Maya Brooks

I used to end my clinical days by watching videos because I was too tired to do anything else, and honestly, it gave me a false sense of confidence. The material felt familiar, but when I tried to answer questions later, I realized I couldn’t actually recall or apply any of it.

Dr. Randy Clinch

That’s one of the biggest traps students fall into. Passive learning feels comforting, especially when you’re tired. But if you don’t pause and try to recall what you just heard — even for a few seconds — the information just washes over you. There’s no memory formation, no retrieval practice, no pattern building.

Maya Brooks

And when time is tight, protecting the little study time you have is everything. Question banks that match the exam you’re taking are essential. If you’re preparing for COMLEX, use tools built for COMLEX. If you’re taking USMLE, use the resources aligned with that exam. Practicing with the wrong style is like training for the wrong sport. You're spending your time preparing for the wrong exam — it’s not effective.

Dr. Randy Clinch

Your time is precious on rotations. Make sure it’s spent practicing the exact kind of thinking you’ll need on test day.

Maya Brooks

So if you’re finishing a long shift and wondering how to study, keep it simple. One short set of random timed questions for exposure. One short set of focused of your prior incorrect questions for improvement. And one minute of reflection about the patients you saw that day. That’s the formula.

Maya Brooks

OK, so let’s take a moment to recap. Your clinical day can support your board prep by helping you think like a question writer. Listing the conditions you saw and imagining how they could show up on a board exam helps anchor those experiences in memory. When you sit down to study, use short, structured question sets rather than passive learning. Random questions reinforce what you know, while focused prior incorrect questions build strength in the areas where you need it most. And when time is limited, make your study choices intentional and aligned with the exam you’ll actually take.

Dr. Randy Clinch

You’re learning all day during your rotation. Your studying doesn’t need to fight against that. It should flow with it. You’re not behind. You’re not doing it wrong. You’re building a process that works with your life right now.

Maya Brooks

Thanks, everyone, for joining us again! We’ll see you in next week’s episode of the AI Med Tutor Podcast.