I don’t happen to have nay medical textbooks so I did a little search and quickly came up with the US Army First Aid book which I thought might be useful to me, so I’m going to talk about that so we have a specific example:
The link is here: http://armypubs.army.mil/doctrine/DR_pubs/dr_a/pdf/fm4_25x11.pdf.
The first thing I would do is have a look at the Chapter and Appendix titles and get a good overview of what the entire book is about. We see here eight chapters and two appendices. In your memory palace I’d devote the first room to the chapter headings. Looking at that again, I see that the second chapter actually is three major sections, so I’m going to store those in the core room too.
I end up with the following as the outline of the entire book:
CHAPTER 1. FUNDAMENTAL CRITERIA FOR FIRST AID
CHAPTER 2. BASIC MEASURES FOR FIRST AID
Section I. Open the Airway and Restore Breathing
Section II. Stop the Bleeding and Protect the Wound
Section III. Check for Shock and Administer First Aid Measures
CHAPTER 3. FIRST AID FOR SPECIFIC INJURIES
CHAPTER 4. FIRST AID FOR FRACTURES
CHAPTER 5. FIRST AID FOR CLIMATIC INJURIES
CHAPTER 6. FIRST AID FOR BITES AND STINGS
CHAPTER 7. FIRST AID IN A NUCLEAR, BIOLOGICAL, AND CHEMICAL ENVIRONMENT
CHAPTER 8. FIRST AID FOR PSYCHOLOGICAL REACTIONS
APPENDIX A. FIRST AID CASE AND KITS, DRESSINGS, AND BANDAGES
APPENDIX B. RESCUE AND TRANSPORTATION PROCEDURES
GLOSSARY
So that’s 14 loci for the overview. Depending on the palace you use, that could be one or two rooms, lets say one for this example.
You first goal is to get a good overview. You need to learn that first. You don’t have to be word perfect or anything like that, but you need to understand where the book is going, the subjects it will cover. It’s really useful in everything apart from fiction to read as though it’s a newspaper. Headlines, then opening paragraphs. Then take another look through, see if there are summaries of the chapters, perhaps “what we will learn” sections. Knowing what will come later in the book can help you store the fundamental knowledge it requires.
Ultimately when you’re done, you can enter your palace you can pop into the first room and see the entire book structure. From there you will be able to get to specific rooms that give you a deeper view on the subject and eventually you’ll get into the nitty gritty details of each.
I would learn by spending 15 minutes a day on a section. Write out what you can for five minutes then turn the paper over and see what you remember. When you’re spent, then turn the paper back over and see what you’ve missed. Circle errors, write out the corrections. Then try once more and mark yourself again. Continue to do this until you’ve spend 15 to 25 minutes. Don’t do any more than that as after a maximum of 25 minutes you wont take any more in. 15 minutes is better still in my view as you don’t exhaust the limit of your concentration.
The next day you test yourself first, again mark yourself. See where you went wrong and mark yourself.
Now schedule a retest for two days time. Always test yourself first. If you look at the material and then test you’re not really going to gain as much as when you test first.
Aside: This is a very simple paper based spaced repetition system that I use to shove stuff into my paper diary. If you use Anki or Supermemo all the better. The system is easy to calculate like so. For each revision (n) we calculate the next test time by the formula
2 ^ (n-1).
First review looking at a section (first time you encounter the material) - next test is 1 day later. (two to the power of zero (day 1 - 1) = 1.
Second time through a section if all goes well then review in 2 more days (2 ^ (2 - 1))
Third review, if all goes well then review in 4 more days (2 ^ (3 - 1))
Forth - review in 8 more days (2 ^ (4 - 1))
Fifth - review in 16 more days (2 ^ (5 - 1)).
If a section doesn’t go well then review in half the time shown and keep the same review count.
If you completely fail then review the next day and start the process and review count again.
/end of side track!
Having studied the overview on day one, the next day I’d then start on the first chapter. Just the oveview of it. In you second room you’d have six loci and
Then I’d take the first chapter.
CHAPTER 1. FUNDAMENTAL CRITERIA FOR FIRST AID
1-1. General
1-2. Terminology
1-3. Understanding Vital Body Functions for First Aid
1-4. Adverse Conditions
1-5. Basics of First Aid
1-6. Evaluating a Casualty
The third day, tackle the first section of the second chapter overview.
CHAPTER 2. BASIC MEASURES FOR FIRST AID
2-1. General
Section I. Open the Airway and Restore Breathing
2-2. Breathing Process
2-3. Assessment of and Positioning the Casualty
2-4. Opening the Airway of an Unconscious or not Breathing Casualty
2-5. Rescue Breathing (Artificial Respiration)
2-6. Preliminary Steps - All Rescue Breathing Methods
2-7. Mouth-to-Mouth Method
2-8. Mouth-to-Nose Method
2-9. Heartbeat
2-10. Airway Obstructions
2-11. Opening the Obstructed Airway - Conscious Casualty
2-12. Opening the Obstructed Airway - Casualty Lying Down or Unconscious
Day four, you’d do chapter 2 section 2. Each day just add that one more little bit. Then schedule your review and keep track of the review counts for each section. As you review the time spent is greatly reduced, so whilst the initially study might be 15 minutes per section after a few goes round the reviews are likely to only be a few minutes long. Due to the way they space out you’ll never be spending that much time per day. If you conversantly estimate that the reviews would be 15 minutes, then 12, 10, 8, 7, 6, 5 (reducing by about 20%) you never get to more than 63 minutes a day even going as far as 150 sections!
Eventually you’ll have a palace of 15 rooms, the first is the book overview, then a room for each chapter or major section.
Now you need to start tackle each chapter section. For Chapter one we have as shown before:
1-1. General
1-2. Terminology
1-3. Understanding Vital Body Functions for First Aid
1-4. Adverse Conditions
1-5. Basics of First Aid
1-6. Evaluating a Casualty
What you can do now is go through the first section, 1.1 and turn all the sections into questions. These you can put into Anki / Supermemo and start to truly learn the material.
See this article by the Supermemo creator http://www.supermemo.com/articles/20rules.htm
I’ve got to make some supper and leave for the evening, feel free to ask questions and I’ll try to get to them tomorrow.
