Tricks to Remember Tricky Medical Facts
My mathematician brother Ben told me that anyone who wants to remember the value of pi to 14 decimal places should simply learn this mnemonic: “How I need a drink, alcoholic of course, after the tough lectures involving quantum mechanics.” (Counting the letters of each word, you get 3.14159265358979.)
Ben also told me that memorizing pi this way is pretty useless. But how about all the facts that medical students have to learn? All those different veins and bones and nerves--to say nothing of protocols for when a patient shows up with a bellyache that might have a zillion different causes? Surely, those folks need mnemonics like crazy!
We called UCLA medical school; we surfed the Web. And we found a slew of medical memorization tricks. For a goodly sampling, check out https://www.medicalmnemonics.com, a Web site put together by Robert O’Connor, an enterprising young med student in Dublin.
Many mnemonics--probably the most memorable ones--are unprintable in a family newspaper. But here are some that are printable:
Who’s a likely candidate for gallstones? Think “the four Fs”: female, fat, fertile, 40. (They said it, not me!)
Which bronchial tube--the left or the right--is more likely to get blocked by a stray chunk of hot dog? That would be the right (because it’s more vertical)--as in “Inhale a bite, go down the right.”
“Never call me needle nose” serves as a handy reminder that parts of the nose cavity are nares (external), conchae, meatuses, nares (internal) and nasopharynx.
“Shut up and butt out” reminds docs-in-training that the safest place to jab a needle in the buttock is the upper outer quadrant. (This safely avoids hitting the sciatic nerve.)
And here’s a catchy way to remember the steps in treating a type of heart attack called ventricular fibrillation:
“Shock, shock, shock, everybody shock, little shock, big shock, mama shock, papa shock.” (“Shock” stands for defibrillation; the first letters of the other words stand for different drugs. (Little=lidocaine, for instance; everybody=epinephrine.)
Students from around the world are constantly adding new mnemonics to his Web site, says O’Connor, and other students rate them on a scale of one to 10.
For instance, the tip-off that “ ‘Leino’ rhymes with ‘spleen-o,’ therefore leino means something to do with the spleen” scored a tepid 6.38. (Though I kinda like it.)
And I don’t think I’d be kind to whoever came up with the mnemonic for risk factors for a pulmonary embolism:
Simply remember “TOM SCHREPFER,” standing for trauma, obesity, malignancy, surgery, etc. (Tom who?)
Dr. Michael Wilkes, who teaches med students at UCLA, says that mnemonics are just supposed to get students rolling; with time they’ll rely less on rote and more on experience. (And let’s not forget about books, so handy for looking things up.)
And mnemonics are no good if you can’t remember what on Earth they stand for, says Wilkes. How very true. It’s been decades since I learned (in a British public safety campaign featuring John Pertwee, an actor who played Doctor Who) that when I cross the road I should “SPLINK.”
To this day, as I stand by the curb, I think “SPLINK.” And as I cross the road, my mind drifts from attending to the cars and the traffic lights and muses on just what “SPLINK” might mean. Stop--or start? Proceed Left? Into, into--what?
If I ever get run over, I’ll sue.
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If you have an idea for a topic, write or e-mail Rosie Mestel at Los Angeles Times, 202 W. 1st. St., Los Angeles, CA 90012, rosie.mestel@latimes.com.
