The word pathology means “the study (logos) of pain (pathos)”. And it’s true, in a way, because a lot of the things we discuss in pathology involve some kind of pain. Not to mention the pain of studying pathology itself, but we won’t go into that, as this is a pain-free space.

What we really study in pathology is not exactly the pain, but the disease. So if you’re just starting out on a pathology course, or even halfway through, it’s not a bad idea to come up with a little plan of attack for studying diseases.

New Learning Disease Planning

It is necessary to plan when learning about new diseases the reason behind it is that you have to retain and process information in your working memory before you can put it into your long-term memory. And your working memory has limited space! So if you approach each disease in a different way and just try to memorize everything, you’re not really going to get that information into your long-term memory, and obviously, that’s important for passing exams.

But if you have a little mental template that you use for each disease, that organizes the information into smaller, more meaningful chunks that WILL STAY in your working memory. Also, if you do that for each disease, it allows your brain to relax a bit because your brain likes categories and consistency.

Steps of a Good planing

Here is a disease plan that works in How to study diseases well for pathology because it is simple, straightforward, and widely applicable. It breaks down the information into four categories:

• Etiology (cause)
• Pathogenesis (a mechanism)
• Morphology (gross and microscopic appearance)
• Clinical manifestations (signs and symptom

Benefits of Good Planning

Another good thing about this plan is that it helps you avoid the “trees can’t see the forest” problem, so common when you first find out about an illness. This plagued me during medical school. I would learn so much about little details that I couldn’t pull away and give you the big picture. It’s best to start with the big picture and then add the details later. We study How to study diseases in pathology with good planning I hope you will learn something from this article.