Second Year Notes - Section 5

Pulmonary

Neurology & Pain

PDA Flashcard Programs

I own a Palm PDA, and after evaluating a number of Palm flash card programs, I recommend Flash!. The best reason to use Flash! is the fact that you can import flashcards from MemoPad. This means that you can design your flashcards using a text editor on a home computer, copy/paste them into memopad, synchronize your PDA, and quickly import the whole deck into Flash!. You can also use the general find feature of the PDA to lookup particular drugs in your flashcard deck. As a side benefit, the format is such that people without Flash! can still read the cards. Flash! is open source, but unfortunately it is not free as all of the other resources on this website are. It costs $10 to register and the author claims half of it goes to charity. I think it's well worth it.

Importing the flashcards is a painless process. Just open Flash!, choose "Import Deck..." from the main menu, select "MemoPad", the memo, and "Ind. > 1", and finally hit "Import". Voila! You're ready to begin quizzing yourself. If you want to edit the original file, be sure to preserve the pattern of indentation, including the indented blank line between the question side and answer side.

My flashcards are not designed to be as comprehensive as Olivia's flashcards. My flashcards are organized purely by drug (or drug class), and the back of each card contains what I feel are the absolute essentials for each drug while leaving out a lot of detail. The order of information is generally the same for each drug, as outlined below. However, in an effort to eliminate what I feel is unimportant detail, not all categories of info are present for each drug.

• Question side: name of drug or drug class
• List of specific drugs if question side is a drug class
• MOA ("mechanism of action") almost always listed for every flashcard
• Intended use of drug (listed as "Treat..." or "Rx...") and other important facts
• PK ("pharmacokinetics") covers any important pharmacokinetic/dynamic properties, metabolism/elimination routes, and drug interaction issues
• Tox ("toxicity") covers any important adverse events

Of course, Flash! may not be the program for you (but then my cards will be in the wrong format). If you want a free flashcard program, all I can say that I was unable to find one after a good bit of searching...do let me know if you discover a good one! Anyhow, you may wish to try the other programs I considered:

• Memorizer+ (This is the next best thing to Flash!, in my opinion)
• SuperMemo
• HandyCards
• PCards
• Anki
• Quiz Buddy
• Quizzler
• Lexi
• Learn?!

WinCE folks that can't run Palm programs may want to check out some of these links:

• Learning Flash Cards
• Pocket Flash Cards
• Flashcard Lite

Standard Disclaimer

All documents posted herein that are not otherwise credited are authored by Raymond Cheong, Copyright 2004, All Rights Reserved. Documents with the prefix DB are authored by Douglas Bernstein. Outlines and other review materials not guaranteed to be error-free; consult course notes as needed; you may find it more useful to make an outline of your own; inform me if you find any errors so I can correct these outlines.