Learning Medicine

Learning Medicine
The Ultimate Guide to Study Skills in Medical School

Wednesday, September 26, 2012

My Anatomy Anki Deck

I've had several requests for me to post my anatomy deck.

The reason it's not up there is because the anatomy deck I have is not of great quality. I made it back in first year when I was still very new to Anki and I hadn't a clue about what was important to know. I don't think it's worth studying from.

I'm making another deck right that i think is much better. It will be more comprehensive, have more images, and be more clinically relevant. However, it still won't be everything you'll need to know for your classes.  I'll post it when the deck is done.

In the meantime, if you want to make your own decks, and you want it to be super comprehensive for your classes and such, I recommend the following:

(1) Find anatomy tables online (UMich is good)
(2) Transfer those tables to excel. Then save that file as a table-delimited .txt file.
(3) Open up notepad or textedit (mac) and save that file as utf-8 format.
(4) Make custom templates in Anki to import that correspond to the format of your tables. (see example below)
(5) Import the .txt file by going to file > import.

See these links for more info
Importing Files to Anki
Card Templates

And there you have it. Then if you want, if you have an online source of images, like Gray's or Netter's or whatever, go to the cards and paste in pictures.

This will get you pretty far along in making an anatomy deck. It's not everything, but it's a lot. It's questionable whether you even need to know every insertion, origin, etc. but anatomy class in med school often does test these things, so it's not a bad idea to have cards like this.

My deck will have more than just tables though. It will have clinical correlates, pictures with labels occluded, and other stuff.

UPDATE (10/3/12): I was checking out the Anki 2 shared decks yesterday and I saw that a new Anatomy deck has been posted. It comes from the University of Nottingham and it's made for medical students. It's amazing! They curated tons of images from Gray's and did image occlusion. They've done a great service. Here is the link; https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/3649422301

This is way better than any anatomy deck I've done. For those who are interested in using my deck, I'm not sure when I'll have it up, but to be honest, there are already good resources out there, this being a fine example. So download and start studying.

UPDATE (12/4/12): The links above are old. All my Anki decks are now in one file on the homepage

UPDATE(04/30/13): Due to time constraints, I am no longer working on an Anatomy deck.

32 comments:

  1. Looking forward to seeing it! Your decks have been invaluable resources for me (including your older anatomy deck). I can't tell you how much I appreciate your willingness to share your hard work.

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  2. Looking forward to the deck. Is it possible to have a tag on cards from the old deck. I plan to incorporate them into my current deck that I will built starting with your cards. Or will it all be new?

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    Replies
    1. I'm just starting anew. My old deck sucked, so I don't even want to bother with it.

      Delete
    2. Yeah, I have that same problem with a few of my older decks and cards; it's so hard to let go though because I love the mentality of "if it's in my anki deck, I will know it for life," almost as if I don't add the card, I risk losing that knowledge. Thus I have cards that are poorly worded and cumbersome to figure out what I am even asking. Now when I come across them, I mark them for later "fixing," either by changing the fact to test more high yield material, make the question clearer, or more clinically relevant.

      As a silver lining, I was able to use your deck for the great images I otherwise did not have access to, so thanks!

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    3. Hello, your work is great. At what time do you think you will be able to finish the anatomy cards? and it is based on a specific book?
      Thanks again.

      Delete
  3. Thanks for your hard work
    Please If you can re-add the Microbiology media folder ?

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    Replies
    1. The micro media are corrupted. That's why I took it down. Sorry.

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  4. If it is impossible to put them, what are the inconveniences??

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    Replies
    1. 1- I am new to Anki. The media folders are to be studied alone? or they will be incorporated into the cards ??

      2- for the microbiology media, it is critical to have them? or reading only the cards will be fine ??

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  5. See the instructions at the download link. The media show up in your cards. The microbio media were corrupted and so I took them down. They're not essential. Sure, the cards would be better with them, but it's not necessary.

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  6. The Nottingham deck seems great for images, but beyond the identification, which is exhaustive, I disagree that this a great deck for anatomy because relationship and concepts are sparsely *tested* as a card. 3K+ cards of pure identification and you will still not understand clinical anatomy... Seems also to have to heavy of an emphasis on stylized cartoons (ie. blue veins, yellow nerves) and needs more cross-sections, radiographs, etc. Thanks for pointing it out though

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    Replies
    1. Hey. Yeah, I agree with you. It's not comprehensive. This is just part of the equation. The Nottingham deck is analogous to the flashcard decks you buy for Netter's or Gray's. You can't learn anatomy entirely from those, but they help. It's visual recall. None of the conceptual or relational stuff is tested there. As far as I know, no good deck exists for that yet. I'm working on something that should be up sometime.

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    2. PS. The Nottingham deck could be a starting point for peoples' decks. I agree, it'd be awesome to have radiographs, cross-sections. That takes work. I wish we could build collaborative decks online to split the workload.

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  7. Hello
    I am a Med1 student, started about 1 month ago
    I downloaded ur decks and I have 2 questions
    1- our curriculum is integrated and based on modules
    year 1: Foundation (12 weeks), Hematology & Immunology (6 w), Endocrinology & Reproductive Medicine (8 w), Pulmonary System (8 w), Nephrology (7 w)
    year 2: Cardiovascular System (6 w), Gastrointestinal System (8 w), Musculoskeletal System/ Dermatology (10 w), Neurosciences (11 w)

    So if I want to study from your decks, what is the best way that you suggest?

    2- some decks that I downloaded are used, how can I reset them to be new ?

    thanks alot

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    Replies
    1. Please if you can answer to question number 1. Thanks again fo your efforts

      Delete
    2. Use the tags to do selective study by topic. I tagged most cards by system. You may need to do your own tagging to sort the cards so that they correspond with your class work.

      Yes you can reset. Select all the cards in the browser and reschedule as new.

      Delete
  8. Dr. Willbe, can't thank you enough for the immense effort you're putting in and the wealth of information you've shared with us. I will share everything you have shared here with my friends and make sure they know where I got all this from.

    Thanks again, Dr. Willbe

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  9. Hi,

    I get an "invalid id" when following the link for the cards. Is there another link that is working, or can anyone share the cards with me?

    Thanks!

    Kind regards,
    Fontain (fontain@gmail.com)

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    Replies
    1. any chance you got the deck and can pass it on?

      Delete
    2. Sorry, I haven't been able to find the deck either. Let me know if you do, and I'll do the same.

      Delete
  10. I also get the invalid ID. Can you post a working link?

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    Replies
    1. I tried the link for the nottingham anatomy deck and still get invalid ID. Do you share that deck in your dropbox?

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    2. Hey. Sorry for your troubles. Honestly, you're not missing much. My anatomy deck is not my best. I don't even like using it very much. I'm looking now at the Anki shared decks site (https://ankiweb.net/shared/decks/) and it appears that the U of Nottingham decks have been taken down! I bet it was a copyright issue. I don't think I posted them as part of my personal decks, sorry. When the DB link works again, try my deck, see if its useful. My apologies. I know you probably want to just start studying.

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  11. PS. My deck download link is working now.

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  12. Thanks for the blog and the decks! I will definitely be using these for med school next year. Are you still in the process of updating your anatomy deck? I'd definitely be down to pay, similar to the path deck you just uploaded.

    Thanks again

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    Replies
    1. This comment has been removed by the author.

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    2. Yeah, are u still working on the anatomy deck ??
      We are waiting for it and surely paying for it!
      Thanks a lot

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    3. Hi,

      Thanks for your interest. I abandoned the anatomy deck, because for my purposes right now, it's fairly low value. So there won't be an anatomy deck anytime soon. My apologies. But, if you take the advice from this post, you can create decks really quickly by using tables from places like the UMich site. Combine that with some pics, and you can have a really large deck with lots of good questions fairly quickly.

      Delete
  13. Hey,

    I'm using the UM anatomy tables as you suggested, but I find when I go to study my origins and insertions, none of the information from the table is labled (i.e. it'll just say Q: "erector spinae" > A: "iliac crest, sacrum . . .") I'm not sure if the answer is referring to an origin or insertion or what. Are you aware of a way to label the information on the flashcard (i.e. "Muscle: Insertion" or whatever)?

    Love your stuff! Thanks for your work!

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    Replies
    1. Obviously, I could label each individual question/answer, but I'm looking for a more time-efficient method.

      Again, thanks!

      Delete