Study Orthopedics Flashcards

What is Orthopedics?

Orthopedics is the medical specialty that concerns diseases and injuries of the musculoskeletal system. This interconnected system includes the nerves, tendons,  ligaments, joints, muscles, and bones.

Orthopedic surgeons have a variety of patients from newborns with deformities such as a clubfoot to athletes needing arthroscopic surgery and baby boomers with arthritis. Orthopedic surgeons are also involved in the event of trauma from road traffic accidents, when individual critical case management is required and many limbs may be affected.  

Orthopedic teams work with patients from diagnosis, treatment with exercise, medication, surgery, casting or other options through to rehabilitation by utilizing exercises or physical therapy to restore strength, function, and movement.

This branch of medicine is highly complex and many orthopedic surgeons specialize in a specific area such as the hip, knee, foot and ankle, hand, or spine. No doctor would choose an amputation unless all other treatment options have been exhausted, however, orthopedic surgeons are tasked with this rather grim and highly complex procedure, on occasion to save a patient’s life. Sadly, with the rise of diabetes in the US, over half of all amputations performed are as a result of circulatory issues brought on by diabetes. Regardless of the amputation being necessary due to an RTA trauma, cancer, deformity, or vascular disease as a result of diabetes; a patient is seriously affected both physically, mentally, and emotionally by the loss of a limb. Holistic patient care involves a team of prosthetic experts, physical therapists, endocrinologists, psychologists, podiatrists, occupational therapists, and nursing teams.

The demand for orthopedic surgeons and nurses is strong with a forecasted growth of 14% from 2014 to 2024  in the number of physicians according to data from The US Bureau Of Labor Statistics.

Careers in Orthopedics

As with most other branches of medicine in the US, it takes thirteen years to qualify. First, there are three-years of grad school and you’ll need to take a pre-med or science course or a course that has biology, chemistry, physics, and calculus modules. You’ll need to pass the Medical College Admissions Test (MCAT) to start med school.  In med school, you’ll take general medical courses and rotations including orthopedic medicine. After that, there’s a four to five-year residency to complete before becoming a certified orthopedic surgeon.

Orthopedic nurses and orthopedic nurse practitioner complete a four-year nursing degree and successfully complete the NCLEX exam to become RGNs. They then earn the Orthopaedic Nurse Certified credential by gaining a minimum of two years experience as an RN, and complete the required 1,000 hours of work experience in orthopedic nursing. Furthermore, they must pass a 150-question test in order to earn certification.

Orthopedic surgeons are serious high earners in the US and they rated as the second highest paid doctors in a Medscape Compensation Report 2018 of 29 specialties, with only plastic surgery being slightly more highly compensated. If you think you have what it takes to enter orthopedic medicine then take a little time to visit The American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons or The National Association of Orthopedic Nurses. Why not take a few moments to watch this quick video featuring a typical day in the orthopedics department at Boston Children’s Hospital?

Learning Orthopedics

Studying to become an orthopedic surgeon or orthopedic nurse can be tough going. Notwithstanding, the huge amount of medical and scientific knowledge you need to learn there are all the rotations which are sometimes 24-hours or longer!

As an orthopedic surgeon, nurse or nurse practitioner, no case is the same and you need to be a problem solver to implement treatment plans. Brainscape will allow you to build and rely on key medical knowledge so that you can focus on the application of those principles in clinical practice.

Orthopedics in Brainscape

There are thousands of flashcards dedicated to Orthopedic Medicine in Brainscape, all prepared by top students and professors. If you’re learning Orthopedic Medicine you might also find other pages helpful such as physiology, pharmacology, vascular disease and surgery, psychology, anatomy, nutrition, immunology, podiatry, pathology, histology, surgery, occupational therapy, and oncology.   

If your AP scores need a boost to get into nursing college or grad school then take a look at the AP Biology and AP Chemistry study guides in Brainscape. Alternatively, if you’re looking to get great MCAT scores for med school then the MCAT study guide is helping thousands of students gain the edge they need.

Regardless of the excellent content on Brainscape, some students prefer to learn by writing out their own notes and there’s a reason for that. The process improves your memory trace, so if you’d like to use your own coursework but you want to benefit from Brainscape’s flashcard system then simply make your own notecards. It’s free and easy and you can choose to share your content or keep it private.

Learn faster with Brainscape

Brainscape’s revolutionary learning system known as Confidence-Based Repetition or CBR is great news for medical students.

Thousands of doctors and nurses have trusted Brainscape to supplement their learning from AP exams, through to MCAT exams and throughout medical school and nursing college. In fact, medical students rely on Brainscape, with challenging shifts and rotations and a heap of coursework to get through, learning effectively is key.

That’s why Brainscape’s CBR system is proving invaluable, in particular, for medical students. The CBR uniquely incorporates three proven learning methods: spaced repetition, active recall, and metacognition. Consequently, this makes the CBR system the most powerful learning engine available on today’s education market. It allows students to learn twice as fast and remember longer.

The first of the learning methods used in the CBR system is spaced repetition. Scientists have proved this to be an effective learning method in thousands of studies and you’ll see it incorporated in the flashcard format used.

The second learning method is active recall which is the learning process of recalling information. In Brainscape the answers are not shown in patterns so you’ll have to retrieve answers and that strengthens the memory trace and the neural pathways. Therefore, when you next want to retrieve that piece of information the memory trace is strong and retrieval is easy.

What makes the CBR engine so powerful is its use of the individual learner’s metacognitive to fuel the algorithm. Other computer-aided learning tools show notecards randomly however every card that Brainscape presents to the learner is placed with precision for optimal interactive learning. In practice, learning with Brainscape is a seamless user learning experience and the results are outstanding.

Each time you review a flashcard in Brainscape you’ll take a second or two to consider your breadth of understanding and leave a record of how well you knew the answer. This metacognitive response allows the algorithm to place cards with precision rather than randomness. Cards will be placed in the deck according to the rating the learner records. A student may record a low rating of “1” and so the algorithm will repeat this card frequently and the flashcards rated “5” will be shown infrequently. The method of perfectly placing the cards in the deck means students never waste a second going over material they know and instead they optimize their learning by focusing on weaker areas.

This remarkable learning tool is proving invaluable to thousands of doctors and nurses so get started boosting your learning with Brainscape today.   

How to get started

Getting started with Brainscape is easy. Simply take a quick look through the decks below and you’ll see topics from Lower Extremity Disorders, Back Disorders, Foot and Ankle, Thoracic Spine Assessment, Osteoarthritis and Rheumatoid Arthritis, Complications of Fracture, and Pediatrics. So dig in, now!

If you have your own coursework that you'd like to commit to Brainscape flashcards then just click on “make flashcards” at the top of the page and get started right away, it couldn’t be easier.

Brainscape is making the difference for thousands of medical students, nurses and doctors across America and beyond. The Brainscape team wishes you all the very best in your Orthopedic Medicine studies and career.