01/26/2026
Is recall based knowledge in medicine still the norm? Rethinking Memorization in Medical EducationI used to defend why my residents needed to memorize something until I realized their phone could answer that in 3 seconds. The old "I'll look it up tonight" is dead.
Now you can look it up right at the patient's bedside or while you are drafting their ambient scribe generated note. With that note in context, you can invoke evidence-based knowledge and apply it to the context to generate enviable text for prognosis, for diagnostic pathway, or any other clinical reasoning or decision support.
I can't give a good reason to memorize anymore.
The truth? Memorization isn't dead.
But memorizing FACTS when AI retrieves them instantly? That's the part that's obsolete.
What actually matters now:
✅ Mental models that let you recognize patterns
✅ Foundation knowledge for clinical reasoning
✅ Internalized frameworks that guide decision-making
You can't reason about what you can't recall quickly. But you also can't waste cognitive load on what AI handles better.
The question isn't "Should we still memorize?"
It's "What's worth holding in your head when everything else is one click away? What is the functioning database that you need to have at bedside and what's new knowledge that one can look up at the bedside"
That's the shift medical education is struggling to name.
What's ONE thing you still make students memorize, and why does it matter?👇
I'm genuinely curious what you're holding onto, and what you've let go.
