Learning how to deal with test anxiety in medical school may be a game changer in your grades. Half the battle in medical school is learning the content, and the other half is being able to answer questions. Whether you have always had test anxiety, or you develop it in medical school, it can be quite disruptive.
The unfortunate part about having test anxiety in medical school is that you always have tests! On top of that, your tests always carry a lot of weight. Every school is different, but for many schools, you have to hit a certain grade or you fail and have to remediate. Too many remediations can lead to a repeat of the year, or a dismissal from the program.
Licensing exams are just as important. Failure on even one exam can seriously derail your residency and fellowship options. Therefore, it’s essential that you make it a priority to learn how to deal with test anxiety in medical school. The earlier you can do this, the better off you’ll be. You don’t want to be on the verge of dismissal and just then trying to figure out why you get nervous before exams.
So, continue reading for my tips on how to deal with test anxiety in medical school!
1. Figure out where your anxiety comes from
When you’re learning how to deal with test anxiety in medical school, it’s important to understand why you have anxiety. Have you gotten bad test grades before and now have low confidence? Do testing environments make you nervous? Do you generally just feel unprepared or unknowledgeable? What are the thoughts that run through your mind before you take an exam?
Situational factors are also important for determining why you feel anxious. Are there certain classes you feel more anxious in than others? Do you always feel anxious, or only some times? Are you okay when you walk in the room, but then when the tests starts, do you get extremely nervous?
What does test anxiety look like for you? Is your heart beating fast? Do you find it hard to breathe? Are you sweating profusely? Is your stomach churning? These are all questions to ask yourself so you understand what test anxiety looks like for you, and when it happens. Taking these measurements is the first step in overcoming this fear that you have before tests. Take some time to think or journal about these questions to really get a good idea about when the anxiety occurs.
2. Address contributing factors
Once you’ve done your root-cause-analysis, the next step in how to deal with test anxiety in medical school is to directly address those contributing factors. If you continue to ignore them, they will continue to be a problem. So you have to identify what causes your anxiety, and what you need to do to try and assuage those feelings.
If your anxiety stems from a lack of preparation, then you have to study more or more effectively. Perhaps you get easily distracted while studying, or you just don’t like a certain topic so you avoid it. Whatever the main reason is, it’s amazing how your confidence can continue to build as you become more familiar with the content. You don’t fear being surprised as much.
If your anxiety comes from past failures or poor performances, then you have to learn how to move past those. It becomes more of a mental process. Shaking off failures in medical school can be hard, especially when you think about the potential long-term consequences. But, you have no control over that, so you have to focus on the present. Use affirmations to help rebuild your confidence. Take some shorter quizzes and see yourself perform well. Do things that reinforce that you know the material, and directly challenge those negative thoughts.
Perhaps you just have straight anxiety and everything makes you nervous. Then you may need to talk to someone to figure out why you’re anxious, and how to overcome it. Look at the list you made for step 2, and begin making a plan to directly address those problems.
3. Find resources offered by your school
Learning how to deal with test anxiety in medical school is hard to do by yourself. The good things is you don’t have to. There are people in your school whose jobs are to assist students with issues like this. Find out who those people are and talk to them about your struggles. They have a lot of training and experience in helping students with test-taking skills, among others.
There is no shame in getting help, and it’s better to do it as soon as you recognize there is a problem, rather than later. I used to feel stupid for getting a tutor. But, what’s actually stupid is struggling when help is right there. Continue seeking help, either mentally, academically, spiritually, or all three, both in your school and outside of your school until you find something that fits.
4. Learn relaxation techniques that work for you
Sometimes nerves just get the best of us, and if we could learn how to manage them, then we could learn how to deal with test anxiety in medical school. That can be done by relaxation techniques. Everyone’s is different, and it has to be something that truly makes you feel calm.
For some, that could be listening to music and getting into a good headspace before the exam. For others, maybe there are different breathing and meditation activities that could help. Think about the times when you feel most relaxed. Whatever you can do to simulate that experience or feeling will help you stay calm both before the exam, and after.
5. Simulate test environments before the exam
Another tip for how to deal with test anxiety in medical school is to stimulate the test environment before the exam. I recommend doing this in my post about the MCAT, but this can truly work for any exam. It’s like a sports practice. You want to simulate game day, so when game day comes, you don’t panic. You’ve been in the scenario before.
Same for an exam. Study in exam-like environments. Take practice tests and do practice questions in those same environments. This can help your brain acclimate to that type of atmosphere, so exam day isn’t such a shock. Turn your devices on silent or DND so they don’t distract you. Get into a quiet room and set goals for yourself so you have a bit of that pressure that comes with test day. The closer to exam day that you can make your study sessions, the better prepared your mind will be for the real deal.
6. Create an exam day routine
One of the best ways for how to deal with test anxiety in medical school is to come up with an exam day routine. Routines help calm your brain because they give your mind order. You know exactly what you’re going to do because you do the same thing every time.
An example of my exam day routine consists of:
- Last-minute review
- Breakfast/lunch (preferably Chick-Fil-A)
- Pump up music on the way to the exam
- Arrive to the exam 20-30 minutes early
- Quiet time before the exam without studying
This has been my routine for the past two and a half years, and it helps me go into the exam confident and calm. I don’t like to study up to the minute before the exam because that rarely does anything but makes me more anxious. I also do not like to be late for exams because that also increases my anxiety and doesn’t give me a chance to decompress and pray before the test.
Figure out what your routine is that helps you feel the most calm and prepared. Then try to do that every time before an exam just to get into the rhythm. If the routine changes from here to there, it’s okay. But overall, it should be about the same.
7. Learn in-test coping skills
Sometimes, you can feel great about an exam until you get in and are surprised by the content, length, etc. That surprise can cause in-exam panic attacks, zone-outs, or a full on nervous breakdown. These will fully derail your exam days, and potentially those testing with you.
Instead, you need to learn some in-test coping skills that you can deploy whenever you begin feeling anxious. You know what anxiety looks like for you. Recognize that within an exam, and address it right from the beginning before it can escalate. These coping skills have to be things that don’t take that much time, don’t cause any disturbances, and can get you back on track quickly.
Breathing exercises are great, subtle techniques for how to deal with test anxiety in medical school. Various breathing exercises require focus on the breath, which can distract you from your feelings about the exam. Do that for a minute or two, and re-engage in the exam.
Try various testing techniques like answering the short, easy questions first, and then coming back to the longer, tougher questions. If you really don’t know the answer, make your best educated guess and move on. The answer might be in another question, or it might come to you later. Or it might not. But spending 5 minutes on a question you don’t know takes away from time that you could be spending on questions that you do know.
At the end of the day, if you put your best effort forward, then there’s nothing else for you to do but get through the exam and keep your head up high. If you know you could have done more, then you’ll know better for the next time.
Key Takeaways
Test anxiety can be debilitating, and really take away from your ability to do well on exams. Don’t let test anxiety be the reason that you don’t get the grades or residency that you want. There are ways to overcome these feelings, but they will require some effort on your part to make that happen.
If you struggled with test anxiety, please leave comments on how you overcame it!
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