When my students ask me this question I often say: "Jean Inman is a great resource and reference, but it is not a bible." And what I mean by that in Inman is a great resource! I’m not going to lie about that. I used it to study and I recommend it to all my students and internships typically provide their students with a copy. It has been the standard for years, but it also requires you to use it correctly and realize that you will most likely need to use other resources to fully study for the exam.
For most students, just reading the Inman cover to cover isn’t going to make those topics stick in your brain. I do recommend that you give Inman a solid read cover to cover if you haven't before. Don’t forget to take notes and listen to the audio if you have it. While you do this be sure to note topics that that you still don't get after reading the section or get a practice question wrong on. These are topics you need to go back and look at and really kind of work to understand them. There are many ways you can dive deeper into a topic whether it is using your school notes, Google or attending a class. Often seeing it explained in a different way or with a picture can help to make it click! Don’t forget you can also post any questions you have to the Facebook page so that I will review and discuss them in the Sunday live session.
After you have finished reading and taking notes, many students find it helpful to reorganize the information into study guides. I use the word reorganize because you don’t need to keep things grouped in specific domains. There are many topics that are seen in multiple domains (ie. equations, vitamins/minerals, community nutrition, government agencies etc.) that will best be studied all at once vs a little in each domain.
Like I mentioned above, remember that the Inman is a great resource, but Jean Inman did not write the exam so be sure to look at additional practice questions (you guys know I love Medical Pocket Prep!) and add additional topics covered in those questions to your notes as needed. Pocket prep has great explanations on each question which you can add to your notes.
Additionally the Inman questions are great, but they don’t have any explanations. When you work through the Inman questions, you need to block extra time to be looking up why the answer is correct. Again, if you can’t figure out why it would be correct, post it on the Facebook page!
So to answer your questions: I 100% recommend you get an Inman guide and use it for your studying, but also be sure to use it correctly! What do you think of the Inman? Please your opinion in the comments!
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