I'm a current medical resident, and I have absolutely used YouTube to fill in the gaps. Just a few days ago during lunch, I watched a 3 minute video on how to r

I'm a current medical resident, and I have absolutely used YouTube to fill in the gaps. Just a few days ago during lunch, I watched a 3 minute video on how to remove a PICC line before taking one out of a patient. I have taken PICC lines out before, but I just wanted a quick refresher before doing another one. I've also used YouTube to improve my physical exam skills. In the real world, you just don't get enough abnormal findings in certain areas to learn quickly. For example, although ACL tears are common, I haven't seen more than a few due to the context I work in. I use YouTube to see more examples of these kinds of abnormal findings. While I was in medical school, the vast majority of my education came from online resources, YouTube, question banks, or ancillary books that were not part of the official curriculum. If you go to any medical student in the US today, they'll be familiar with the four key resources: UWorld (massive bank of USMLE board questions), First Aid (reference text book containing key information for board exams), Pathoma (video series teaching histology and pathology created by a University of Chicago pathologist), and SketchyMedical (another video series of visual mnemonics to help you memorize microbiology and pharmacology facts). There are also community driven projects such as Zanki and Brosencephalon, which are Anki decks with 25,000+ cards containing info needed for board exams. Another popular YouTube channel is Armando Hasudungan, who illustrates medical concepts aimed towards med students. The med school I went to and many others are moving away from the traditional lecture-based model. Lectures at my school were offered, but they were optional and attendance was usually <25% of our class as the quality was notoriously poor. My med school classmates and I found learning much, much more effective with this hands off approach. This does call in to question the value and role of a medical school today. Now that I'm a resident working with other residents who went to med schools all across the US, I'm realizing that most of us just forced our way through the official curriculum and did most of our "real" learning using the same resources I mentioned above.