<p>memorization?</p>
<p>If so, how do you retain the information?</p>
<p>Yes (memorization), and being able to integrate all that information into a differential diagnosis and potential treatment. You are not going to remember everything that you learn in medical school, but you will be using it on occasion where you will have to remember it. Obviously a surgeon will know more anatomy than a dermatologist and a pathologist will know more pathophysiology than many and so on.</p>
<p>The first two years are a lot of memorization, but the final two are more about the integration of that into application.</p>
<p>There is a lot of stuff that is taught in the first two years, that simply won't appear during the course of clinical practice. I've had plenty of lecturers "now I have to tell you about this, but I've only seen 2 cases in all my X years of medical practice", and yet, for the exam, you have to know how this is going to present, how you'd treat and the underlying mechanism for the disease and its subsequent complications...</p>