Anki for Medical School: The Complete Guide (2026)

Medical school requires memorizing an absurd amount of information. Thousands of drugs, diseases, pathways, and symptoms. And you need to retain it for years, not just until the next exam.

This is why Anki has become essential for medical students. The spaced repetition algorithm is perfectly suited for the long-term retention that medicine demands.

Here's everything you need to know.

Why Anki dominates medical education

The numbers:

• ~70% of US medical students use Anki
• Top Step 1 scorers almost universally use spaced repetition
• The most popular medical Anki deck (AnKing) has millions of downloads

Why it works:

• Medicine is memorization-heavy (perfect for flashcards)
• You need knowledge to last years (perfect for spaced repetition)
• Content is well-defined (boards test specific facts)
• Community has created excellent pre-made decks

Getting started: The basics

Install Anki

• Download from apps.ankiweb.net (official site)
• Create a free AnkiWeb account for syncing
• iOS app costs $25 (one-time)—worth it for mobile reviews

Essential add-ons

Install these via Tools → Add-ons → Get Add-ons:

1. AnKing Note Types - Better card formatting
2. Image Occlusion Enhanced - Essential for anatomy
3. Review Heatmap - Track your consistency
4. BetterTags - Organize cards by topic
5. Load Balancer - Smooth out daily review counts
6. FSRS - Modern scheduling algorithm (built into Anki 23.10+)

The big decision: Pre-made vs. custom cards

Pre-made decks (most common approach)

AnKing Step 1/Step 2 deck:

• 30,000+ cards covering all of Step 1
• Tagged by topic, First Aid chapter, and resource
• Community-maintained and constantly updated
• Includes image occlusions and cloze deletions

How to use AnKing:

1. Download from ankingmed.com
2. Unsuspend cards as you cover topics in class
3. Keep cards suspended until you've learned the material elsewhere first

Pros: Saves hundreds of hours of card creation. Cards are high-quality and tested.

Cons: Not personalized. Can feel disconnected from your learning.

Custom cards

Making your own cards for lecture material, research, or topics not covered in pre-made decks.

When to make custom cards:

• Your curriculum covers something unique
• You want to reinforce lecture-specific details
• You learn better by creating cards yourself
• Filling gaps in pre-made decks

The challenge: Time. Making good cards takes forever.

Anki settings for medical students

New cards

• New cards/day: 20-50 depending on your schedule
• Learning steps: 15m 1d (or 10m 1d 3d for harder material)
• Graduating interval: 3-4 days

Reviews

• Maximum reviews/day: Start with 9999 (unlimited), reduce if overwhelming
• Easy bonus: 130%
• Interval modifier: Start at 100%, adjust based on retention

FSRS (if using Anki 23.10+)

The new FSRS algorithm is more efficient than the legacy SM-2. Enable it:

• Deck Options → FSRS → Enable

Image Occlusion: Essential for anatomy

Image Occlusion lets you hide parts of an image and test yourself on identifying them.

Perfect for:

• Anatomy (muscles, bones, organs, vessels)
• Pathology slides
• Radiology images
• Biochemical pathways
• Drug mechanisms

How to use:

1. Find a diagram or image
2. Click the Image Occlusion button in Anki
3. Draw rectangles over parts you want to hide
4. Each rectangle becomes a separate card

Pro tip: Screenshot from First Aid, Pathoma, or Sketchy and create occlusion cards.

Cloze deletions: Perfect for lists and pathways

Cloze deletions hide part of a sentence:

{{c1::Streptococcus pneumoniae}} is the most common cause of {{c2::community-acquired pneumonia}} in adults.

This creates two cards, each testing one fact.

Use cloze for:

• Drug mechanisms
• Diagnostic criteria
• Step-by-step processes
• Lists (symptoms, risk factors, treatments)

AnKing uses cloze extensively, so you'll see this format throughout the deck.

Integrating Anki with other resources

First Aid

• AnKing is tagged by First Aid chapter
• Unsuspend cards as you read each section
• Many cards include First Aid page references

UWorld

• Do questions first, then unsuspend related Anki cards
• Wrong answers → find and review those cards
• Some people make cards from UWorld explanations

Pathoma/Sketchy/Boards & Beyond

• AnKing cards are tagged by video resource
• Watch video → unsuspend tagged cards
• Don't Anki content you haven't learned yet

The typical M1/M2 workflow

During the semester:

1. Attend/watch lecture
2. Review with First Aid, Pathoma, or B&B
3. Unsuspend relevant AnKing cards
4. Do daily reviews (aim for <1 hour/day)
5. Make custom cards only for lecture-specific content

Dedicated Step 1 prep:

1. All AnKing cards unsuspended
2. 200-400 new cards/day (unsuspending, not creating)
3. 1-3 hours of Anki daily
4. Combined with UWorld questions

Common mistakes to avoid

1. Starting too late

Anki works best over time. Starting M1 day one beats starting during dedicated.

2. Too many new cards

Unsuspending 100 cards/day sounds fine until you have 500 reviews/day a month later.

3. Not using tags

AnKing's tag system is powerful. Learn to use it:

• Browse → filter by tag
• Suspend/unsuspend by topic
• Track what you've covered

4. Making bad custom cards

If you make your own cards, follow the rules:

• One fact per card
• Specific questions
• Use cloze and image occlusion
• Don't copy-paste entire paragraphs

5. Ignoring reviews

Skipping reviews defeats the purpose. Consistency > perfection. Even 50% of reviews is better than 0%.

The custom card time problem

Here's the uncomfortable truth:

Pre-made decks like AnKing are good, but they're generic. They cover board-relevant material but miss:

• Your specific lecture content
• Research you need to present
• Topics your program emphasizes
• Material from your unique rotations

Making custom cards fixes this, but takes forever. A single lecture's worth of cards can take 1-2 hours to create properly.

Most students either:

1. Use only pre-made decks (miss personalized content)
2. Make terrible custom cards (waste time on bad cards)
3. Burn out trying to do everything (unsustainable)

Oboeru: Fast custom cards for medical students

This is where Oboeru fits in.

You can't replace AnKing for board prep. Those 30,000 cards represent thousands of hours of community work.

But you can enhance it with custom cards from:

• Lecture slides your professor uploads
• Research papers for journal club
• Rotation-specific material
• Topics AnKing doesn't cover well

The Oboeru workflow:

1. Drop your lecture PDF or notes
2. Get properly formatted cards in seconds (cloze, image occlusion supported)
3. Review and edit
4. Sync directly to Anki alongside your AnKing deck

What used to take 2 hours takes 5 minutes.

You get the best of both worlds: AnKing for boards + custom cards for everything else—without burning out on card creation.

Summary

• Use Anki from day one of medical school
• Start with AnKing for board prep
• Learn the tools: cloze deletions, image occlusion, tags
• Set sustainable limits on new cards and reviews
• Supplement with custom cards for lecture content
• Automate card creation where possible

Anki is a superpower for medical school. Use it wisely.