If you've ever tried to memorize every antibiotic and its side effects the night before an exam, this episode is for you.

I talked with Ron Robertson, the creator of Picmonic. It's a visual learning platform built for healthcare students - mnemonics paired with weird, memorable images that stick in your head when a list of facts won't. Ron came up with it while he was in medical school and drowning in material, which is exactly why it works the way it does.

We get into why visual memory beats rote memorization for the volume of information you're expected to hold onto in PA school, and how students use it for prereqs and pharmacology.

What we talk about:

• How Picmonic started and the problem Ron was trying to solve
• Why mnemonics and images stick better than lists
• Using it for prerequisites before PA school
• Pharmacology, microbiology, and the classes that eat people alive
• Building study habits that hold up under PA school volume
• What Ron would tell a student who feels behind

Resources:

Free application timeline: https://www.thepaplatform.com/services/free-application-timeline

CASPA GPA calculator: https://www.thepaplatform.com/pa-school-caspa-gpa-calculator

PA Program Map: https://www.thepaplatform.com/pa-platform-map

Pre-PA counseling: https://www.thepaplatform.com/services/pre-pa-counseling

Welcome to episode 50.

We have a special interview today with the creator of Picmonic.

Meet Ron Robertson.

What is Picmonic?

Let's find out.

Welcome to the Pre PA Club podcast.

If you want to learn how to become a physician assistant, you're in the right place.

I'm your host, Savannah Perry.

Let's get to it.

Hey, guys, thanks for listening.

I'm Savannah, your host.

I am a dermatology PA and also the founder of the PA platform.

Thank you so much for taking the time to listen to this episode and any other episodes that you've listened to.

I really appreciate it.

And I can't believe it's been almost a year of this.

It's crazy.

I am so excited about today's episode.

So if you follow me on Instagram or the blog, a lot of times I'll share things with.

Whether it's scrubs I like, lab coats, whatever things I use to study in dermatology, just resources I like for myself to be aware of what's out there and what the best things out there are.

And then I also like to help you guys figure out what the best things are and if something would maybe be a good fit for you as far as a review tool or study tool, sometimes we can use all the help we can get, right?

So I started talking to Picmonic a while ago and they were just like, hey, have you ever heard of us?

Will you check out what we've got going on?

Let us know what you think.

And so I jumped online and was extremely impressed.

So I'm gonna let the CEO and creator of Picmonic, Ron Robertson, tell you more about what it is exactly.

And he may even give you a spot special discount code.

But they have some great free content as well.

But yeah.

So I'm really excited for this interview.

Let's jump in.

One thing I wanted to mention is that next week I will be doing a live webinar with Picmonic, talking about Mastering.

It's their Mastering Medicine series.

And I'm going to be talking about specifically PA school and studying for PA school.

How I studied, what I found difficult, what I struggled with, and how I overcame those challenges.

I've mentioned it before, but PA school is tough.

And you've heard other interviews talk about that, especially when you first get started.

It's a lot of information and I struggled at first and you'll hear me talk about that.

I mean, I struggled in anatomy, I struggled in pharmacology.

It's just tough to find your groove.

And I want to Help anyone who is going into PA school be able to get there a little bit quicker than I did.

So let's get to our interview and I hope to see you guys at the webinar.

You can find links to that in the description.

Like I said, it is Tuesday night at 8pm Eastern time and it will be on YouTube, Facebook.

You'll be able to find it a lot of places.

But I'll make sure that there's links here in the Prepa Club Facebook group on Instagram if you want to watch.

You should be able to find it fairly easily.

So let's get to it so you can meet Ron.

So my name is Ron Robertson.

I am the co founder and CEO of education technology company known as Picmonic.

Okay.

So I feel like on social media and just the Internet, I've definitely seen stuff floating around about Picmonic.

I've known you guys are out there.

What exactly is Pigmonic?

So Picmonic is a web and mobile visual learning platform.

Essentially it's a tool that you can use online or on your phones to help you learn and retain the complex information in healthcare professions to do better on course exams, ace the boards and actually become a more competent provider long term because you remember all the details.

But our secret sauce is in that we use Picture Mnemonic, which is where the name Picmonic was derived from, which is if you break it down, it's essentially cartoons for learning, which sounds kind of silly because you're learning to become a PA or a doctor or a nurse and learning with cartoons sounds ridiculous, but the science actually shows that we remember pictures better than words and things like that.

So we've leveraged a lot of research up to create a product and a platform that really engages with students and ultimately helps them become more successful.

So give me a little bit of background as to how did Picmonic start?

How did this idea come to be a thing?

Yeah, that's funny, right?

Right.

Because who would go and create a cartoon tool for PA students or med students?

Right.

So long story short, I came from a family of a doc and a nurse practitioner and always wanted to go into medicine and ended up studying biochemistry out in San Diego for undergrad and did some neuro research.

I was fascinated with the brain and how memory works really to help me also get into medical school.

And then I took a year off, traveled the world and when I got back I went to.

And I felt like going to lectures and using question banks that it wasn't enough.

I just really wasn't remembering all the little subtle nuances and the details because as you know, right.

Learning, you know, the drugs, the bugs, the diseases, it's a lot of information.

And so for myself, you know, I kind of had this background and knew that if you could take information and make it more sensory, make it vivid, make it emotional, make it funny, that you would remember it better.

And so I actually started before I took my boards, which in medicine is called the United States Medical Licensing Exam for the step one I started, you know, I kind of had this freak out moment realistically where I was like, I'm not going to, I'm not going to pass this exam.

I'm not going to remember any of this information.

I've got to do something different.

And so I ended up converting a lot of the medical information into these pictures and stories to help me pass my boards and do well.

And afterwards, you know, I really knew that that's what worked.

So I started sharing with friends and professors and everybody in order to see if this was something that other people liked.

And you know, whether it was the students at the top of the class or the students that were struggling, everybody kind of found it effective.

And so we very quickly said, how do we make this available for everyone in the medical profession?

And then over the last, now what has been a seven year journey in as much of the healthcare professions as possible.

That's really cool.

And I mean, I think in medicine, I think back to PA school, we use mnemonics a lot, old carts, there's tons of things I can think of that we use them with words, but we never really put them with pictures.

Which is interesting because I think you're right.

I mean, when you see something, you learn it so much better.

I think that was my trouble with pharmacology specifically was it's so hard to try to memorize a drug and all these things about it when you have no context and no reference whatsoever.

So from what I've played around with pigmonic, I think that is a huge area where it's super helpful.

But anyway, so yeah, so that's interesting.

So you decided that this was a thing that needed to be more available, did you?

Are you an artist?

How does that work?

No, So I can't even draw a stick figure.

I am awful when it comes to any form of Drawing or illustration.

But I had a good buddy, Johnny Antoni, who was a tattoo artist.

And so I started sharing these ideas with him.

And he actually would create these pictures that once I saw him, I was like, I would never forget taking something like Niemann Pick disease, where he would turn the man and put a pick in the knee.

Knee man, pick.

And all of a sudden you have this man with pick in his knee.

And it's caused by deficiency in an enzyme known as sphingomyelinase.

And so he would draw sphinx on my leg of the guy with pick.

And essentially all of these different aspects of what otherwise was just a bullet point list of black and white text of facts with crazy names that, like you said, we have very little context in the first few years of kind of the academics and medicine that these pictures kind of gave me this, like, mental or this mental filing cabinet, a way for my brain to be able to store the information in a more memorable way.

And by no means is this to replace actually having a profound understanding of the concept, but there's still a lot of details that you just need to be able to memorize.

And that's really where kind of this popped in.

But, no, I can't draw.

So Johnny was the saving grace early on.

That is so cool.

I love.

So I come from a very artistic family.

My dad's a metal artist.

My sister can paint and do all these things.

I cannot draw or paint, but I've been around creative stuff so much that I love that you're taking creativity and mixing it with medicine, which tends to be, I don't want to say boring, but like, a lot of people in medicine are very cut and dry, very black and white, but not everyone is.

And I think being able to look at it from a different angle is so cool.

So I really appreciate that.

When it comes to so Picmonic, I know you mentioned there's an online portion and a mobile portion.

Can you just kind of break those down for me?

Like, how would someone use Picmonic?

Yeah, absolutely.

So, you know, we're all on the go these days, so we do have both an iOS app and an Android app that are available on the App Store.

But when it comes to kind of just how you use this in your studies, the idea is that we cover the majority of the course content for, let's say, pa, over a thousand different topics that you need to know, whether that's the pharmacology or the micro or the biochem.

It kind of covers everything.

The bugs, the drugs, the disease.

And beyond.

So when you're struggling with a topic or a concept, you can jump in, you can search for it, or the content's organized into courses and body systems or even references books.

So like Pants Prep Pearls, if you're working with Pants Prep Pearls, you can go to a specific page, go to the app and then also see what picmonics directly align to topics.

There you're picking a topic, you're playing a two minute video.

We're essentially breaking down the key facts, what we call high yield information, things that you need to know that are frequently tested about a specific topic.

And we're associating those with characters in a quick, you know, like a two minute audio and then there's a quiz.

And the idea is that after you've learned something, instead of just rereading it or re watching the video, we're going to go and do a quick active recall quiz which is very simple questions but it's going to test you and make sure that you actually remember what you just learned.

So within a few minutes you watch a video, you take a quick quiz and then all this information is also pulled into the system and tied to spaced repetition algorithms for what becomes a daily quiz.

And so if you're not familiar with spaced learning, it's that you can space your study cycles out over increasing intervals in time in order to maximize retention.

And we won't get into the science of all this, but it's crazy that you know, even as a medical student, I'm sure you as a ph student we're not necessarily taught how to learn.

No, you're expected to know that, right?

And I think most people come in and are like holy crap, I'm not able to cram and pass an exam.

And you know, because you need to know this information for boards and then into actual, you know, practice long term.

So learning how to learn is tough.

But the beauty is that there's systems like ours and others that have been designed to optimize that experience for people so you don't have to think about it.

If you're struggling with topic or a subject, you come in, you learn a picmonic, you play a video, you do a quiz and then you come back in time and we're going to test you on stuff that you didn't know as well.

And you can do this on your computer.

Sorry.

Or on your phone.

And what we see a lot of students doing is they'll learn on their computers for the first experience computer or tablet, just because it's bigger.

Right.

The image is a lot larger.

And then they'll do the quiz on the go, standing in line at Starbucks, pull out the phone, do a quick quiz and you know, you remember it five times better long term.

Okay, cool.

So how does Picmonic work as far as pricing?

I know y' all put out a lot of free content, but there is.

Is it subscription based or something somebody pays for once?

Good question.

So, yeah, it is a subscription based model.

So very similar to Netflix.

You can sign up and get it from anything from monthly to a year to several years.

And the longer subscription you get, you get a bigger discount up front.

Okay, cool.

Have you found you've been doing this for a while?

As far as feedback from students, I mean, what are they saying and what kind of student or person do you feel like benefits the most from this kind of tool?

That's a really good question.

So to go back to kind of my story, I ended up having an opportunity where I either had to go back to medical school or I could leave medical school my third year in and continue on with Picmonic.

And I made that decision and I did it because we literally have had.

There's been over 400,000 students that have used this in the last handful of years.

But we get students reaching out to us every single day saying, thank you.

This literally was the difference in me failing and passing.

This saved my life.

And so many of those, and typically the best ones are the people who are the most skeptical up front.

He said, I'm not even a visual learner.

This would never work for me.

Learning with cartoons is silly.

I'm becoming a, you know, a doctor.

And then they end up reaching out to us saying, you know, this actually ended up being something I used and I can't.

I wish I would have started sooner.

And it works really well.

And that, that's kind of the motivation for not only myself, but our entire team.

You know, we've got a small startup based out of Phoenix, Arizona.

There's 15 of us, and everybody works their tails off every single day.

Which is, in essence, we want to help make learning the impossible possible for students that work just like me, you, and everyone else.

And so I don't think you can really classify this as a resource for students who are struggling or doing incredible.

I think it has the potential to help everyone.

And the science actually says that too.

And so when we actually launched the product, there was a lot of skeptics and people who are saying things that, you know, really question the validity of it.

So we worked with a medical school and ran an international research board approved study actually showing that people using Picmonic remembered more and up to 300% more within a month time frame.

So you could actually go to pubmed, search Picmonic.

There's a legitimate research article there kind of validating its efficacy.

But it's been incredible to see how many people it's, it's been able to help.

And that's what fuels us, is helping others keep doing it.

I love that.

So we talked previously and about how my husband is now a resident and so I was with him through the step one, step two days, MCAT days.

I mean, I.

So I remember, I mean it.

He had these huge books he was trying to memorize.

And so yeah, I just, I, I think this would have been a great tool for him to have.

But I love that y' all are specifically reaching out and including PAs, because I think that is an area where there is just a lack of resources.

And even I remember being in PA school and everyone said to use this specific question bank.

So I purchased it.

It was super expensive and I felt like the questions weren't tailored to PA school at all.

They were leftover step one questions.

They weren't relevant.

They weren't the material we were being tested on.

And so that was really frustrating.

So why for you guys?

I know you said you want to reach all the healthcare professionals, but why do you feel like specifically reaching out to the PA community and providing this to PA students and PAs was something that was important to you?

It became more important to us because it was important to the PA students that we were talking to.

A lot of students were coming in and using the medical product and loving it, but needing additional information or organized differently.

And the reality is, right as a pa, you learn what a medical student does, you guys still have to learn so much information in such a short amount of time as well, that it's not like they're two completely different worlds.

They're very, very, very similar.

And so for us, it was more based on student demand.

Students coming and just asking, requesting for us to kind of build a specific product tailored to their needs and including things like pants prep pearls that really help make it easier and more efficient for the students to use the tool effectively.

Yes, I love that y' all are integrating the resources that we use that makes it a lot more, a lot easier to find, like you said, the information we want.

When I first got on Picmonic, I of course went straight to the dermatology section since that's the field I'm in.

And of course, I was a little bit skeptical.

I was like, I need to go.

Like, I need to see if they're teaching the way I think they should and if it's legit.

And it was.

I watched the ones about skin cancers, and they were great.

So it was kind of funny.

I was just like, I was a little bit skeptical just because I. I don't know.

I like to take notes.

But you can still take notes on picmonic, so it's fine.

You can, yeah.

You know, and a lot of this system over the last couple years has continued evolve based on what students are saying they need.

So we've added in things like additional media resources, meaning if you're learning about histology or radiology or pathology, we've got the actual real images and media incorporated into the system to make it easier for things that you're going to see in real life around test questions.

So.

And there's a lot of examples of that, different ways that we've tweaked this system to become more effective for some students.

Yeah.

And obviously everyone, I think, should go check it out themselves.

But I did find that the you pro, there's probably a technical term for it.

The interface was very easy to use, and it made sense.

It wasn't hard to find what I was looking for, which I feel like in some of these review systems, it.

They're.

They're just kind of cumbersome and clunky.

And so it was nice that everything was very smooth.

Y' all have done a good job there.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I think it's good.

On kind of a different note, so you initially went to medical school thinking you were going to be a doctor.

Obviously changed paths and doing something different, but still kind of related, but doing very well.

I think one question that comes up with a lot of people just interested in healthcare in general is, okay, I want to do medicine, but I have these other interests and these other things that I feel like I'm good at or this business idea.

Was that scary for you to switch paths like that?

I mean, or is that something you feel like.

I don't know.

Did you see yourself ever doing that?

I did not see myself ever leaving medical school.

And, you know, I'd spent many, many, many, many years of my life believing that I was going to become a doctor.

And it was kind of set in stone probably from a very early age.

So actually, changing paths and directions was not the plan, but it kind of came down to a couple things.

One is, we started the company, and I was incredibly naive in thinking it would be simple to create the technology and the content and get it out there to the world.

I didn't know any better.

You know, kind of an ambitious entrepreneur at heart, and thought it would be quicker, faster, easier than it was in reality.

And so once we actually got things started, it was harder for me to actually go back to medical school because I'd taken investment capital and we had a team, and there were students using the product, and so I couldn't really just bail out.

And then on the flip side, for me, it was just, how could I have a bigger impact?

And I really believe that this was something that was just, you know, every single one of my friends and colleagues and students when I was in school still struggled.

And, you know, we've talked to thousands of students over the last couple years, and it's pretty ubiquitous.

There's not a lot of great resources.

And even though there are a lot more today than when I was in school, it's still deficient.

And it takes somebody a little bit crazy to go and try and create cartoons for medical education.

So it's been a journey by no means easy, but I'm really glad that I did it because I think we are helping a lot of people.

That's so cool.

I love it.

Well, I know we're gonna have a special code or link for everyone, but if someone wanted to try out Picmonic or check it out, where would you recommend they go to find you guys?

Go to picmonic.com.

Okay, if you're on your computer, and definitely recommend checking it out on your computer first.

But go to picmonic.com you can actually sign up for a free trial just by registering, and you'll get access to a few free Picmonics, and then you can actually get one for free every single day if you continue to come back.

Or you can sign up for the entire product, which is going to include all the content that we have for whatever discipline, whether it's medicine or physician assistant or nursing.

And you can do that.

And if.

Because you're so generous in taking time to chat with us today, if you want to hook your audience up, they can also use a promo code on the checkout page for 30% off.

Nice.

Very generous.

Do you want me to give that to them now, or do you want to wait?

Yes.

All right, so if you want to use discount code 30 off, just type in picmonic for PA.

Pick monic for PA on.

Checkout will get you 30% off for,.

Like, for or the letter or the number four.

That is a good question.

F, O, R. So all letters.

All right.

And that'll be in the episode description too, so I'll make sure you guys get that.

But awesome.

Okay, great.

Anything else you want to share?

Any wife tips?

Wow.

Wise tips.

I mean, it's, you know, it's a journey, you guys.

The getting into grad school, going through the process, trying to learn all that information and retain it in order to pass exams.

And then, you know, it's.

It's a really difficult process and doing that while keeping your sanity and your balance is really difficult.

So I'd say definitely check out Picmonic.

It'll help save you some time, get you better grades, make sure you nail the boards, and then open up some time for you to live your life a little bit.

Take time to.

To enjoy.

Enjoy everything that we have.

It's kind of a fun way to study, in my opinion.

More fun than reading a book, so.

I think so too.

Well, thank you so much for joining us, Ron.

I really appreciate you talking to us and everything you're doing for the PA community.

Like I said, we really appreciate being included and I think you have a great resource and I know you've worked really hard on it.

Well, thank you for taking the time and love what you're doing with the PA platform and wish you all the best.

Thank you.

So there you have it.

Sorry if you heard any little baby noises.

Sam decided she wanted to be part of that interview and I tried to edit her out, but I don't think I got it all.

But anyway, so if you missed that code, it is Picmonic for F O R P A.

And I will link to that in the description of this episode and I'll also put it on social media.

So check it out.

See if Picmonic is something that may work for you as far as your studying.

I think it's always great to explore different study options when you're trying to figure out what your routine needs to look like.

Thank you to Ron for taking the time to tell us about Picmonic.

And I hope you found that interesting and helpful.

And if you have any questions, reach out to me on Instagram, the PA platform.

Email me.

Just let me know what you think, leave a review, do something, and make sure you subscribe so that you don't miss out on future episodes.

We have some really, really great interviews coming up.

I'm so excited about them.

We've been.

I've been doing lots of interviews, so hang in there.

Stick around and let me know if you need me.

Have a good day.

By.