• OBJECTIVE
    • The purpose of this review is to synthesize recent literature relating to factual knowledge acquisition and retention and to explore its applications to medical education.
  • RESULTS
    • Distributing, or spacing, practice is superior to massed practice (i.e. cramming). Testing, compared to re-study, produces better learning and knowledge retention, especially if tested as retrieval format (short answer) rather than recognition format (multiple choice). Feedback is important to solidify the testing effect.
  • CONCLUSIONS
    • Learning basic factual knowledge is often overlooked and under-appreciated in medical education. Implications for applying these concepts to smartphones are discussed; smartphones are owned by the majority of medical trainees and can be used to deploy evidence-based educational methods to greatly enhance learning of factual knowledge.