Opinions on Gross Anatomy Group Size?

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So as a pre-med I'm excited about gross lab and I want to do as much dissecting as possible so I've been leaning towards schools with smaller groups. However, my girlfriend (an M3) says after a few weeks it becomes tedious and you learn to hate it.

What do you guys think is the ideal group size per cadaver?
 
4 is a good group size. And I agree with your gf
 
We have 3-4 here and it works out fine if you don't like cutting like me.

Cutting is cool for like the first 20 minutes of your first lab, after that, it's a complete pain in the *******.
 
MilkIsGood said:
4 is a good group size. And I agree with your gf
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notbobtrustme said:
We have 3-4 here and it works out fine if you don't like cutting like me.

Cutting is cool for like the first 20 minutes of your first lab, after that, it's a complete pain in the *******.
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Wow those are the smallest groups I've seen at interviews. Most of the schools I've been to have 6-8 per body, but they dissect in two groups of 3-4. Is that what you guys mean?
 
My school has groups of 8 (four groups of 2) per cadaver, but only 4 people are in the lab on any given day. Groups A and B dissect the first day, then B and C, then C and D, and finally D and A. My classmates and I grew to love this system immensely, because on the days we weren't dissecting, we were able to go study instead of wasting 2-3 hours digging around in fat. 9/10 would recommend. (not the fat part, the larger group part)
 
I am a M3 and can tell you the things I dissected personally I still remember very well. The other areas I have a rough idea of what is there. Imo there is no better way to learn gross anatomy than in lab, dissecting, with a good manual/atlas.

That being said, I had a skinny cadaver, if yours has 5 inchs of fat then it might be a different story.
 
CuttingCorneas said:
My school has groups of 8 (four groups of 2) per cadaver, but only 4 people are in the lab on any given day. Groups A and B dissect the first day, then B and C, then C and D, and finally D and A. My classmates and I grew to love this system immensely, because on the days we weren't dissecting, we were able to go study instead of wasting 2-3 hours digging around in fat. 9/10 would recommend. (not the fat part, the larger group part)
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Since you are only dissecting 2/4 days, do you worry that you'll miss out on something on those other 2 days?
 
MedPR said:
Since you are only dissecting 2/4 days, do you worry that you'll miss out on something on those other 2 days?
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Not at all. Most of the structures are so much better in Rohen's or Netter's, and our instructors went in before practicals and made sure dissections were clean and structures were easily-taggable/identifiable. Personally, I felt like lab was a waste of time, because it was doing the dirty work without gaining anything special like knowledge of the structures. Sure, maybe I'd seen some things in person, but I had no idea what they were, because I had 40 other new structures to remember as well. It was only when I got to go back and study Netter's in a private setting that I was able to cement my knowledge.

Probably the biggest question you should be asking when it comes to anatomy lab is how often the practicals are. I know several people at different schools who had one giant practical as their midterm, and one as their final. IMO, that's way too extreme. We had practicals every Friday morning, meaning we only had a week's worth of material to cover (which is still a ton), and there was less chance of forgetting minutiae that we'd learned six weeks before.
 
I think 4 is the most optimum size for learning anything over that just gets annoying because you have to push yourself through others to learn. I was really excited about dissecting the first week of anatomy after that it I let the gunners peel off all the skin, fat and just stood there learning. Dissecting is fun though don't get me wrong but not my thing especially when I can be doing better things like going over notes and images in Rohen's.

Lab is all about using your time wisely to learn not just stand around. If you can force yourself to go over notes during lab while your partners dissect then you can cut away a lot of the study time outside of class unless you're a nerd like me who just likes studying a lot any ways.
 
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As a pre-med I thought the exact same thing that you did....That anatomy was going to be my calling and that I was going to spend massive amounts of time in the lab.

We just finished anatomy and I am so glad that I went to a school that has 8 students per body. Performing the actual dissections is a very low-yield way to learn and the physical process is slow and boring. Reviewing structures after they have been dissected is a great way to learn, but doing the actual dissections is not.

The less students working on the body the less thorough the dissections will be unless you commit huge amounts of time (that you don't have) in lab.

Believe me, 8 students per body split into two alternating groups of four is the way to go.
 
MedPR said:
Wow those are the smallest groups I've seen at interviews. Most of the schools I've been to have 6-8 per body, but they dissect in two groups of 3-4. Is that what you guys mean?
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yea, we have two teams per cadaver. 3-4 students is the norm per team but for one-off structures (heart/GI/CNS), we have joint dissections.
 
Students/cadaver is definitely one of the most useless metrics to assess medical schools.

My school had 8/cadaver, and I loved anatomy. However, love of anatomy does not equal love of tediously picking through fat or cleaning up structures.

Every school will allow you pretty much as much time with the cadavers as you want. The actual time spent dissecting is not terribly useful.
 
VisionaryTics said:
Students/cadaver is definitely one of the most useless metrics to assess medical schools.

My school had 8/cadaver, and I loved anatomy. However, love of anatomy does not equal love of tediously picking through fat or cleaning up structures.

Every school will allow you pretty much as much time with the cadavers as you want. The actual time spent dissecting is not terribly useful.
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agree totally.

my time was best spent after lab, at night when the dissection was already done. It gave me time by myself to go over everything without fighting for space or trying to cut through fat and skin.
 
Opinion: This is one of, if not the, most frequently asked questions on med school interview days, and is one of, if not the, least important factors you should consider in choosing a med school.

The number of students in your group is next to meaningless. Almost all schools will fall somewhere in the standard range of 4-8. All schools will still give you an adequate exposure to anatomy. In a few years you won't remember or care.
 
We had eight per cadaver with four dissecting every other day. It would have been god-awful to do all those dissections--I was SO glad I only did half. Anatomy lab can be very discouraging, especially in the beginning when you're mostly just removing superficial fascia. And even after that. I spent three hours once dissecting the left orbit. It was horrible. It was really awesome to get to lab the next session and see that we had moved beyond that.
 
We had 4-5 per cadaver. I never heard anyone say they didn't have enough cadaver time. I don't think it matters.
 
You will eventually come to hate dissection when you realize it is primarily monotonous, tedious, terribly boring work. You don't slice into a body part and find a nice neat artery. First you skin, then slowly and carefully work through the fascia. And then when you find it, you pick off little bits of tissue until its clean.

It sucks. Unless that sounds like your thing.
 
We had 6 per body. You had the option to split up the group if you wanted to, and many groups did 3/3 alternating days. Lab was not mandatory and it was really nice to have the flexibility to come and go as we pleased. Some people came every day, while others just showed up right before the practical. The lab was open 24/7 so you could theoretically go in and dissect/review whenever you wanted.
 
I am apparently one of the weird ones and actually really enjoy anatomy. I do agree that it can get tedious, but there is no question that whatever I am personally dissecting, I wind up learning very well. For that reason I actually enjoy the fact that we only have 4 people per cadaver. I would feel like I am missing out on learning if there were any more people working on my cadaver. This is definitely a personal preference as there are clearly many people who do not enjoy gross anatomy as much as I do.

One thing in anatomy you need to learn quickly, is that you can be really rough and deliberate with your dissections. I spent the first few labs carefully cleaning the fascia and teasing out muscles. However once you see the anatomy professors come by your body and just completely rip everything apart, but still wind up with effectively the same result only in 1/10th the time, you realize that it's really not necessary to be 'careful.' Eventually I learned to never use the scapel unless absolutely necessary and to just use fingers and blunt tools to separate skin and muscle with ease. Of course once you have to deal with nerve bundles, you do have to be slightly more delicate.
 
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darkjedi said:
I am apparently one of the weird ones and actually really enjoy anatomy. I do agree that it can get tedious, but there is no question that whatever I am personally dissecting, I wind up learning very well. For that reason I actually enjoy the fact that we only have 4 people per cadaver. I would feel like I am missing out on learning if there were any more people working on my cadaver. This is definitely a personal preference as there are clearly many people who do not enjoy gross anatomy as much as I do.

One thing in anatomy you need to learn quickly, is that you can be really rough and deliberate with your dissections. I spent the first few labs carefully cleaning the fascia and teasing out muscles. However once you see the anatomy professors come by your body and just completely rip everything apart, but still wind up with effectively the same result only in 1/10th the time, you realize that it's really not necessary to be 'careful.' Eventually I learned to never use the scapel unless absolutely necessary and to just use fingers and blunt tools to separate skin and muscle with ease. Of course once you have to deal with nerve bundles, you do have to be slightly more delicate.
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Definitely agree that you learn more doing the dissections. I had two people on my group who loved being cutters so I didn't get to cut too often. I would usually come in outside of lab and walk through the entire dissection. It would take a while, but I noticed that I felt much more comfortable with the material than when I didn't do that.

(sent from my phone)
 
We had 4 per cadaver, no rotating. I didn't have to fight to cut because no one else wanted to, and I really learned any fine structures that I managed to preserve. I liked dissecting because it gave me protected time to kind of space out and get in my zone.

Remember, scissoring is your friend!
 
We have 4-5 per cadaver with 2 groups alternating days, and I don't feel like Iam missing anything. In fact, I wish we had 6 per cadaver alternating every 4 days. Once you get to where you need to be, there are like 5 usable structures per lab. 2 hours of tedious crap sucks.
 
I feel like I'm one of the few people who got almost nothing out of anatomy lab, whether I dissected or not. I learned most of it via Gilroy's and built a picture in my head. Then, I just went into the lab the week before the exam to confirm the structures' locations on a cadaver. I was definitely not one of those people who spent hours upon hours in lab -- personally, I found that to be extremely low-yield unless you already had a solid mental image of what you're looking at. I enjoyed learning about anatomy but I absolutely hated being in the cadaver lab.

I go to the same school as VisionaryTics, so we had the same set-up -- 8 per body, with 2 students dissecting each session and teaching it to the rest of the group the day after.
 
4 is a decent size. Personally, I found anatomy lab to be pretty useless. I learned way more from the atlases than from the cadavers. It is more a rite of passage than anything IMO and it gets boring and tedious after some time.
 
I'd say it depends on what you're doing. Dissecting the back? 6 was a good number. Rolling the cadaver? 6 was a good number. Dissecting the pelvis? 2 was a good number.
 
This is possibly the worst metric you could ever use to judge a school.

You going to choose a school based on one class u take that is worthless anyway?
 
Good to know interns can read
 
MedPR said:
Good to know interns can read
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tumblr_m9g6e6Bucx1rya3nuo2_500.gif
 
MedPR said:
Good to know interns can read
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S/he has a point, though. It's hard to know whether you'll like anatomy until you actually do it, so it shouldn't be a significant part of your decision. Let's say you think you'll love anatomy and so you choose a school that you might otherwise not have chosen because it has smaller anatomy groups that do every dissection. Then you end up dreading anatomy lab because it sucks to pick out tiny bits of fascia for four hours when you don't really know what you're looking for anyway and you still can't tell the difference between a nerve and a vein. And you start thinking to yourself, "Wow, to think I could have been at a school in Cool Big City instead of Bumfrack, Nowhere AND would have only had to do half of these stupid dissections." This is exaggerated, but there really is no reason to let little things like this factor into your decision. If anything, consider block anatomy vs. longitudinal anatomy, but that probably won't make a huge difference in the long run either. I am glad I had block anatomy because it's over now, even though it sucked balls at the time.

I really think that location, cost, and maybe rank should be the highest priority factors when choosing a school. I would have been miserable if I'd had to move away from my family and SO, for instance, even if I'd gotten into a higher ranked school. Or if you get severe SAD, you will probably want to choose a school in Arizona over a school in upstate NY. I think a lot of pre-meds believe that they will easily be able to handle major life changes for factors like grading system, average Step score, curriculum, early patient contact, etc. It's harder than you think to get used to med school, and the fewer stresses in your life the better you'll adjust. You're still the same person you were before you started med school, and the same things will still make you happy. Don't compromise those.
 
I laughed on the inside at interviews when inevitably, often on the tours, someone would ask "And how many people are there to a cadaver?"
 
TheMightySmiter said:
S/he has a point, though. It's hard to know whether you'll like anatomy until you actually do it, so it shouldn't be a significant part of your decision. Let's say you think you'll love anatomy and so you choose a school that you might otherwise not have chosen because it has smaller anatomy groups that do every dissection. Then you end up dreading anatomy lab because it sucks to pick out tiny bits of fascia for four hours when you don't really know what you're looking for anyway and you still can't tell the difference between a nerve and a vein. And you start thinking to yourself, "Wow, to think I could have been at a school in Cool Big City instead of Bumfrack, Nowhere AND would have only had to do half of these stupid dissections." This is exaggerated, but there really is no reason to let little things like this factor into your decision. If anything, consider block anatomy vs. longitudinal anatomy, but that probably won't make a huge difference in the long run either. I am glad I had block anatomy because it's over now, even though it sucked balls at the time.

I really think that location, cost, and maybe rank should be the highest priority factors when choosing a school. I would have been miserable if I'd had to move away from my family and SO, for instance, even if I'd gotten into a higher ranked school. Or if you get severe SAD, you will probably want to choose a school in Arizona over a school in upstate NY. I think a lot of pre-meds believe that they will easily be able to handle major life changes for factors like grading system, average Step score, curriculum, early patient contact, etc. It's harder than you think to get used to med school, and the fewer stresses in your life the better you'll adjust. You're still the same person you were before you started med school, and the same things will still make you happy. Don't compromise those.
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My point was the thread is asking for input. Not whether or not I should choose a school with larger or smaller groups.

Sent from my SGH-T999 using SDN Mobile
 
Nymphicus said:
I laughed on the inside at interviews when inevitably, often on the tours, someone would ask "And how many people are there to a cadaver?"
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Yeah, ditto. It's a completely useless number. And anatomy lab has only a weak connection to actual medicine. Tissue after preservation only slightly resembles actual live tissue.. Twelve people per cadaver or two people per cadaver, you still decide how much involvement you actually have. Where you really learn medicine is during third year, not in anatomy lab.

If you really want to get a lot from anatomy, you should spend time in the lab outside the assigned hours. And that has nothing to do with how many people there are per cadaver. Don't waste your time thinking about it.
 
penguinism already answered for my school, but I felt like 6 was perfect. My group kinda worked out in that there were 2 people who usually didn't want to dissect, 2 people who didn't mind whether they were dissecting or studying, and 2 people (me included) who loved dissecting. Different groups will have different dynamics. I personally learn best when I actively DO something, so dissecting and uncovering structures was the best way for me to learn, but other people are fine with just seeing it and being told what each structure is. You also need to be familiar with ALL the cadavers in the room, not just yours, so if there are a lot of people dissecting at your table, you can go around to other tables and look at their structures. I think 4 would have been too few (less people to cover for you when you don't feel like coming in or something) and 8 would be too many (probably forced to create dissecting shifts), but that's just me.
 
You will most likely be working with 4 people per cadaver (at most 6). I dissected cadavers in my post-bacc years and there were times it was exciting other times it was a pain. I found out the graduate school anatomy class is harder than our state's medical school anatomy class (you most likely know where I am talking about MedPR).

From what I have read on the forms netters and rohens will be your best friends since it will cut down on the time spent on lab. You should also check for videos online for cadaver dissections. This will help you out a lot 😀

(I am kinda jealous some medical schools spoon feed their students this material as well as CDs will all the parts labeled).
 
IslandStyle808 said:
From what I have read on the forms netters and rohens will be your best friends since it will cut down on the time spent on lab. You should also check for videos online for cadaver dissections. This will help you out a lot 😀

(I am kinda jealous some medical schools spoon feed their students this material as well as CDs will all the parts labeled).
Click to expand...

CDs/books are nothing compared to an actual cadaver. In order to do really well on practicals, you need to commit a good amount of time in lab looking at not just your cadaver, but everyone else's as well. The specimens in Rohen's are beautifully dissected, and no medical student's cadaver will look like that, so it's better to study the real thing. I did use Netter's and YouTube dissection videos to get a general idea of location (and also to study for the written exams), but 90% of my studying for practicals came from being in lab, dissecting and looking at cadavers.
 
Nymphicus said:
I laughed on the inside at interviews when inevitably, often on the tours, someone would ask "And how many people are there to a cadaver?"
Click to expand...

This is funny. When I asked a physician I know why he chose such-and-such school, he said that school X had only 5 students per tank and school Y had 10, so he chose school X. He actually told me, "Be sure to find out how many students they have per cadaver."

What do you think is the question people SHOULD be asking? (I ask about USMLE prep support...and, of course, number of students per cadaver.)
 
Ismet said:
CDs/books are nothing compared to an actual cadaver. In order to do really well on practicals, you need to commit a good amount of time in lab looking at not just your cadaver, but everyone else's as well. The specimens in Rohen's are beautifully dissected, and no medical student's cadaver will look like that, so it's better to study the real thing. I did use Netter's and YouTube dissection videos to get a general idea of location (and also to study for the written exams), but 90% of my studying for practicals came from being in lab, dissecting and looking at cadavers.
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Medical schools differ (the amount of time spent in lab will differ also) and in fact I got into a heated debate with a medical student on this form in the past because I did not believe he/she could master the material through just rohen's and netters alone. I agree with your statement whole heartedly Ismet.

I went through 6 different cadavers in graduate school I had to learn about the origin, insertion, inervation, movement of all the muscle in such fine detail. Rohens and netters just did not cut it and had to look through far more material than that (cadaver videos online were very helpful). You are correct in saying what you said but I never once said you should never go to lab (nor did I say rohens and netter's were a substitute for it). By looking at the books, it cuts down on the time spent in lab (try and not look at rohen's and look at a cartoon drawing all day when dissecting, you will see the difference).
 
squat said:
This is funny. When I asked a physician I know why he chose such-and-such school, he said that school X had only 5 students per tank and school Y had 10, so he chose school X. He actually told me, "Be sure to find out how many students they have per cadaver."

What do you think is the question people SHOULD be asking? (I ask about USMLE prep support...and, of course, number of students per cadaver.)
Click to expand...


I mean, if everything is exactly identical, then sure 5 might be better than 10. I could list 100 other things (not exaggerating) about a school that I would find more important than whether there are 4, 5, 6, 7, or 8 people to a cadaver. Some schools actually don't even have dissection. That would be a more important theoretical question to ask if you were concerned on whether they had dissection or not.

USMLE prep time is probably going to be adequate for nearly and US MD school. All schools want their students to do well on the board exams. A couple weeks difference here or there, in my opinion, shouldn't really influence your decision too much.

Your question is really better suited to a new thread (or one of many that have been posted previously), but briefly, my top 3 things to try to ascertain about a school before attending would be:

#1 Strength, availability, and flexibility of clinical rotations
#2 How supportive are faculty and administration of students (My school goes above and beyond in this category and it is a-m-a-z-i-n-g.)

[unfortunately, these can be hard to figure out as a pre-med with limited time at the school--second looks are a good time for these]

(not quite as important)
#3 Resources and protected time for research​

Unranked p/f is a cherry on top.

Edit: These assume school location is acceptable to you.
 
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Nymphicus said:
I mean, if everything is exactly identical, then sure 5 might be better than 10. I could list 100 other things (not exaggerating) about a school that I would find more important than whether there are 4, 5, 6, 7, or 8 people to a cadaver. Some schools actually don't even have dissection. That would be a more important theoretical question to ask if you were concerned on whether they had dissection or not.

USMLE prep time is probably going to be adequate for nearly and US MD school. All schools want their students to do well on the board exams. A couple weeks difference here or there, in my opinion, shouldn't really influence your decision too much.

Your question is really better suited to a new thread (or one of many that have been posted previously), but briefly, my top 3 things to try to ascertain about a school before attending would be:

#1 Strength, availability, and flexibility of clinical rotations
#2 How supportive are faculty and administration of students (My school goes above and beyond in this category and it is a-m-a-z-i-n-g.)

[unfortunately, these can be hard to figure out as a pre-med with limited time at the school--second looks are a good time for these]

(not quite as important)
#3 Resources and protected time for research​

Unranked p/f is a cherry on top.

Edit: These assume school location is acceptable to you.
Click to expand...

I think some other things are very important, for me my #1 thing was how much class time is required in person? I didn't consider any school with mandatory classes everyday.

Also, dedicated step 1 time was important for me.
 
squat said:
This is funny. When I asked a physician I know why he chose such-and-such school, he said that school X had only 5 students per tank and school Y had 10, so he chose school X. He actually told me, "Be sure to find out how many students they have per cadaver."

What do you think is the question people SHOULD be asking? (I ask about USMLE prep support...and, of course, number of students per cadaver.)
Click to expand...

1) What is the role of med students on the wards? Do you actively participate in care and manage patients to some degree? Or just sit on the sidelines? How are clinical grades determined (i.e., predominantly shelf scores, predominantly subjective evals, combination, etc.)?

2) Is grading true P/F or are internal ranks kept? Does this information go into the MSPE?

3) Are classes mandatory? If so, approx. how much per week?

I think those three questions are perhaps the most important with respect to the actual education aspect of medical school. The other stuff is obviously important, but what's important will vary from person to person.
 
Above all else, cost.

Seriously, having a huge burden over your head for the next 10 years will be draining.
 
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