A medical school without a cadaver lab??

[HardToStarboard]

---

Members don't see this ad.

I was in the inaugural LECOM-E PBL class to go 100% distance learning for anatomy. I was furious initially... I (and several others) asked about cadaver access in the interview and was assured we would be able to utilize the cadaver lab. In practice, we were bared from it. We we allowed 'enrichment sessions' only - that is to say, an hour in the lab, supervised with an anatomy professor and only at the request of several students.

that said... one day we went in for an enrichment on the thorax. I walked in with a buddy, we popped out the heart and lungs, and rifled off all the structures, attachments, clinical relevance, ect. We looked at each other and just said "hm...".

I was one of the more out-spoken people against this at LECOM, but I can attest first hand that much like every other aspect of medical school, if you put in the effort, you can succeed. On the whole our class (PBL) performed on par with the lecture students on all tests (better on some). It was an adjustment to be sure, but the above posters are right... when you add the menial task of fat and fascia resection to anatomic variation, dissection of one cadaver does not an anatomy expert make. Does it enhance the learning experience? I'm sure it does. Does it hurt to not have it? I don't think so.

This is anecdotal but I think what i'm trying to do is waylay some fears about such a program. From a guy who was ADAMANTLY against this, I found success and haven't had a single regret from the program.

Thanks! 🙂

I have no doubts whatsoever that a person with access only to books, slides and computer models could become a much better anatomy student than a person with access to all that plus a cadaver. The advantages of the cadaver as learning tool must be experienced firsthand, I think. I've spent countless hours with many of the nearly 40 cadavers in our labs. Seeing the variation from body to body and seeing pathology firsthand is valuable in ways I couldn't see before this course. We also get to find out things about who these cadavers were as people - from a full-back tattoo on one elderly male to a bullet retrieved from the brain of another (he'd apparently been living with it in his head for some time). By interacting physically with human bodies we've learned things about humans that one cannot suss out from mere pages or digital images.

All that aside, I am a huge fan of tradition. I believe strongly in preserving those things that are valuable. I see this as one of those things.

 

[whyrms]

Wow...I did not know that, I thought everyone had to go through the experience of cutting open a dead body, dismembering it, bits by bits. I understand reinforcing learning with prosected bodies and models and videos...but not getting to cut? That's blasphemy!

Here in TUCOM-CA we are 5 to a cadaver, and Everyone has to cut; otherwise we won't finish dissections in time. The surgical club also use them to practice sutures and there's couple of bodies saved for the kids who wants to learn how to Pro-sect the body as an advance anatomy elective...

I guess it's pretty hard to attain cadaver if you're kinda in the middle of nowhere. They also cost a crap ton to go through all the procedures of cremating the body afterward and proper rites....