welcome to the fun facialata. first post eh?
Ah yes, anatomy at KCOM. you hate it and you love it... and hate it some more. I think once 3rd quarter is OVER, you love it again. while some areas might seem a little fuzzy as time goes by, it all comes right back- and you get to keep reminding yourself of muscle names and nerve distributions via OMM if you do that sort of thing. I recall a time last year when I was asking a 3rd year at a not-to be named 2nd tier med school (one of the top in his class- thinking neurosurgery residency) about the plastic surgery he was doing in rotations and it shocked me to hear that he knew less than me about much of what we consider basics (I was somewhere around the middle of the pack here for anatomy, which is perhaps why i was surprised).
He explained that they teach to a point- specifically, only structures that are relevant to common surgical practices (he told me this is also how the USMLE questions are written). he knew serratus anterior was innervated by the long thoracic nerve, but with many of those little "inconsequential" back muscles- they never really studied, named, or talked about innervations. seems weird to me after what we've been through. I dont really know how valuable this extra info will be in the long run, but I think if you want to be true to osteopathic principles and really personalize your patient treatment (yea sweaty, I hear you grumbling... lol!) every little bit of anatomy you know may help in finding the piece of the puzzle that is significant for a particular patient. You cant really do "holistic" medicine without either doing it superficially or really deeply understanding a variety of information that could be useful for a given patient. Maybe thats something all this extra study time is good for...
cheers,
bones