Anatomy Lab Setup

[cleavagefurrow]

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I am somewhat frustrated by the way that our anatomy lab is set up and was wondering how the other schools set up their anatomy labs. We were given a body, a copy of Grant's dissector, some tools and a brief lecture on safety. We were then left on our own to figure out everything else. Testable material is every bold term in Grant's. Is it normal to have such a lack of instruction?

 

[TMP-SMX]

I am somewhat frustrated by the way that our anatomy lab is set up and was wondering how the other schools set up their anatomy labs. We were given a body, a copy of Grant's dissector, some tools and a brief lecture on safety. We were then left on our own to figure out everything else. Testable material is every bold term in Grant's. Is it normal to have such a lack of instruction?

You got a free manual. Sounds like a good deal to me. Bolded terms are testable? Seems lucky to me.

We did have instruction in terms of asking them to come and help us because we don't know what we are looking at.

We did have oral quizzes every week or so.

 

[Abilene85]

At U.Toledo we have 4 students per body. Since our class is so large (165), our dissections are usually split up so that only half the class is in the lab at one time. This came from the suggestion of older students who wanted more individualized attention from the professors. I believe we have something like 6 professors + an anatomy grad student TA in the lab, every lab. They are assigned to a number of tables to help answer questions or to help us locate hard-to-find structures. Profs will help out by picking up a scalpel/scissors to show us techniques to get through really thick fascia, or how to separate nerves from CT without damaging them. And they rotate through the benches so that we can learn from all the profs, not just one. It's pretty awesome because they all seem to love learning about each body and its variation on the standard anatomy. And after years of teaching, they don't seem bored teaching the same things to a new batch of students.

We are supposed to follow Grant's dissector, but once we are in lab it's a mix of following directions from the book, written directions from the teachers, verbal directions from the teachers, and winging it. Our faculty wrote a short guide to each lab telling us what changes they want us to make from the dissector. They also give us a list of important structures to identify, which is what they consider fair game for the practicals - it is a shorter list than all bold items in the dissector.

So far, I don't have any major complaints. We have our first practical and big test coming up in two weeks, so we'll see how it goes. If I had just been given a body and a book, I would certainly be feeling lost.

 

[osli]

We have an average of about 5 students per tank. Leading professor and his/her prosection is covered by a multi-axis HD camera, with video displayed on HD screens throughout the lab (about 15 of them). He/she leads the dissections and review sessions very thoroughly. There are two additional professors and two TA's assigned to each group of 5 tanks, as well as two fellows that circulate throughout the lab. What we are expected to dissect and learn in any given lab is pretty clearly defined. Dissections follow anatomy lectures fairly closely. We are given a detailed and comprehensive lab list of every structure/innervation/etc. we are responsible in every section. It is about as extensive as Grant's, but not nearly like every term in Netter's, and the best part about the lab list is that when we encounter one of those anatomic variations and/or discrepancies between reference texts/sources we know exactly what the faculty position is and what we should go with for the practicals.

Being thrown into the room with a knife and a book hardly sounds like the most efficient way to learn... in fact, I can think of very few advantages of such a method (and those are really stretching to find anything positive at all). Maybe some kind of general "life lesson" being on the top of that very short list?

Part of the reason for being taught anatomy is for structures and relationships that are important to the clinician being pointed out in a way not all reference texts are good at doing.

 

[braluk]

Tulane has 6 per table. We use Dissector to guide us through. There is a structures list for every lab we have and it is our job to find all those structures since any of those are fair game to be tagged. Every lab has a lab head (one of the professors and they each rotate throughout different labs along with TAs following every block exam). Lab head gives a prelab powerpoint lecture that discusses the relevant structures, clinical backgrounds. Most of the time the way our lab group does it is that there are 3-4 who are usually dissecting, one to lead the dissection with the dissector, and another with a Netter and looking up stuff and quizzing each other. Lab reviews are weekends with each other. Mid block practice practicals.

 

[QuantumMechanic]

Testable material is every bold term in Grant's. Is it normal to have such a lack of instruction?

Is it normal to have such low expectations?

Our anatomy course is so much more difficult!

 

[cleavagefurrow]

Let me add that we have not had any formal lectures on anatomy. Instructors may allude to anatomy while giving other lectures but we have not had an actual anatomy lecture. It seems strange that we are cutting and identifying without any reference for what the parts do. So far, we have only dissected the back muscles and spine. I am pretty disappointed and was wondering if I am just being too critical. We do have faculty that rotate between the tables and there are five us in a group. Any other thoughts?

 

[TMP-SMX]

Let me add that we have not had any formal lectures on anatomy. Instructors may allude to anatomy while giving other lectures but we have not had an actual anatomy lecture. It seems strange that we are cutting and identifying without any reference for what the parts do. So far, we have only dissected the back muscles and spine. I am pretty disappointed and was wondering if I am just being too critical. We do have faculty that rotate between the tables and there are five us in a group. Any other thoughts?

You should be happy. Anatomy lectures are a huge waste of time. Read Gray's for students and your Netter. You don't need lectures.

 

[Slide]

Let me add that we have not had any formal lectures on anatomy. Instructors may allude to anatomy while giving other lectures but we have not had an actual anatomy lecture. It seems strange that we are cutting and identifying without any reference for what the parts do. So far, we have only dissected the back muscles and spine. I am pretty disappointed and was wondering if I am just being too critical. We do have faculty that rotate between the tables and there are five us in a group. Any other thoughts?

How is this a bad thing? Most people learn anatomy from reading Gray's/Dissector and using Netter's. Most anatomy lectures are point and tell, with some interesting info tidbit every once in a while. Granted, the lectures were sort of helpful for the extremities because of its mechanical nature, but otherwise I could've read everything from the book and done fine.

At UMiss we have 4 people per cadaver and we have 120 students in the lab. We have 5 anatomy professors and 2 TAs that roam around the lab and help students dissect, locate something, or explain a concept. Occasionally we'll get pimped at our cadaver tables (which I honestly feel is a good thing right now). For most of the class we followed Clemente's dissector, with deviations every once a while because our particular dissector is rather destructive in procedure. We have a prelab lecture before every lecture and we'll have some formal lectures before our prelab lecture as well. We also have some clinical correlation lectures where a surgeon or a surgery-orientated specialist (OBGYN/EM) will come in and give some really cool presentations to remind us that we can't just purge this stuff after the boards. Roughly spend 15 hours in lab/lecture per week and an extra 2-3 on review weekends. I have no complaints with the class itself; in fact I really like it. How our schedule integrates the other classes with anatomy, though, is a different story.

 

[nogolfinsnow]

We have 6 people/cadaver, but only 2 do any given dissection. Two days later, the 6 get together and the 2 who dissected teach the material to the other 4. The other 4 then take a quiz, and all 6 get the grade for that quiz. There is a prelab before each lecture to lay out the structures we will be looking at, and 3 roving instructors (for ~50 people at 25 stations). I guess overall we are provided with a broad overview including clinical vignettes for the dissection, but a lot of the anatomy is self-taught using Moore's, Rohen's, etc.. I like the system, I'm sorry you don't like yours, because human anatomy really is an amazing thing.

 

[bucksfascia]

I'm a second year. Last year in gross, we were six in a group with a cadaver. There were various wet copies of Grant's floating around the room and we were pretty much left to figure out the dissection on our own. There were one or two anatomists walking around who could theoretically help you identify things, but usually the line to get help from them was ridiculously long and if they came to your table, suddenly half the class would flock to your table and you wouldn't be able to see anything.

While anything bold in Grant's was fair game, we were lucky in that students from previous years were kind enough as to make lists on what was tested in years before and so we focused more on those. But some of the stuff on the test was very, very detailed (AV nodal artery...)...also, we always had to say L or R and V, A, M, N, etc....

 

[sprinkibrio]

Work your system, it's doable. I'd ask 2nd years at your school what they did. If you like guidance you might like coming into lab outside of class with a group of people and going over structures to figure out what is where. The dissecting process itself is not most important thing anyway, so I don't think you need guidance to do it perfectly.

 

[vicksx44]

Work your system, it's doable. I'd ask 2nd years at your school what they did. If you like guidance you might like coming into lab outside of class with a group of people and going over structures to figure out what is where. The dissecting process itself is not most important thing anyway, so I don't think you need guidance to do it perfectly.

Oh man, you hit that one right. I didn't think so either that you needed to be proficient with dissection. I always told my group that we can mess up, if we cut something that wasn't supposed to be cut, then we just move on and look at other cadavers or Netters for reference. Dissection just takes so much time and you don't have too be so anal about cleaning adipose tissue or other gunk off of muscles and nerves. I just wait for it to get oxidized and slough it off the next session (which explains our dried up specimen).

Anyway, viewing dissection videos (Univ of Michigan is a good one) and supplementing with Netanatomy.com (your school needs to have a site license though, if not, try to petition for it) would be very helpful for the practicals and even for the written exams.

 

[somemaybedoc]

We have 4 to a tank. A TA for every 4-6 tanks and 3-4 professors in the lab during our officially scheduled lab time. Generally it is easy to get help if you need it.

Our school is in the process of writing its own internal dissector for the course, which we used for the first half of the course this year. For the parts of the course for which the internal dissector has not been completed we used the combination of Grants and a list of structures to find. At the end of lecture before we go into lab we are given a walkthrough of the dissection using videos of the dissection that the school has made, which were pretty useful in clarifying what we were doing. I actually liked going to lecture for that class because it was a faster way for me to learn than reading Moore.

After using the school dissector, which had practical instructions and photographic examples, Grant's seemed like a big pile of crap. Grant's instructions are pointlessly wordy, have inane details and make dissection take longer than it really needs to.

I ended up looking up the structures I needed in the computer Netter program and in Rohens and just winging it on the dissections with the assistance of information gleaned from the dissection videos at the end of lecture. That worked out better than using Grant's, which I believe to be a mediocre, meandering book.

 

[myKuduSlewaZulu]

^You're right on about Grant's. Rarely used the damn thing. Here there are 4-5 students/tank. All 228 of us were in lab together...lots of faculty+TA's assigned to sections of tanks and rotate. A couple of pathologists also walk around and explain the stuff that went wrong with our cadavers. Four days/wk, 2hrs/day (usually really 1.5), for 8 wks. On Thurs, we gather in the amphitheater next to lab and a path goes over interesting specimens from our tanks via tv feed...the absolute best part. We were given a list of structures that were testable, much less than the bolded ones in Grant's.

Lectures didn't really help much. Used BRS anat + Netters/Rohens + blue boxes in Moore's.

 

[EBI831]

i like our system. we have 4 to a cadaver. but people wander around if they wanna see the zebras , good examples of stuff, see male versions/female versions. we have 3 teachers and 12 anatomy TAs...so there's always someone to help. each table gets a grants and a netters. our TAs do a great job of writing the really important stuff on the boards. and then we get doctors come in and lecture once in a while about clinically relevant stuff about the part of the body we're on. lecture, in my opinion, is helpful and not a waste really...they go over the gray's stuff for our anatomy written tests. so in all we have 50 mins lecture + 2.5 hours of lab a day (you can leave if you want to though) x 5 days a week and we have a test every 1.5 weeks or so and a test is a written part and a practical. before each practical, we have a practice practical. i'd say that the stuff in grant's being fair game is not bad b/c it honestly does point to the major stuff and even some obscure crap. we also have one radiology presentation/ session before each test for 2.5 hours and one TA review session before each test. our school is big into radiology on our anatomy tests. overall, i like it...as much as i detest anatomy, i can't shoot down the system.

 

[kpod]

sounds like everyone's experience is fairly similar except in # of people on the bodies. At VCU/MCV, we have 8 people per body and every group does it differently. Some groups rely heavily on professors and TA's, some follow the dissector to the letter---I think we used our dissector to pile fat on...highly, highly valuable 😳) We do have good lectures on structres in relation to one another and we have access to the michigan videos, but I've never watched them...except the couple times they forced us to in class. MCV is pretty fantastic!! Lots of room to learn the way you need to I think.