appropriate anatomy knowledge for an intern

[waxedapathetic]

do all incoming interns know their anatomy 'cold?' i am doing some pre-residency studying because i hated not being able to identify every structure when i was a medstudent scrubbed in on a case.

i'm a perfectionist, but i wonder ... what level of anatomy knowledge is good enough for an intern to perform solidly (above avg for an intern) in the OR?

any advice / sarcastic remarks are greatly appreciated.

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[Pir8DeacDoc]

IMHO the best way to learn anatomy is to review the surgical approach and relevant anatomy for each case the night before. Sitting down with Netter right now doesn't strike me as super high yield.

Knowing the anatomy from the view you'll be getting doing the surgery is more useful. Get yourself a nice surgical atlas. I recall my friends using Zollingers for general surgery.

 

[Buzz Me]

Agree with the above. Definitely learn the basics for bread-and-butter cases: gallbladder, appendix, inguinal region. Then breast, stomach, colon, etc.

 

[notinkansas]

I helped tutor gross anatomy during med school. I noticed a problem many student had was they simply tried to recognize the structure, rather than figure out what it is by it's relationship to nearby structure. I think this is especially important in surgery- things aren't dissected out as much as they are in the gross lab (or in Netter). And you have to deal with anatomic variations. Usually you realize that the pt has a replaced right hepatic artery, for example by deducing that from the relationship of vessels to one another. As you progress, you will realize that some cases, you will spend some time discussing/confirming/reconfirming that you have, indeed, properly identified a structure.

 

[njbmd]

IMHO the best way to learn anatomy is to review the surgical approach and relevant anatomy for each case the night before. Sitting down with Netter right now doesn't strike me as super high yield.

Knowing the anatomy from the view you'll be getting doing the surgery is more useful. Get yourself a nice surgical atlas. I recall my friends using Zollingers for general surgery.

+1 Gross Anatomy has very little bearing on surgical anatomy. Sure you know the relative positions of things but the surgical anatomy is what you have to know well to operate. Most of the true knowledge will come with the experience of actually looking at the anatomy during the case but a surgical atlas shows what to look for (a start). Netter is not very useful for this.