best way for noob to learn anatomy?

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Oh_Gee

Oh_Gee

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Anatomy was not taught in my UG physiology classes so I am nervous about anatomy in medical school next year (yes i know i should be chilling the rest of this year).

so, Anatomy whizzes, what books and methods did you use to tackle this mountain. i don't want to blindly walk into anatomy class
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Just remember to try to tie the anatomy you learn to its clinical applications. For example, see Underground Clinical Vignettes for Anatomy (I think it's called). Also the USMLE Step 1 Secrets chapter on clinical anatomy as another example. And UWorld has a lot of great clinically relevant questions on anatomy too. I'm sure there are more examples, but the main point is to try to think beyond rote memorization or learning of anatomy in order to see its clinical context and applications. Hope that helps a little bit.
 
Netter's atlas & Netter's flashcards
 
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yeah seriously, just chill. nothing will prepare you now. once you begin though, all you really need is Grants dissector for lab, and Netters (with flashcards if that's you're thing) for class. pairing Netters with your class lecture notes should be all you need, along with lippincotts for questions.
 
Deep breath OP. Congrats on your acceptance. Now take advantage and rage/do fun things for the next year. When you start school, get an atlas and try out either Netter or Rohen flashcards (I like Rohen's personally). I never took anatomy in undergrad/my postbacc either and was a nervous when I started. You'll be fine.
 
Don't bother. Most people don't have a good anatomy background coming into med school. Plus like with any med school courses, you can do prematriculation studying before you come to med school, but all of your work will likely last you all of a day or so with the pace of material you get thrown at you. But nearly everyone deals with it completely fine and as long as you study in med school you will too, so enjoy your time now, you will have plenty of studying to do soon enough.
 
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Oh_Gee said:
Anatomy was not taught in my UG physiology classes so I am nervous about anatomy in medical school next year (yes i know i should be chilling the rest of this year).

so, Anatomy whizzes, what books and methods did you use to tackle this mountain. i don't want to blindly walk into anatomy class
Click to expand...

I blindly walked into anatomy. I'm doing well. Don't pre-study, I learned in a week what you will learn pre-studying until school starts. Enjoy your time before medical school.
 
Deranged Medic said:
I blindly walked into anatomy. I'm doing well. Don't pre-study, I learned in a week what you will learn pre-studying until school starts. Enjoy your time before medical school.
Click to expand...
i'm probably a lot slower, mentally, then you
 
steps to success:

1. Use an atlas. Review atlas before going into what dissection you are going into.
2. After reviewing, go to dissection. Play over relationships in head over and over.
3. Review atlas again, relate atlas t structure you saw in cadevar.
4. Draw structures.
5. Repeat and win
 
Deranged Medic said:
I blindly walked into anatomy. I'm doing well. Don't pre-study, I learned in a week what you will learn pre-studying until school starts. Enjoy your time before medical school.
Click to expand...

Truth. I took a community college anatomy course about a decade ago as part of my paramedic class. We covered the vast majority of that entire semester in the first lecture in med school:laugh:.
 
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The people who are telling you to chill? Lies. Lies, I tell you.

I desperately wish that I had pre-studied anatomy. And I had taken A&P courses before as part of my nursing degree. And then worked in an OR where I got to see a lot of that cool anatomy in vivo. I'm still struggling to keep up now, and wish I had just a little more time to review.

No, you aren't going to learn everything to the level of detail you will need when you get to medical school... but I think of it like painting a masterpiece. At first, you just make rough sketches, figure out where the shapes go. Then, you go over the entire work again and firm up your plans about what will go where. You move from pencil to ink. Then, you come in with the big areas of color. Each pass brings a little more detail. You can keep studying anatomy your entire life and never get every detail down pat, but the more times you see it, the deeper and more complete your understanding of it will be.

And anatomy is absolutely the foundation of so much else that you will need to learn. There is no such thing as overstudying it.

Atlases are great. Flashcards are great. But the majority of our class is currently heavily addicted to youtube. We trade great youtube videos, of dissections, of diagrams and explanations. I will share a few of my gems:

These dissection videos have saved my LIFE:
Noted Anatomist - not many people seem to have seen his vids, but they are GOLD:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCe9lb3da4XAnN7v3ciTyquQ/playlists

Dr. Preddy - fast, fun, great mneumonics for the extremities:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLhqd4CB6o3UXzBNuNPPeqwUs48MgftwDp

Anything at all by Access Anatomy:

I could go on and on.

Look, I'm not saying that you have to spend 12 hours a day on this, but what would be the harm in watching an hour or two of anatomy videos when you are goofing off on the internet anyway? It doesn't have to seriously cut into your chillaxing, and you can still come in ahead of where you would have been without it.
 
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Another benefit of youtube? You can kick those puppies up to 2x speed. Zoom! Only have a few minutes to prepare for lab? No problem. Just watch the dissection on double speed and you're good to go.
 
Resources: don't overbuy, but this is a subject where some good resources will help. The classics;
1) netters. Gotta have it. Other atlases may have prettier art but can't beat netter for detail and having everything visible and labeled on one page. Great to have open on the table while studying. You'll probably use another copy at your table in the lab
2) Rohen's = gold. Buy it. It's a great supplement to better and will save you countless wasted hours in the lab.
3) acland dvd atlas : cure for insomnia but beautiful fresh tissue dissections and nicely structured to help you understand the three dimensional relationships.

Thoughts:
1) look for patterns. Because of how the body develops embryologically, there are many inherent patterns to anatomy. These can save you a lot of time (ie. Learning blood supply and innervations and actions by compartment rather than by muscle. Only a handful of compartments to learn compared to zillions of muscles).

2) spend time in the lab learning things from multiple angles. Many people will orient their dissection like the netter plate and then the profs will turn things upside down for the practical. You may have the brachial plexus down cold when looking from the front, but the test may have you looking at it from the back at an angle under the armpit. Figure out how to orient yourself and see the key relationships from any angle.

3) be aware of what the names of things mean. Often they are named for what they are (ligamentun flavum = yellow ligament) or where they are (latissimus dorsi = lateral-most back) or what they look like (fornix=arch or scaphoid=like a skiff/boat).

4) relationships. Relationships. Relationships. Don't just memorize by sight; know the relationships of any testable structure to all the key structures nearby.

Ok those are enough for now!
 
First, like everyone said, there's not a lot of point of trying to learn anatomy ahead of time. For learning new structures, I recommend learning the basics first. For example, if you're doing the skull, learn the bones, then learn their landmarks (foramens, protuberances, etc). Flashcards are great. When you use an atlas, you can use post-its to cover up the answer and quiz yourself.

Spend a lot of time in the lab, but try to prep ahead of time to get the most out of it.

Try to do some quizzing daily, this will make sure you don't forget all of the stuff you just learned! Teaching someone else is also a great way to remember things.
 
Promethean said:
The people who are telling you to chill? Lies. Lies, I tell you.

I desperately wish that I had pre-studied anatomy. And I had taken A&P courses before as part of my nursing degree. And then worked in an OR where I got to see a lot of that cool anatomy in vivo. I'm still struggling to keep up now, and wish I had just a little more time to review.

No, you aren't going to learn everything to the level of detail you will need when you get to medical school... but I think of it like painting a masterpiece. At first, you just make rough sketches, figure out where the shapes go. Then, you go over the entire work again and firm up your plans about what will go where. You move from pencil to ink. Then, you come in with the big areas of color. Each pass brings a little more detail. You can keep studying anatomy your entire life and never get every detail down pat, but the more times you see it, the deeper and more complete your understanding of it will be.

And anatomy is absolutely the foundation of so much else that you will need to learn. There is no such thing as overstudying it.

Atlases are great. Flashcards are great. But the majority of our class is currently heavily addicted to youtube. We trade great youtube videos, of dissections, of diagrams and explanations. I will share a few of my gems:

These dissection videos have saved my LIFE:
Noted Anatomist - not many people seem to have seen his vids, but they are GOLD:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCe9lb3da4XAnN7v3ciTyquQ/playlists

Dr. Preddy - fast, fun, great mneumonics for the extremities:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLhqd4CB6o3UXzBNuNPPeqwUs48MgftwDp

Anything at all by Access Anatomy:

I could go on and on.

Look, I'm not saying that you have to spend 12 hours a day on this, but what would be the harm in watching an hour or two of anatomy videos when you are goofing off on the internet anyway? It doesn't have to seriously cut into your chillaxing, and you can still come in ahead of where you would have been without it.
Click to expand...


We're telling him to chill because every course blasts you. Maybe all you have done is anatomy but the days will come that you look back longingly at anatomy.
 
TBV said:
We're telling him to chill because every course blasts you. Maybe all you have done is anatomy but the days will come that you look back longingly at anatomy.
Click to expand...

No, it isn't all that I've done, and the other courses haven't blasted me. I've been racking up easy As in my other courses, but barely have my head above water in anatomy.

The advice about mastering it is based on having gone through this before. I took A&P very seriously in nursing school and it paid enormous dividends later in the game, when other folks were having to work a lot harder than me. And now, classmates who haven't had as much exposure to anatomy as I have are seriously struggling. I can't imagine being asked to go through the body as quickly as we are doing now, if I didn't have as much background as I do.

I sincerely wish that I had reviewed anatomy before I got to medical school. I know that the prevailing advice is to just chill, but I am saying that I followed that advice and I regret it.
 
Promethean said:
No, it isn't all that I've done, and the other courses haven't blasted me. I've been racking up easy As in my other courses, but barely have my head above water in anatomy.

The advice about mastering it is based on having gone through this before. I took A&P very seriously in nursing school and it paid enormous dividends later in the game, when other folks were having to work a lot harder than me. And now, classmates who haven't had as much exposure to anatomy as I have are seriously struggling. I can't imagine being asked to go through the body as quickly as we are doing now, if I didn't have as much background as I do.

I sincerely wish that I had reviewed anatomy before I got to medical school. I know that the prevailing advice is to just chill, but I am saying that I followed that advice and I regret it.
Click to expand...
You may not understand how your classmates w/o prior anatomy experience pass, but everyone does. It's like everything in med school, requires lots of work/effort, but totally doable and very few people end up totally failing even without prior exposure.
 
So, what I don't understand is why what I am experiencing and what I am seeing is being dismissed in favor of SDN groupthink.

I, and several of the people that I study with, wish we had pre-studied. We regret having listened to people who said not to do so. If I could go back and trade a few hours wasted on "chilling," I'd gladly do so.

Not everyone does pass. About 10% have to remediate the course, and I truly can't afford to do so.

I won't argue the point further. I've got studying to do, and desperately little time to do it in. I just think it is important for alternate opinions to be expressed. Maybe the reason you don't hear more people saying they wish they had pre-studied anatomy is that those of us who feel that way are too desperately trying to paddle up crap creek against the current to take the time to say so. I'm glad you don't find yourself in the same predicament, but please don't try to deny that my perspective might also be valid.

I don't think that pre-studying much else is useful. But anatomy is not something that you will learn once and have down pat. You really can't study it enough, because there is always a greater level of detail that you could learn, more relationships you could understand. There, said my bit, and said it again. Back to grinding on Gray's Review for the exam Monday...
 
you'll be fine for anatomy (it's a fairly low yield topic for step one, too)...most likely all the rest of your classmates are going to be going in 'blind" as well.

If you really must do something, try watching acland academy or something. But srs, stop being so neurotic.
 
Anatomy sucks for everyone when you're in it. I have the advantage of hindsight and I still think prestudying is a waste. Your perspective is easily dismissible because you haven't even gone through it all yet. I don't understand why you think it's valid to dismiss the prevailing opinion of clinical students and residents as groupthink coming from a first year medical student. It is not and it is not even a criticism that means anything. If it makes you feel better, I felt like I was drowning the entire first two years.

Prestudying is a waste because you don't know what to study or how much. You also wouldn't have any idea about the pace. Becoming desensitized to the body and learning to deal with mountains of information is the whole point of first year.
 
Promethean said:
So, what I don't understand is why what I am experiencing and what I am seeing is being dismissed in favor of SDN groupthink.

I, and several of the people that I study with, wish we had pre-studied. We regret having listened to people who said not to do so. If I could go back and trade a few hours wasted on "chilling," I'd gladly do so.

Not everyone does pass. About 10% have to remediate the course, and I truly can't afford to do so.

I won't argue the point further. I've got studying to do, and desperately little time to do it in. I just think it is important for alternate opinions to be expressed. Maybe the reason you don't hear more people saying they wish they had pre-studied anatomy is that those of us who feel that way are too desperately trying to paddle up crap creek against the current to take the time to say so. I'm glad you don't find yourself in the same predicament, but please don't try to deny that my perspective might also be valid.

I don't think that pre-studying much else is useful. But anatomy is not something that you will learn once and have down pat. You really can't study it enough, because there is always a greater level of detail that you could learn, more relationships you could understand. There, said my bit, and said it again. Back to grinding on Gray's Review for the exam Monday...
Click to expand...
I'm kind of with you. We haven't started anatomy at my school yet but if I had looked over genetics and biochem in the months I wasted before school started I'd be in a much better place. Definitely not necessary but I would've saved myself at least a bit of trouble. Everyone always says "The med school content is so much more in depth than everything you did in undergrad." But I really haven't found that to be true.
 
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disagree. I'm currently going through anatomy and am doing very well, and I can definitively say that there is NOTHING I could have done prior to starting that would have prepared me whatsoever. The pace really is more than you can imagine and there will inevitably be times you feel like you're drowning, but if you work hard while you go through it you will be fine. just come in ready to hit the ground running and truly work hard, don't convince yourself you're working hard when you know you can do more/better.
 
Definitely don't waste your life prepping before you start anatomy. No background is required. Memorization is required.

Also don't waste your money on any resource outside of Netters.

Before lab, be able to cover up every tag in Netters's and know the structure the line is pointing to. Next, memorize all the little facts in your corresponding lecture. Then, find everything your faculty says you should be able to find during dissection. The week before your practical, spend 1.5 hours a day in lab until you know every dissection ad naseum. Finally, receive your A on your practical and continue with life. That simple.
 
CharmanderMD said:
I'm kind of with you. We haven't started anatomy at my school yet but if I had looked over genetics and biochem in the months I wasted before school started I'd be in a much better place. Definitely not necessary but I would've saved myself at least a bit of trouble. Everyone always says "The med school content is so much more in depth than everything you did in undergrad." But I really haven't found that to be true.
Click to expand...
The saying is actually more of a "it's not as in depth as an upper level science course taught in undergrad, but the pace is extremely faster."
 
smokn said:
Definitely don't waste your life prepping before you start anatomy. No background is required. Memorization is required.

Also don't waste your money on any resource outside of Netters.

Before lab, be able to cover up every tag in Netters's and know the structure the line is pointing to. Next, memorize all the little facts in your corresponding lecture. Then, find everything your faculty says you should be able to find during dissection. The week before your practical, spend 1.5 hours a day in lab until you know every dissection ad naseum. Finally, receive your A on your practical and continue with life. That simple.
Click to expand...
did you use netters flashcards and coloring book
 
Work big to small: first just learn to identify any structure that could be tagged on a practical, then learn function/clinical correlation (as above, with muscles it's often better to just learn where it's located and then deduce the function from that), then blood supply/innervation, then origin and insertion. Don't get hung up initially on trying to memorize every single detail for every single structure: it's counterproductive, as not all details are equally important.

When you get to anatomy, btw. Unless you can somehow take a formal course on it now any studying is almost certainly going to be a waste of time.
 
operaman said:
Resources: don't overbuy, but this is a subject where some good resources will help. The classics;
1) netters. Gotta have it. Other atlases may have prettier art but can't beat netter for detail and having everything visible and labeled on one page. Great to have open on the table while studying. You'll probably use another copy at your table in the lab
2) Rohen's = gold. Buy it. It's a great supplement to better and will save you countless wasted hours in the lab.
3) acland dvd atlas : cure for insomnia but beautiful fresh tissue dissections and nicely structured to help you understand the three dimensional relationships.

Thoughts:
1) look for patterns. Because of how the body develops embryologically, there are many inherent patterns to anatomy. These can save you a lot of time (ie. Learning blood supply and innervations and actions by compartment rather than by muscle. Only a handful of compartments to learn compared to zillions of muscles).

2) spend time in the lab learning things from multiple angles. Many people will orient their dissection like the netter plate and then the profs will turn things upside down for the practical. You may have the brachial plexus down cold when looking from the front, but the test may have you looking at it from the back at an angle under the armpit. Figure out how to orient yourself and see the key relationships from any angle.

3) be aware of what the names of things mean. Often they are named for what they are (ligamentun flavum = yellow ligament) or where they are (latissimus dorsi = lateral-most back) or what they look like (fornix=arch or scaphoid=like a skiff/boat).

4) relationships. Relationships. Relationships. Don't just memorize by sight; know the relationships of any testable structure to all the key structures nearby.

Ok those are enough for now!
Click to expand...
which rohen book is it
http://smile.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb...s=rohen+anatomy&sprefix=rohen+anatomy,aps,378
 
Promethean said:
So, what I don't understand is why what I am experiencing and what I am seeing is being dismissed in favor of SDN groupthink.

I, and several of the people that I study with, wish we had pre-studied. We regret having listened to people who said not to do so. If I could go back and trade a few hours wasted on "chilling," I'd gladly do so.

Not everyone does pass. About 10% have to remediate the course, and I truly can't afford to do so.

I won't argue the point further. I've got studying to do, and desperately little time to do it in. I just think it is important for alternate opinions to be expressed. Maybe the reason you don't hear more people saying they wish they had pre-studied anatomy is that those of us who feel that way are too desperately trying to paddle up crap creek against the current to take the time to say so. I'm glad you don't find yourself in the same predicament, but please don't try to deny that my perspective might also be valid.

I don't think that pre-studying much else is useful. But anatomy is not something that you will learn once and have down pat. You really can't study it enough, because there is always a greater level of detail that you could learn, more relationships you could understand. There, said my bit, and said it again. Back to grinding on Gray's Review for the exam Monday...
Click to expand...
+1 for pre-studying, but don't go memorizing lists of origins and insertions or even bother learning all the structures yet. I'd recommend reading a clinical anatomy review book like the Underground Vignette series so you can have some appreciation of the clinical relevance before you go hell for leather in M1 anatomy. Having a tiny bit of clinical knowledge really helps you appreciate the basic science material much more and leads to more efficient studying and better retention.
 
I think I love Dr. Najeeb. At first, I wasn't in love with his accent, but the more I listen, the more it actually helps the info stick.
 
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