Cadaver labs

[vikaskoth]

i'm a senior undergrad and last semester and this semester i have been taking an anatomy and physiology course where the lab is cadaver based. Its not just us standing around, Last year we would work 3-5 people per body and got to do a lot of good dissections. This year only one cadaver but still get good time to cut and look at structures. I know we aren't in depth as a gross lab in med school might be. But i wanted to know if any of you guys got cadaver exposure as undergrads and if it will really help that much for the first year of med school??
Also at your schools how many people work per cadaver?

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[felipe5]

I took a cadaver dissection class and later worked as a TA for it at my undergrad, and now as an M1, I think my past exposure to the bodies has indeed helped me....first off, from the get go, I felt very comfortable around the body, was 'prepared' for the fumes, and knew how to get busy with the "b!tch work" as I like to call it (ie fat scraping, poke-and-separate, etc). Also, its really nice to know how to identify nerves, arteries, veins. As with anything you have experience in, be careful not to get too confident regarding your past education....remember that med school is different, and that your gross class will probably be much more intense than in undergrad

 

[medstudent2008]

I have pretty much the same story. Cadaver based Anatomy lab, later a TA for lab, and now MSI. During undergrad I was a dissector for a year (regular and advanced gross anatomy). I feel confident with my dissections and I knew what to expect to see (and smell) going into lab. Remembering the innervations, origins, attachments, and actions of every freaking muscle is something that I've never had to do before. So, yes there is some advantage, but it does not mean you'll get honors (or even high pass) in the class without a lot of hard work. All I want is to pass, anything above that is just gravy.

 

[TTSD]

I got a cat. But still, almost everything's the same and with just a little bit of application and imagination.. it's making my life cake right now. I mean, we had to freakin assemble the bones of the skull.. so while everyone here's floundering and whining about it.. I'm just singing along.

 

[Giving My .02]

What helps is you already have 3-D orientation of anatomy features. You realize this does not come easy for a lot of your classmates. Sometime in my anatomy in undergrad it just clicks and makes sense. You avoid that time of confusion already having experienced it. At least that is what I have understood from other people telling me their frustrations of not being able to "see" it. I think this is probably why so many people spend tons of time in the lab dissecting cadavers after the lab. If you have the frame of mind you can study before class from a book, associate that to your lab, and go in an review everything on the weekend. If you naturally have the 3-D placement you can see a structure on your own tank, but when you see other tanks' dissections they don't confuse you because you understand the overall orientation. Hope that made sense.

 

[Shodddy18]

I got a good amount of cadaver lab exposure as an undergrad... it did help a lot. Not just because there was a cadaver involved... I guess Im saying that any anatomy and physiology class would help. I still had to learn everything again, but having learned 70% of it before def helped.