I agree with what Jabbed said. Micro is anatomy 2.0 so beware.
This is why I love having a curriculum that is mostly integrated- you learn micro in bits and pieces that make sense in the context they're given, rather than a flood of crap.
Ugh, I'm dreading head and neck. So many muscles and vessels, so much minutiae about the skull... Thankfully it's the last block that we cover.
I thought Neuroanatomy (and Neuroscience) was MUCH better than Gross Anatomy. Absolutely hated the clinical Neurology rotation, but loved learning Neuroanatomy w/ Neuroscience.
I would rather have a more accelerated anatomy course myself. Shorter anatomy courses tend to focus more on board relevant information and clinically correlated things. Our anatomy course is basically designed to teach us anatomist-level anatomy that we'll never really use. Every muscle, every common anatomical variation, every little piece of every little structure, every single spinal level to every last muscle. It's just needless depth, as most of us will not be using this level of anatomy with any frequency in practice.
I listen to the lectures once every week or two at double speed, and only do readings when I'm not understanding something fully. We're also provided with a must know structures list, so I just go through it top to bottom as often as I can, until I can recall every structure by memory. Two weeks before the exam, I focus heavily on using cadaveric atlases to better identify the structures in the body, and the week before exam I focus on clinical correlates primarily.
Neuroanatomy is generally regarded to be the most difficult block in our course. I'm not sure why, as I have not yet been through it, but the general impression I get is that I should be shaking in my boots at its difficulty.
I guess I thought Neuroanatomy wasn't that bad bc the atlases are so good that you don't really need to dissect. Haines Atlas FTW! and BRS Neuroanatomy explained it so well and organized during the course in terms of learning the separate tracts, etc.
Hey, it's just what I've heard
comparing my tests with those from people that went to schools with accelerated anatomy courses, they tended to have a lot less minutiae questions and a lot more board-relevant material. I'm sure it varies greatly school-to-school.
First read-through for comprehension and generally getting the lay of the land. Subsequent read-throughs for appreciating the details. I always try to avoid 'memorizing' as much as possible, but that's obviously unavoidable for anatomy.
I guess it varies by professor. The reason Gross Anatomy has to be intricate is bc they have no idea who in the class will be Surgeons and they have to prepare those people well for it. Your school is kind of crazy in many respects.Hey, it's just what I've heard
I've even heard from surgeons that much of the gross anatomy we learn is kind of irrelevant since things look completely different in a living person than they do in a cadaver, so you kind of have to learn it all over again once you start cutting.
The more I learn about my school and the changes it has been through in the last few years, the more I realize exactly what the score is. Basically, their goal is to turn out students that are impressive in MS3 and MS4, hence why we're learning H&Ps, drilled on minutiae with little room for error, working on practice cases, and sent in to work with standardized patients starting in the first couple of weeks of class. That and all of the constant drilling of "professionalism" into us are basically designed to make us (and the school, by extension) look good. It's not a terrible system, and I'd heard nothing but good things about students from the school from preceptors in my area, but I sometimes look toward the motivations of it being in place with a cynical eye, thinking it's more about the school's reputation than it is about our personal development. Regardless, it works, so I'm just toughing it out. We'll see how I feel in a couple years.
The constant drilling of professionalism into med students is more getting on the soapbox. That's one thing medical administrators NEVER get tired of doing.
I don't really see why any of that should be seen cynically..
Because if it were for the good of the students, that would be one thing. But I get the general vibe that student outcomes are secondary to how good we make our school look, that they're willing to put us to hell and back to improve their own reputation. Sure, we get better outcomes, but is it really about us?
We had two weeks for upper and lower limbs combined (with hand-offs, so we only did half of the dissections + a few prosections) and I'm pretty sure the average for the first lab practical was in the 40s-50s.
👍👍
Anatomy (or Anatomical Sciences) has research - more usually in evolutionary anatomy esp. in comparing different species.
Most places that do (based on the curricula that I've seen) this will give you a big bolus of micro in the first year and then go into infinitely more depth during your system blocks.
We don't have a systems-based curriculum. Our curriculum is kind of hard to describe. We usually have a focus for a given week, say, anemia or pulm, and then we'll go over everything pertaining to the topic. So for anemia, we went over all of the possible causes for anemia, presentation of different types of anemia, parasites, etc, while for our pulm weeks we went over respiratory mechanics, common diseases of the respiratory system, viruses and bacteria that affect the respiratory system, ABGs, etc. Every week has the micro of the bacteria that pertain to a given topic, while we've got histo sections, embryology, and anatomy that tend to track pretty well with the material being covered.
Thank you, this was encouraging.
