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Does it get easier or harder after gross anatomy?
Started by ChristofferMS
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I agree with what Jabbed said. Micro is anatomy 2.0 so beware.
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I think it gets "easier" in the sense that information is more learnable -- reasoning things out, understanding the why? not just the what? (Goljanism FTW!). I hated Gross Anatomy as well. I hated Head and Neck with the strength of a thousand suns. Harder in terms of just more material.
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.
Anatomy, OMM, and clinical sciences (history taking, clinical skills, and the like) are not a part of the integrated curriculum though, so I'm finding anatomy to be a pain in the ***. I think it's a bit better now that we're in the thorax and away from all the limbs (I can't stand origins/insertions/functions, it's all just boring basic recall). The heart and lungs are just way more interesting to me.
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deleted480308
yeah, we do gross over the course of a year as an ongoing class....it's an hour or two of lecture and few hours of lab time each week. It's still work but it's very manageable
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.
We get a full year of anatomy. Then another block of neuroanatomy just in case we missed anatomy over the summer and wanted to start second year off with an old friend.
Can you guys give me some reading advice? Do you read it fast first time without stressing too much, then try to memorize on the 2nd/3rd reading?
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.
Neuroscience is handled separately, so we're just getting the dry stuff in neuroanatomy before we get the cool stuff in the neuroscience weeks.
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.
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deleted526278
This is how my course is too. My professors love to say how all this stuff will be relevant, but all the older students say 90% is unnecessary. Unless you are a neck surgeon, you will never need to know neck anatomy as well as we learn it. There's so much info that most students feels their other classes suffer from it. I personally feel like everyone just learns the relevant anatomy to their specialty in residency, so why learn EVERYTHING now?
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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.
My general schedule:
1. Study lecture material and cross reference anything that isn't clear.
2. Watch lectures on accelerated speed (which is made easier by previewing the material). I don't take notes unless the professor blatantly says something that isn't on the slides or if he explains something in such a way that I didn't appreciate or properly understand on my first read-through.
3. If I'm going to use an outside resource or textbook, I'll use it now. At this point I already have a working knowledge of the majority of the material covered so I feel that I'm able to start passively absorbing a lot more of the smaller details as I can appreciate their relevance/significance. Generally, I read a textbook only once but will occasionally refer back to it.
4. Review the slides + notes on the weekends.
If anything requires brute force memorization, I'll throw it in Anki and/or review the relevant charts/tables periodically throughout the week. Honestly, I do use Anki as a crutch in terms of memorization.
I've been doing pretty well and I feel that I have a good handle of the material and outside knowledge. Free time and relatively low-stress are bonuses.
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?
I guess it really doesn't matter. I'll look good on rotations, and I'll be a better physician for it. But motives matter to an idealist like myself, so I just can't help but wonder about them.
My ENT to Facial Plastics buddy retook the entire Head and Neck block of anatomy at a medical school as part of his residency. So apparently this is not the one and only shot we get at learning this stuff.
Also, recently a Rads program director in town told me he didn't like anatomy until it had context.
I find hope in all of this.
Not liking Anatomy feels like not liking Math when I did engineering. Something just not right about it.
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.
You could say the exact same thing about many of the things you learn in the preclinical curriculum. The goal of the basic science courses is essentially to make sure you have exposure to everything. No one ever said everything you learn will be relevant to your future practice. In fact, much of it wont be. But would you really want the first time you see the basics to be during residency? I wouldn't.
My course is similar in terms of depth. Anatomist teach like they were taught it seems.
👍👍
Pretty much. They'll throw in clinical correlations here and there, but they are not clinicians. They have a PhD in Anatomy.
Never fully understood this PhD in anatomy thing. I kind of associated PhDs with fields that have a stream of novel research and associate anatomy with something that has been (for the most part) very well established for ages.
But, yeah our anatomy instructors are 'PhDs in anatomy'. Fortunately for us, they're really good.
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Anatomy (or Anatomical Sciences) has research - more usually in evolutionary anatomy esp. in comparing different species.
http://www.anatomy.org/content/graduate-degree-program-anatomy
it is all hard and sucks in some way or another. Just take it as it comes. Semester by semester, month by month, week by week, and day by day. Then, you will wake up and be on the other side on being done.
Wait, you learn micro spread out over the course of the first two years? As much of a fan as I am of integrated blocks (my school uses system-based blocks as well), I can't imagine retaining micro without doing it all at once. The hardest part about micro is keeping everything organized in your head (e.g. gram stain/shape/characteristics, symptoms, treatment, etc). It seems as if it would be 100x more useful memorizing everything together in an organized fashion rather than learning it all separately, specifically because all of the similarities and differences between pathogens start to blend together unless you have them organized in your head.
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.
I thought that anatomy was BY FAR the worst part of medical school. I hate pure memorization, so I (misguidedly) tried to make all of the names logical. Head and neck did not go well, but I'm pretty sure I invented better, novel names for 60% of the structures on that exam…
I actually enjoyed most classes after anatomy, and was able to do well in them. More encouragingly, I actually learned anatomy fairly well once I got to third year and had to recognize structures through a laparoscope.
Just hang on, it'll be over soon.
I actually enjoyed most classes after anatomy, and was able to do well in them. More encouragingly, I actually learned anatomy fairly well once I got to third year and had to recognize structures through a laparoscope.
Just hang on, it'll be over soon.
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.
this makes a lot of sense
Gotcha. I'm sure it works well, I think I just had to learn micro in a very particular way so I could retain everything. Basically like this (everything organized in a logical way to avoid mixing up details):
Thank you, this was encouraging.
I think everything in med school gets easier over time. Stuff makes more sense. Even like GI path is easier after cardio path, it all just makes more sense. Same thing for physical exam stuff. It makes more and more sense why you'd ask the things you ask so it just becomes more logical and easier to figure out without memorizing.
Eh, I found head/neck easier learn than everything else below. I mean, all of the nerves/vessels/muscles are smaller and can run in stupid paths but I felt more comfortable being in a single small space.
Same. Head and neck anatomy was fun.
Mother **** anatomy.
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Fun compared to all the stuff between the diaphragm and the perineum.
Oh dear god, I never want to see anything in the perineum/pelvic region again. The material sucks, the structures make no sense, and the dissections are grueling.
Ha, I actually really enjoy the abdomen, at least I can see the structures. Hello Pterygopalatine fossa, where are you, are you even real?
That's good news... now you won't have to change your username.
Haha, right? I don't know, IR has piqued my interest. An IR neuro guy came and gave a talk recently, he had me at "here's the clot I removed from her middle cerebral artery and here's the angiogram take directly after, patient had full recovery from this stroke". 😍
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