Histology

This forum made possible through the generous support of SDN members, donors, and sponsors. Thank you.
ChubbyChaser said:
How the hell did yall learn this stuff? Advice please
Click to expand...

It wasn't easy! I hated histo. Best advice I can offer is make sure you have a good histo textbook with lots of pictures. I would suggest first learning some of the background physiology of a given system (ie, how the cardiovascular system works or how the kidney functions), then try to learn how everything looks. I found it much easier to learn histo when placed in context of some physiological process. You can't learn it in a vacuum or everything just looks like blobs and specks of pink and purple. Just FYI, even if you hate histo, it is still important to learn it. It comes back heavy in pathology second year (I got much better with histo during my second year because I saw so much pathological variety....there are a lot more ways for things to look abnormal than normal), and is relatively high yield on step 1 (mainly path histo). Good luck.
 
1) Remember you're always looking at a planar section of a 3-D structure.
2) Form follows function
3) Google "webpath" for another good path/histo website
 
ChubbyChaser said:
How the hell did yall learn this stuff? Advice please
Click to expand...

I liked histo a lot. I didn't have a textbook. Our school had very good online resources (including virtual microscopy). I used that a lot as well as some online quizzing sites (check out Blue Histology).

The thing about histo that clicked for me was that you have to work things out- i.e. "this is type X tissue BECAUSE it has lots of lipids, etc. etc."

Don't memorize things. Try to remember relationships and reason your way through it. Think about why Sertoli cells have their cell bodies above, etc. Structure and function are really illustrated in fine fashion in histo.
 
Advice from our histology professor (and it totally works!) about analyzing images:

1. Figure out the magnification of the image.
2. Look at the whole image. In fact, avoid looking at the thing that the arrow is pointed at until you've looked at the whole image.
3. Figure out the cross-section if it's applicable.
4. NOW look at the thing that the arrow is pointed to. What are the features? What is it next to?
5. For each thing you're learning about, focus on FUNCTION rather than form. Someone said it above - form follows function.
5. Practice!

G'luck!
 
Well for the first 2 or 3 months, I had the same problem. We had to use Basic Histology by Junquiera and it was so hard (as every lined seemed so important). So after a bit of researching, I found Difiore's Atlas of Histology to be such a great resource. So I used to always study a chapter from Junquiera in the morning and then do the same chapter in Difiore's. Difriore's tells you what you need to look for in slides.

After all this, I went to the lab and did each slide in detail...trying to mentally map all the points pertaining to each slide. Like say you take a slide of hyaline cartilage, you should be able to remember all the points pertaining to it (like the chrondrocytes, how they derive nutrition from the perichrondrium, their arrangement and so on.) Towards the end of the year, I became so good in Histology and I was really pleased with my study approach (unfortunately it doesn't work well for other subjects...except for Pathology perhaps.)
 
chubby, definitely use an atlas. i don't know if your slides are labelled but look at an atlas and know what all the different stuff looks like in there. then look at your slides. note the criteria to determine what it is.
blue histology is really really good for most of the histo slides so definitely go through their notes and take a look at that. histo is a lot of guessing/ambiguity in my opinion but if you look at it enough you can guess the same as the profs do haha. also if your school has free lab tutoring like ours does. definitely do it. the more you look at slides the better you get! good luck!
 
Wheater's. This is a really good resource, and (at my school at least), a lot of the images on histo exams came straight from there.

Along with Wheater's, use whatever online resources your school has to study and quiz yourself. (All the miscroscopy at my school is virtual, which made things much easier.) Quiz uourself frequently to make sure you don't get fooled by "lookalikes."

It can be a big time investment, but one you really need to make. I had a hell of a time with histo for most of last semester, but I kept plugging and got much, much better by the end. (In fact, I shocked myself by getting 100 on the last histo practical.) It went from hurting my anatomy grade to really helping.
 
Takes time, you'll get it. Good advice on here.

The first day I was thinking the same thing. It all looked the SAME.
 
Histo is considred the easiest of all anatomy in our school..and its true..the whole text can be done in maximum three days..during exams students litrally revise the whole book just in an hour or two..overhere difiore's atlas is amust plus textbook by LIaq hussain is used..and this has made histo realy a "cute" subject.. the hardest thing usually is the slides(folks's opinion not mine)so for this ya should do slides regularly (we had one pract a week and used to do one or max four slides).jUst put out ur atlas and do the slides on microscope by comparison..this hardly takes fifteen minutes.jUst develop a bit interest.
good luck!!
 
I appreciate everyones input. Just for clarification we dont use microscopes we use a computer program.
 
This was unbelievably eco-unfriendly, but I made flashcards by printing our labeled images set. I covered the labels on one side, and left them on the other.

I didn't do this for the first block exam, but did for the second and third and it helped A LOT. It really helped me learn what to look for in terms of structures, tissues, etc.
 
1. Ross book. Read the F out of it. Look at all the plates.
2. Histotime is helpful.
3. I liked the Boston University site. They have many images and reveal the answer soon after. Save both questions and answers. Stare at the screen for hours till you get it.

I did this for every exam/practical and did well. Hope that helps.
 
waitwhat said:
1. Ross book. Read the F out of it. Look at all the plates.
2. Histotime is helpful.
3. I liked the Boston University site. They have many images and reveal the answer soon after. Save both questions and answers. Stare at the screen for hours till you get it.

I did this for every exam/practical and did well. Hope that helps.
Click to expand...

I second this! (But it's a really, really dense text.)
 
I also suggest you look at the thread "links to preclinical sciences" or something like that on SDN allopathic form (it's the 1st or the 2nd thread I think). It has some really good histology websites like Blue Histology etc.
 
The Ross atlas of descriptive histology is fantastic!!!! thats pretty much all i use apart from the virtual microscope and review sets we have online.
 
Repetition, repetition, repetition, repetition.

The more you study and practice, the easier it gets.
 
Also check out blue histology, and any other histo websites you can google.

I firmly believe that the only way to learn histo is to see whatever organ/tissue in as many different sections as possible. Look at as many slides as you possibly can and keep on identifying over and over and over again.
 
chubbs!

I have not taken histo in med school yet (not till 2nd year), but I was a TA for it at Penn for a few years (gave lectures and led lab review)


I suggest you take a look at Iowa's Virtual Slide Box

The virtual slides are very well annotated. An added bonus is the accompanying histopathology section so you can compare slides from normal and diseased states

You'll learn to love the class...I mean, besides....Pink is your favorite color...😉

good luck dude
 
get a variety of texts and review cards. No one text covers everything, and you will always get some tidbits from different sources. Don't feel like you need to invest in a lot though. Get 3 different sources and study those. I did that for boards and had no problems. With variety you will get new information that you can add to what you already know.
 
ChubbyChaser said:
How the hell did yall learn this stuff? Advice please
Click to expand...

haven't logged into SDN for almost two months... came back today just because i wanted to open up a duplicate of this thread...

i'm so not getting along with histo... at all... it is unbelievably mind numbing... I hate it... i hate everything about it...

is there a "godsend" book for this crap? you know, the equivalent of something like BRS physiology, or lippincott's biochem book? The dam histolabs are 50% of our grade and we each have our own microscope... not like cadaever lab where there was atleast someone in our group who knew what the hell it is that they were doing...

I'm starting to think this is going to be worse than anatomy...😡
 
phospho said:
haven't logged into SDN for almost two months... came back today just because i wanted to open up a duplicate of this thread...

i'm so not getting along with histo... at all... it is unbelievably mind numbing... I hate it... i hate everything about it...

is there a "godsend" book for this crap? you know, the equivalent of something like BRS physiology, or lippincott's biochem book? The dam histolabs are 50% of our grade and we each have our own microscope... not like cadaever lab where there was atleast someone in our group who knew what the hell it is that they were doing...

I'm starting to think this is going to be worse than anatomy...😡
Click to expand...
i dont think so..so far the best thing i can find is wheaters and blue histology website.
 
Blue histology and google searches. I compiled separate ppt's with a bunch of pictures in them and would use those as flashcards...that way its not as repetitive (because Blue Histo repeats images pretty often) and you get to look at different stuff. A lot of med schools have open-access Histo atlases too.
 
Anyone use Netter's histology flash cards? Are they any good?
 
Shotgun histology is pretty cool. Unfortunately, I wasn't aware of it until this year. I got by just fine by using the pictures in our lectures. I'm not sure if our professors took it easy on us or what, but I found histology pretty simple. Judging by how many people hate it with a passion, I have to imagine I'm (or UAMS is) a unique case. My advice might not be so hot. 😛
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

vignesh9498
Histology shelf
Replies
0
Views
835
vignesh9498
vignesh9498
vignesh9498
Histology NMBE shelf exam
Replies
3
Views
3K
vignesh9498
vignesh9498
D
Neuroscience & Histology Basic Science Subject Exams
Replies
12
Views
926
voxveritatisetlucis
V
S
Summer Remediation Medical Microanatomy (Histology) at Drexel University
Replies
3
Views
2K
gyngyn
gyngyn
readmypostsMD
histology resources
Replies
3
Views
1K
JSReed
J
Top