How helpful is dissection courses?

[lookleft]

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Hi I was wondering how helpful you think dissection courses would be for someone who is thinking about surgery. I will be attending medical school next year. I have taken gross anatomy with cadevars. I have the chance next semester to take a dissection course, 10 hours a week. It sounds interesting but I have a pretty busy schedule. I wanted to know how helpful it may be for someone who wants to be a surgeon.

Thanks

 

[Purifyer]

Originally posted by lookleft
Hi I was wondering how helpful you think dissection courses would be for someone who is thinking about surgery. I will be attending medical school next year. I have taken gross anatomy with cadevars. I have the chance next semester to take a dissection course, 10 hours a week. It sounds interesting but I have a pretty busy schedule. I wanted to know how helpful it may be for someone who wants to be a surgeon.

Thanks

Honest opinion: Completely useless.

 

[droliver]

I disagree. Repetition breeds familiarity. It certainly would make gross anatomy an easier transition for you. I remeber taking a histology course in college that was much more in depth then what I did in medical school & I really had to do minimal preparation for the microscopic exams for med school because I had looked at and been tested on so frequently on it.

One of the worst consequences of new curriculum reforms in medical schools has been the amputation of anatomy time during the first year. A generation ago it was a full year long & very detailed. Now some places compress it to 10 weeks or less & its very superficial and doesn't seem to stick with most students. It sure didn't for me to some degree & I really had to relearn it all again as I was training

 

[Foxxy Cleopatra]

This has also come back to sting me a little, as we flew through anatomy where I came from. Looking back, the parts I learned the best are the ones where I would work my way through a part of the dissector book, figuring things out on my own, even if that meant staying late most days and struggling with it for an hour or 2 after lab. If you have the chance, I'd try to get a good atlas and dissector and work your way through the lab. It definitely will not hurt when it comes time for medical school.

 

[lookleft]

Thanks for the replies. I know anatomy is one of those subjects where repition is very important so it does make sense to learn as much as possible.

Why do you think many medical schools are cutting back on the time they spend on anatomy? Isn't anatomy on of the basics building blocks of medicine? I feel like any physician should know anatomy cold.

 

[neilc]

Originally posted by lookleft
Why do you think many medical schools are cutting back on the time they spend on anatomy? Isn't anatomy on of the basics building blocks of medicine? I feel like any physician should know anatomy cold.

at my school they actually increased anatomy time...it is now a 3 semester course, with each semester having a dissection block of two weeks. during the block, all other classes are cancelled, you are in the lab morning to night. and, during the semester, you go to the dissection lab/practical session one morning a week for a few hours.

i loved anatomy! however, it seems a bit much for those not considering a surgical specialty....

 

[droliver]

Originally posted by lookleft
Why do you think many medical schools are cutting back on the time they spend on anatomy? Isn't anatomy on of the basics building blocks of medicine? I feel like any physician should know anatomy cold.

With the explosion of information on the cellular/genetic level and the call for more PC elements like medical ethics in modern curriculum, some of the staples have been squeezed out by the constraints of traditional medical school schedules. An increasing reliance on imaging studies has also distanced many physicians from day to day hands on anatomy. I'm convinced that after seeing how little most of my medcine colleagues know about anatomy that it really doesn't compromise their understanding of a lot of dz. states, particularly of the GI tract, vascular system, and the chest. Being able to correlate anatomy & pathology when you handle these various organs really out a lot of concepts together for me