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Started by PetPony
Duh, lol. Didn't even think of that.Good point. Knowing my personal weaknesses, I feel like my biggest hurdle would be suturing as neatly as possible. Do people usually just buy suture off of Amazon or something?
the more you practice, the neater you'll become. i would focus on getting the sutures in the right place/pattern, because if you make it pretty but it's wrong, it doesnt matter. and pretty but wrong on a live patient could equal dead.
Good point. Knowing my personal weaknesses, I feel like my biggest hurdle would be suturing as neatly as possible. Do people usually just buy suture off of Amazon or something?
suture is expensive fyi. you can find "kits" online, but many people get it expired from places they work at
Banana skins and pigs feet work well, too
I did. I just purchased a large bag of suture (I think it was around $30). I actually still have some suture left from this and I have had it for around 2ish years now.
Like everyone else stated, there really isn't anything that will give you the feel of suturing on live tissue. Suture practice is better for getting down technique and remembering the patterns so it really doesn't matter so much what you practice on.
Good point. Knowing my personal weaknesses, I feel like my biggest hurdle would be suturing as neatly as possible. Do people usually just buy suture off of Amazon or something?
I asked places I worked at if they had anything that was expired/close to being expired. I got a ton from my equine vet bosses as they didn't suture much of anything. The needles were often fricken huge and pain to work with though.
I also had a shelter vet I volunteered with during first year who would save me any left over suture from whatever he was doing. Every little kitten spay would have like a foot of suture left.
Are there any posters here from central Texas (Killeen, Hewitt, Harker Heights, etc.)? A friend of mine in that area lost her dog (her front door failed), and is absolutely sick over it. Please contact me if you're from that area, and I'll send you the Craigslist ad! Social media does wonderful things when it comes to lost pets.
Bodyline.co.jp is dangerous to my bank account....
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If I didn't have a staff meeting in five seconds, I would totally be checking this out right now just out of curiosity.
Lolita, punk and cosplay fashion and accessories from Japan. I want it all....
I bought a small plastic cauldron for my candy this year. It holds more than I thought it would. Now I need to buy more candy because it looks sad only half filled.
(I don't even know if I'll have trick-or-treaters at my new place, but, let's be honest, the candy was never really for the children anyway.)
(I don't even know if I'll have trick-or-treaters at my new place, but, let's be honest, the candy was never really for the children anyway.)
Oh yeah. This. Totally forgot that being a new home owner means I should stock it with candy for trick or treaters. Thanks for the reminder 😛
WildZoo
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If you don't have a full on haunted house (and send me pics) I will be disappointed.
Hey Canadians! Don't know who to vote for yet? Check out the Vote Compass! And then go vote Oct 19 if you haven't already! https://votecompass.cbc.ca
I'm wondering if any other schools have better systems in place for their anatomy labs. My school/class has an issue with prosections every single year with certain people hogging them (it's difficult for the rest of us to learn when we're standing on our tiptoes trying to get a glimpse). My lab instructor said he's open to any ideas that might help solve this problem, so I was wondering if any of you had any suggestions. I suggested allowing each group 5-10 minutes at the prosections during each lab period using a timer, but he said that has already been tried and failed. I wouldn't care so much if there weren't certain things on these prosections we had to know that we wouldn't be able to see on our own dissections at this point (pelvis, for example).
Those are good ideas, but it sounds like part of the issue is that the prosections cannot be out unless an instructor is present (I'm assuming something happened to them one year...). I guess it'd depend on how willing the instructors are to spend more time in the lab themselves policing.
To me, I think the timer thing would work fine if points got deducted for those who continued to be a**es about things, but maybe that's because I'd be a mean teacher 😛
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You know, I wonder if I could ask them to post pictures of the prosections themselves to our class page. Students aren't allowed to take pictures of any kind when it comes to anatomy lab, but maybe they'd do it themselves.
I suggested something similar to that, but he said that they've tried it several times and that one of the instructors (we only have 3 instructors, 1 grad student, and the professor) ends up having to play babysitter since no one would respect the time slots. It sounds like they tried to give each lab group 10 minutes at the prosections during our lab period, but people would still spend the entire 3 hours at the prosection table (yes, that is honestly what is happening with entire lab groups).
Sign in sheets. People sign in as they walk in. You stand there and watch. It takes less than 5 minutes. Door is shut and locked once everyone is in, if you aren't there on time, you lose points for missing class. If you attempt to show up at a time that isn't your scheduled time, you lose points. If you sign in for someone else, you lose points. It really is NOT that hard nor does it take that long to get a roll call at the start of a lab. Anyone saying otherwise, is making excuses.
Start slapping people with serious consequences. Not abiding by the rules= honor board violations. Stick to it. Trust me, people will start following the rules then.
Yeah, we didn't have much of a problem with people "hogging" things, everyone was more than willing to share and learn from one another. We had more of a problem with people attempting to not show up to mandatory labs.... including a couple of people that decided to show up, sign in, and immediately leave. They got into some big trouble for that stunt.
I 100% agree. I just don't feel that those rules will be enforced. The instructors didn't even make any announcement when hindlimbs to be graded went missing, and the only ones left behind were unfinished (my eye is still twitching over that...).
We honestly didn't have too many in our anatomy labs (at least that I remember). The few that we did have was the cat, which was kind of just out and you could go over as needed. The other ones one of the lab technicians would kind of just rotate to the different tables with it and go through things, but that was about it. We were also encouraged to go in after lab and go through the muscles, nerves, whatever on our classmates dogs to get used to the natural variation that could occur. We just weren't allowed to cut anything, and I don't think I heard of any particular incidents were anyone cut another group's dog.
We more so had issues with things in our lockers. Each lab group had a locker and lock with bones and copies of Miller and a few other anatomy textbooks that you could use at any point, but they couldn't leave the lab. Those would occasionally go missing with it the professors and technicians dealt with it by putting an extra lock or rotating the lock in a way that you couldn't get it open until whoever returned the items. And I think most of the time it would be just someone forgot, not necessarily people trying to sabotage other groups.
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This too for us.
You won't know until it is suggested.
We had our class of 60-something broken into 3 groups for lab periods. 20-something people was perfect. Each group had a different day for lab.... you went on your day at your time. You could swap days with someone if you needed to.
It really worked out quite well and it allowed for smaller groups. We were broken up even further for other animal handling labs and things to only have 10 students or so per group.
It honestly is not that hard to do this. Either your school has not thought about it (which is what I am thinking) or they have not attempted to implement it in a proper way.
We only had specimens... no dissections. So everyone had to get a look at the specimens. Not only that we did not have outside of lab time where we could just go in and look when we wanted. So we seriously were given our 2 hour lab section to look at all the forelimbs or all the hindlimbs and that was it. We were allowed to take pictures.
We have 24/7 access to our cadavers. There are certain things that we will only see on those prosections though that will show up on the practical. We're not so much graded on dissection technique yet, but whether or not we uncovered everything bolded in our manual.
I wonder how they'd implement that for 130 people without disrupting the other lecture times. We do our own dissections obviously, and meet 3x a week now (we are free to dissect outside of the lab period, though). I could see them saying "Groups 1-4, your prosection time is Monday from 4-5" kinda thing. That would make sense imo but it is starting to sound like the instructors just don't want to spend the time keeping an eye on the prosections
Also, thanks for the suggestions you guys! I'll bring them up at the start of our next lab and see if anything sticks.
They still did groups of people for labs at my school once the class size jumped to 160. Again, not difficult, just have to make it work.
And you can't make that last statement unless an actual attempt at a real solution is brought up to the faculty and they have time to consider it and maybe mold/rearrange it to fit with the curriculum.
I do this as an RD. You set off my fire alarm for a stupid reason (straightening hair is the worst!)? Community Service!! You plog my trash chutes or send glass down them? Community Service!! My lobby had the cleanest windows and the cleanest computer lab on campus for the first several weeks becuse of my violation report frenzy. My violations have been cut to maybe a quarter at most because everyone knows that they'll get to clean the lobby, computer lab, or my stairwells if they get caught (and, amazingly, college students are pretty dumb when it comes to not getting caught). They learned pretty quick.
WildZoo
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Nooo you beat me to it
I went in there to talk to the head instructor today and made a couple of suggestions. He basically said they've tried it all and have resorted to taking away the prosections at this point. I'm still going to try these suggestions and see what he says though!
Meanwhile, I saw my RA like a handful of times per semester.
Great minds think alike, but better ones think of it first 😎.
Ridiculous situation after reading your posts. I'm a firm believer in karma, what goes around comes around, whatever you want to call it. I know it's irritating, but sometimes **** is just out of our control. Speak up if you have to, but try not to lose any sleep over it; no need to spike those cortisol levels.
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WildZoo
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I feel like I should be able to spit out the list of cortisol effects right now, but I only know like half, which makes me worry more...
Cue cortisol spike.
I'm sorry I don't understand any of this at all. We have a class of 128 and 2 of each prosection is available, one for the lower and one for the upper lab. They are only available during a few labs (besides the cats, which were always available), and no other time. Most people had to be reminded to look at them as we were so busy dissecting our own animals.
I think we're down to 128 students now. We had 1 dog, 1 dog pelvis, 1 horse limb (that was pinned with a guide), and maybe a bovine limb (I haven't gotten to see all of the specimens yet), and a cat. All of those prosections are on two tables in the center of the lab, and whenever they are out, 20 people are crowded around them. It's the same people for the most part, and I don't know what their own dissections look like. One lab group in particular has spent the majority/entire lab period quizzing each other on the prosections. For the most part, the prosections are out so we can see certain structures most of us can't dissect out well, or aren't supposed to dissect out (like the entire pelvis). I try to squeeze in, but people quite literally edge you out, tell you they're using the guide so you can't see it until they're done in 2 hours, whatever.
We've been done with our dissections for a week now and have been learning them and waiting for a chance to squeeze in at the prosection table. Some people seem like they can learn by peeking over heads and listening to what the other groups are saying, but I personally need to touch/point/dig to get it to all stick. It doesn't help that a lot of us are in finals mode, so people are cranky and not always friendly.
This seems so strange to me too. We had 162 students in our class first year and never had issues like that. Our prosections (or additional random body parts) were laid out around the outside of the room during lab. Our whole class had lab at the same time and we just took turns going from station to station around the room to look at the specimens. One of our professors allowed groups to schedule times to meet with him in the lab but this was available to all the groups provided they contacted him well in advance. The lab was still open to the other groups during those times too.
Yeah really it seems that the problem is the turn taking. Whether it be an 'understood' rule to take turns, a timer is set, whatever, people weren't respecting that. You should know that your group has no reason to spend 2 hours at the pinned horse limb playing quiz games to help you memorize it. There's only one horse limb, so you know that one limb will only be one question anyways. No point in obsessing over it when it will not look identical to the student dissections.
When you are woken up at 12 am because a girl is straightening her hair, then you can call me Umbridge. Lol
Now that I think about it, we never had fire/smoke alarms go off ever when I was in the dorms. Our biggest incidences were police raiding a girl's room for weed, a violent crazy guy, and when I came home from a late night at the library only to find my neighbor passed out in front of her door in a puddle of vomit.
Oh, and I was in a suite-style dorm, so there would be reports of huge thefts. If one room is left unlocked, all they had to do was go through the connecting bathroom into the other room.
I don't miss the dorms. My sophomore year roommate had a boyfriend that started living in our room when he was working nights at a food place on campus. After he spent the night for two weeks straight, I went to the RA. This dude was creepy as hell and didn't bathe regularly so he smelled awful. He worked with one of my friends and was always bragging about how he liked to hide knives around his apartment. 😱
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