What if you are not good at anatomy lab?

Burrell College of Osteopathic Medicine
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If I am not very good at dissecting in the lab, would that relate to how good I am as a doctor? I am not planning to go into surgery but even in other fields like cardiology or internal med, how relevant is your ability to dissect in the lab. I am just worried if I am actually not very good at doing procedures but I won't actually know until residency which is a little too late. Any thoughts?
 
No, dissection is a skill that has to be learned like anything else.
 
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Anatomy lab has no impact on anything. I hated every second and skipped the majority of them. Just learn the information online/books. I even thought I'd hate anything surgery or procedural based on lab but forced myself into doing a surgical research project (on animals) and loved it. Don't worry about it just get through it.
 
Most people aren't good at dissecting, or much of anything as a first year. It doesn't mean you couldn't end up being a surgeon/doing procedures. It just means you don't have much experience cutting into a person's body.
 
"What if you are not good at anatomy lab?" Asked no surgeon ever.
 
Probably the most irrelevant thing you can think of. I stopped doing dissection half way through, literally a waste of time
 
Know a girl who passed out in anatomy lab who became a surgeon.

I'd say you have more to worry about at the moment. Be cool.
 
sliceofbread136 said:
Probably the most irrelevant thing you can think of. I stopped doing dissection half way through, literally a waste of time
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This. Cadaver may have been necessary 100 years ago but now with all the accurate computer programs and multitude of books, spending 2 hours digging out a vagus nerve is just a huge waste of time.
 
TBV said:
This. Cadaver may have been necessary 100 years ago but now with all the accurate computer programs and multitude of books, spending 2 hours digging out a vagus nerve is just a huge waste of time.
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It's better to see things in real life. Gives you a good appreciation for things
 
Psai said:
It's better to see things in real life. Gives you a good appreciation for things
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no different than a cadaveric pic to me
 
Psai said:
That will come in handy for the pics of the patients that you will be dealing with
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Clever straw man. Allow me to introduce my own, When my patients are 6 months dead on a table I will no longer wish to provide care.
 
TBV said:
Clever straw man. Allow me to introduce my own, When my patients are 6 months dead on a table I will no longer wish to provide care.
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How is that a straw man? I'm directly talking about your point right there, not setting up a fake point and passing it off as something you said. And pictures are great but there's no substitute for actually looking at something in real life. Anatomy is necessary. I'm not sure why you want me to prove it to you. It's up to you if you want to learn it or not, it doesn't really matter to me
 
Psai said:
How is that a straw man? I'm directly talking about your point right there, not setting up a fake point and passing it off as something you said. And pictures are great but there's no substitute for actually looking at something in real life. Anatomy is necessary. I'm not sure why you want me to prove it to you. It's up to you if you want to learn it or not, it doesn't really matter to me
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Perhaps you're right about the straw man I thought this was going somewhere else. However you are operating under the assumption that your opinion is fact. Because you think everyone learns better from the cadaver doesn't make it so. Never said anatomy wasn't necessary, I said lab wasn't necessary. Because you can't see something in a picture, diagram or book and apply it in real life doesn't mean others cant.
 
TBV said:
Perhaps you're right about the straw man I thought this was going somewhere else. However you are operating under the assumption that your opinion is fact. Because you think everyone learns better from the cadaver doesn't make it so. Never said anatomy wasn't necessary, I said lab wasn't necessary. Because you can't see something in a picture, diagram or book and apply it in real life doesn't mean others cant.
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I had the same opinion when I was a first year medical student. Come back to me after you've done surgery and tell me that pictures would have been sufficient. I'll be waiting here.
 
Psai said:
I had the same opinion when I was a first year medical student. Come back to me after you've done surgery and tell me that pictures would have been sufficient. I'll be waiting here.
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Pictures were good enough for the uterus! God I hate ob
 
TBV said:
This. Cadaver may have been necessary 100 years ago but now with all the accurate computer programs and multitude of books, spending 2 hours digging out a vagus nerve is just a huge waste of time.
Click to expand...

I disagree. Cadaver dissection is essential to the desensitization process necessary to be a physician and it is good practice. In all honesty, would you really want the first time you cut into human skin to be on a living person? I wouldn't.
 
I think the last few posts have been going off on a tangent. In general, I do think there's value in dissecting a cadaver. Is there a lot of "wasted" time? Sure. However, I do think there's something to the idea that dissecting structures out will lead to a more intuitive understanding of the relationships between structures than what could be gleamed from pictures or an anatomic atlas. If there wasn't, then everyone would simply memorize Netter's and ace anatomy exams. For me, at least, no memorization of Netter's would've allowed me to do well on anatomy exams; for myself, I needed to see things in the flesh.

I suppose the real question becomes whether you will remember these things when you encounter them ~2-3 years down the line. At a minimum, I would think that those things would at least be remembered more easily rather than having to relearn them from scratch.
 
NickNaylor said:
...For me, at least, no memorization of Netter's would've allowed me to do well on anatomy exams; for myself, I needed to see things in the flesh.
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Exactly. While I am just a first year student. I know thus far, that while taking written exams I am visualizing structures in the question as I have seen them in the lab not how I have seen them in an Thieme or Netter. While there does seem to be a lot of wasted time...so far lab has been a valuable asset for me. There is a lot to be said for actually finding, cleaning and looking at the structures as they exist in real life.
 
Anatomy lab was...

1. An important experience? Yes
2. A Good experience? Yes
3. Required to understand anatomy? No
4. Influential on my surgery rotation grade/learning? No
5. Good fodder for med-related convo at bars? Definitely
 
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