What is your school's anatomy lab like?

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Please tell me:
1.Your school's name
2. What is the technology like in your anatomy lab?(touchscreen computers at every table, flat screen t.v's, digital netter, etc.)

Please give as much detail as you can about the setup. We are trying to revamp our anatomy lab.

Thanks and good luck studying!
 
This is not a job for medical students but for the administration of your school. If you, as a medical student, are soliciting this type of information, instead of concentrating on your studies, you are in a very poor school indeed. Your anatomy department chairman and school administration knows what modern anatomical dissection equipment and technology looks like and what is out there. Your job is to get your study done and not to redesign an anatomy lab.
 
Ours is a big room full of cadavers. A couple of years ago they renovated it and added some fancy flat-screen computer monitors and slightly improved ventilation. After all this renovation it remained...a big room full of cadavers.
 
Big room...chains hanging from ceilings...flickering lights swaying too and fro...skeletons in shackles on the walls..you know, the usual.
 
Our whole class have anatomy at the same time, so we are divided into 5 rooms of 15-20 people with one cadaver in it... The rooms are newly refurnished and in a in a half-circle like apperance if you see the building from the outside... Inside its like 5+ meters under the roof with pretty good ventilation, and we also have a whole wall with windows in the opposite door of the enterance to the room = lots of light.

No computers and flatscreens, but I feel bringing your own Netter is really all we need..

We have two prof's in every room that gather smaller groups of students and sit down explaining things, drawing schemes for us etc.

Edit: Yeah and along the walls there are organs and babies and stuff like that in containers w/ formaldehyde in locked cabinets on display
 
3 Rooms that were built in the 20s. We have ~9 cadavers/room and we have no dunk tanks or single ventilation systems. It's old school to the max in there.

Bad? Not really. It's fine for what we are doing.

Oh yeh, no computers at each tabe.
 
We have a large class (250) so only half the class does Anatomy lab at once. We have about 25+ cadavers for students to dissect and about five more cadavers that have been prosected so we can see what it's supposed to look like. It's 5 people to one cadaver and every table/tank has a flatscreen. We also have a pretty decent ventilation system.

Anatomy is a year-long course at my school (and the first four weeks of second year). Since we're on a systems curriculum, we dissect what we're studying. Right now, we're knee-deep in cardiopulmonary so we're doing heart and lungs in Anatomy. I'm told by the end of first year, we'll be thankful for that awesome ventilation system we have.
 
Simmy said:
Our whole class have anatomy at the same time, so we are divided into 5 rooms of 15-20 people with one cadaver in it... The rooms are newly refurnished and in a in a half-circle like apperance if you see the building from the outside... Inside its like 5+ meters under the roof with pretty good ventilation, and we also have a whole wall with windows in the opposite door of the enterance to the room = lots of light.

No computers and flatscreens, but I feel bringing your own Netter is really all we need..

We have two prof's in every room that gather smaller groups of students and sit down explaining things, drawing schemes for us etc.

Edit: Yeah and along the walls there are organs and babies and stuff like that in containers w/ formaldehyde in locked cabinets on display
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15-20 people per cadaver? That is a lot.
 
Our class is the 60's styles, just stainless steel + wood, not even a screen, let alone touchscreen xD
When it comes to observation (using gloves for handling etc) we got more than one specimen (organs and stuff like that) for student. As for dissections we are 5-8 per dissection (entire cadaver).
And the room stinks of formaldehyde since there is no ventilation (not even a windows, let alone extractors 😛)
 
xanthomondo said:
15-20 people per cadaver? That is a lot.
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Basicly we dont dissect that much since the cadavers are prepared for us from before... So we mostly use it 3-4 persons at the time to look at something if we want too... Mostly its just our two professors teaching in divided gropus (they rotate or you can just sit and read on your own if you want to).. We can pretty much do/learn how we want to so there is never a line to look at structures on the cadaver since people rotate by themselfs
 
hrandani said:
What exactly do you use computers for in anatomy lab? I'm dumbfounded.
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Dissection guide, including videos, and atlas. We also have to an actual atlas at each table. Ours aren't touchscreen - wouldn't that get disgustingly illegible very quickly?
 
Not sure if touch screens would be the best idea. Not sure what Formalin does to computer screens, but it can't be good. I guess you could saran wrap them...but not sure if they're really worth the trouble.
 
ParamedicMan said:
Not sure if touch screens would be the best idea. Not sure what Formalin does to computer screens, but it can't be good. I guess you could saran wrap them...but not sure if they're really worth the trouble.
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This has already been thought of. Several companies make touch screens that are like tanks...waterproof, corrosion resistant, etc. All you do is wipe them down at the end of the day and all the goo is gone.
 
I have a hard time imagining how a computer could really augment dissection. Just grab your netter, plug your nose, and be grateful when gross anatomy is done.
 
geogil said:
I have a hard time imagining how a computer could really augment dissection. Just grab your netter, plug your nose, and be grateful when gross anatomy is done.
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I agree. Every anatomy professor I've talked to has thought that computers weren't really the place they would dump their money if they were going to renovate the lab. Sure it's flashy and a good way to impress premeds with how "high tech" your school it but I don't think its a good use of funding.

edit: just want to clarify: I can see how a computer can help you learn anatomy but I don't think having one at every table while dissecting would be useful (when compared to just having a book)

edit2: Oh and to answer the original question we have one gigantic anatomy lab with several bays (they aren't really separated by walls or anything though). All 175 people in my class have anatomy at the same time. The bays each have like eight cadavers in them with 4 students per cadaver. (and a few only have 3 per cadaver) Everyone dissects their entire cadaver. We've also got a couple of cadavers that the MS4's prosect ahead of where we are so we can see what it should look like. Lots of other reference stuff is on the walls/between the bays. (they put up films and we have cross sections and skeletons spread over the lab) They also lend us all a bone box.
 
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wow, computers, tv in an anatomy lab...wow...sounds flahy and a nice way to attract pre-meds, but every tank had a "dirty" netter/rohens thats been left in lab.

We have like ~24 tanks, 4-5 students per tank, 2-3 lab sessions and that's it.

Group A dissects 1 arm, Group B does the other, and Group C just gets to learn. Groups rotate everyday. Being in a dissecting group is fun for like 1-2 days, then it just sucks and being the last group for the day is the best...you actually get to learn stuff.
 
geogil said:
I have a hard time imagining how a computer could really augment dissection. Just grab your netter, plug your nose, and be grateful when gross anatomy is done.
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Our computers contain software to view CT scans of our individual cadavers. We have radiology objectives with structures we have to find each lab, so computers are essential. If we didn't have CT scans to view, computers wouldn't be quite as necessary. It is nice having them to quickly look stuff up, though.

Other than that, our lab is pretty standard. Four students in a group, one group per cadaver. Good ventilation.
 
Most of the technology is for show. We do have a computer and screen for each half (our lab is divided into two) and they could theoretically show stuff and lecture if they wanted, but they never did. We have a room with laptops and models that is away from the cadavers to prevent all the fat and what not from messing things up.

We just have a stack of nasty dissectors, netters, grays and whatever else you may want. I'm a tech person and I still really think screens are kind of frivolous and low yield. Radiology images can be done outside of lab or in another room.

If I had my choice we'd have comfortable easily adjustable seats OR easily adjustable tables. My back was wrecked by the end of each lab. We'd also have a few more saws and slightly better ventilation, although ours wasn't that bad.

There can always be more light too, although I do understand that it could dry the cadavers out during practical time.
 
120 person class. Roughly 30 cadavers. 4 per cadaver, but split up during the week so that only 2 work at a time. No computers or any of that. We work with a scalpel, our hands, and a dissector. And occasionally they break out the reciprocating saw.
 
My school has so many volunteer doctors that we don't even use netters at our tables.......we just have this circulating mass of physicians walking around that you can ask questions. Sometimes that is good, sometimes it is bad/stressful. we dissect in teams of 3 to a cadaver (we rotate dissections w/ one other group of 3) and our cadavers are not prepared at all for her (de-skinning blows). We have self ventilating tables so the smell is not bad at all. Sometimes they show us clinical procedures on the cadavers too, like bone marrow biopsies-which is pretty neat.
 
4 students to a cadaver. Each table has a grimy Grant's dissector and Netter's so you can keep your personal copy nice at home. We have a few computers, but no one really used them. A body and a copy of Netter's is all you really need.
 
There is absolutely no technology in our anatomy lab--just 25 metal tables in a big room. (It does have big windows and a nice treetop view of campus, though.) Never mind self-ventilating tanks and touch screens--I'd kill for a Netter's with pages that didn't stick together, or a saw blade that's actually sharp.

In theory, we are 6 to a cadaver, but we work in half-groups most of the time. The downside to this system is mandatory teaching, where an assigned rep from one group has to go in at 8 am the next day to teach the other group about the dissection they did. Everyone gets teaching duty every 2 weeks or so.

You actually learn a fair amount from teaching, but hauling yourself into anatomy lab at 8 am--whether to teach or be taught--is not much fun.
 
Just stainless steel tables, tile floors, and fluorescent lights for us. Lots of screens above the tables in case the profs want to show something extra special, or someone wants to plug in their iPod and play music. "Self-ventilating" tables sound pretty fancy to me, but the room itself is very well ventilated.

The weirdest stuff isn't on the tables though, it's on the shelves around the room. Some downright disturbing things in jars that look older than my Scottish ancestors. Certainly they were prepared before the words "informed" and "consent" were put together.
 
Right after my class they put flatscreens in all over our cadaver lab. They use them to show interesting findings and for the proff's to demonstrate etc. I think they are neat but I don't think they really are changing how anatomy lab functions. Having to walk over and see a neat finding at tankX wasn't that much of a hardship and it was easier to appreciate the relationships IRL.

Half the time when my school adopts a new technology it just ends up being a clusterfu*(^. We got all new flat screens in our path labs that year too and the proff's couldn't figure out how to use them for weeks so we had our path labs in our lecture hall instead (which really was no different, yay wasting $$). They had a nifty program where we were supposed to be able to take over the screen with our laptop and point things out when called on but it never worked. So yeah, flashy technology isn't always gonna work out the way you envision it and sometimes its just a waste of $$.

Sim labs on the other hand are really really cool.
 
We have TV screens attached to the support beams of the lab, but still haven't figured out what they are used for yet. I am assuming at one point they were used to demo a dissection.
 
Like many other schools - we have one large room (in the basement/dungeon) with ~30 old-style stainless steel tanks. I think our technology upgrade was done several years ago, as all of the 6-8 TVs mounted in the lab are the old tube style, but they work just fine. For dissection and review demos, they have this monstrous mechanical arm with a light and camera that captures the viewing field.

I will agree with what has been said above, learning anatomy from a cadaver is very low tech and I don't think that having a computer or flat screen next to me is going to help me sift through the fat around the perineum to find some nerves. Looking forward to that lab this afternoon...
 
We're on the 3rd floor in one big room with ~30 cadavers. That works out to about 4 or 5 per cadaver. We all have lab at the same time and have one professor per 8 tables or so. There's also a floating professor that just wanders as well as whatever physicians are visiting that day.

The room is pretty beat up and definitely doesn't have all the ammenities as some other schools, but I'm still learning. There are no prosections or touch screen computers or anything. I don't think there's any kind of screen (tv/computer/whatever) in the entire room.

The place could probably use a once over to replace some lighting and it definitely needs new locker room facilities since the space isn't near big enough for all the guys to change at the same time. Regardless, I'm still going to get my MD, so whatever.
 
We have 6 bays with 6 cadavers per pay. There are 4 students per cadaver. There are about 6 to 10 professors who float around between the bays answering and asking questions. There are also two or three fourth year students per bay who will help you dissect and will answer questions. The only thing I find really lacking is that there are only two prosected cadavers (one male, one female). Sometimes it can be hard to view them because they are constantly surrounded.
 
LossForWords said:
We're on the 3rd floor in one big room with ~30 cadavers. That works out to about 4 or 5 per cadaver. We all have lab at the same time and have one professor per 8 tables or so. There's also a floating professor that just wanders as well as whatever physicians are visiting that day.

The room is pretty beat up and definitely doesn't have all the ammenities as some other schools, but I'm still learning. There are no prosections or touch screen computers or anything. I don't think there's any kind of screen (tv/computer/whatever) in the entire room.

The place could probably use a once over to replace some lighting and it definitely needs new locker room facilities since the space isn't near big enough for all the guys to change at the same time. Regardless, I'm still going to get my MD, so whatever.
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And it is one class of many..
 
MossPoh said:
And it is one class of many..
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Exactly. I used to bitch about our Histology class. It only ended 6 weeks ago, and already I feel silly for making such a big deal about it.
 
30/35-ish self-venting stations, each with its own flat screen with VH Dissector software; plastination station, the usual tools and accessories, lots of light, and the back wall is a wall of windows.
 
Reading this I don't feel bad about our basement room Anatomy lab. 4 per cadaver, dirty Netters and one computer per 10 tanks. Nobody uses the computers in lab, we use a dissection guide provided by the department, watch a prosection video prepared by the TAs beforehand and of course our dirty Netters. Skylights would be nice though UTMB Galveston has some awesome natural lighting.
 
👎
njbmd said:
This is not a job for medical students but for the administration of your school. If you, as a medical student, are soliciting this type of information, instead of concentrating on your studies, you are in a very poor school indeed. Your anatomy department chairman and school administration knows what modern anatomical dissection equipment and technology looks like and what is out there. Your job is to get your study done and not to redesign an anatomy lab.
Click to expand...

As a member of Student Government we regularly work with Administration to improve our school. It's called giving back, so next year's students can have a better experience. As a doctor hopefully you'll find that everything is not about you.
 
lol my biggest surprise as an MS1 coming fresh to med school was that no one ever told us wtf was going on in anatomy lab. every lab it was like, "ok, there are 4 med students here who have no idea what's going on and one cadaver, and apparently we're supposed to cut somewhere and find the items on this list..."

ahhhh gross... I actually really liked anatomy.. but it was ridiculous how little we were instructed and how much was expected.
 
Our lab is very well-kept, clean with a great ventilation system. We work in groups of 5. Flat screens with VH Dissector software; plastination station, the usual tools and accessories, lots of light, and no windows.
__________________
 
coldweatherblue said:
lol my biggest surprise as an MS1 coming fresh to med school was that no one ever told us wtf was going on in anatomy lab. every lab it was like, "ok, there are 4 med students here who have no idea what's going on and one cadaver, and apparently we're supposed to cut somewhere and find the items on this list..."

ahhhh gross... I actually really liked anatomy.. but it was ridiculous how little we were instructed and how much was expected.
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So do you all just stand around waiting for someone to start? I would imagine they try to at least tell you where to start, where each part is, etc. It must really suck otherwise.
 
Our anatomy lab is basic but personally I think some of the bells and whistles I've heard about or seen at other schools are overemphasized. To me it's actually doing the dissection itself that teaches you the most.

We have 4 to a cadaver. Laptops for vitual dissection guides. No self-venting tables. The instructors provide videos of them doing a dissection for us to peruse before each session, which helps a lot.

If I had a frivolous wish list It'd be nice to have:

1) Anything that helps with the smell. But honestly I've been in labs with self-venting tables and it still stinks.
2) It'd be nice to have a changing room, lockers, and scrub machine near the labs so we wouldn't have to walk through the building covered in goo.
3) I saw a school that had video cameras and flat screen TVs in their anatomy lab so instructors could zoom in and display a prosection or an interesting anomaly at someone's table. Seemed like a cool thing. But I'm not sure if it's worth the expense since just shouting "check out the XYZ at table B!" seems to work just fine.

But I personally think people obsess too much on gross lab. It's one class. As long as you get the opportunity to do the dissection and have a enough instructors to help out, there's not much else you really need.
 
What you need:
Scalpels
Big table and way for cadavers to not dry out.
Lights
Forceps (kinda)
Bone saw
Good ventilation
Dissection references (a greasy copy of grants dissector and maybe a netters will do)

Everything else is just for show. They used to dissect in rooms lit by candles using dull instruments during the winter (to keep the body longer). During that time people managed to do amazing things like dissect out most of the lymphatic system and trace thin nerves and vessels throughout the body. We have it pretty good and most of us won't come even close to those kind of results.
 
coldweatherblue said:
lol my biggest surprise as an MS1 coming fresh to med school was that no one ever told us wtf was going on in anatomy lab. every lab it was like, "ok, there are 4 med students here who have no idea what's going on and one cadaver, and apparently we're supposed to cut somewhere and find the items on this list..."

ahhhh gross... I actually really liked anatomy.. but it was ridiculous how little we were instructed and how much was expected.
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Yea, all you get is an unintelligible, cryptic dissection guide with cartoon pictures in black and white that don't resemble the actual structures in the least. Add on to the fact that you can't really learn anatomy (enough to dissect with confidence) until you see the structures thus creating a catch-22. Can't learn until you dissect, can't effectively dissect until you learn the structures.
 
Do you all feel its unethical to name a cadaver because of the true identity they once had? Or do you all feel that's its just a way to personalize the experience? I was wondering what some of your schools policies and views were on that issue as well. Thanks.
 
2blessed said:
Do you all feel its unethical to name a cadaver because of the true identity they once had? Or do you all feel that's its just a way to personalize the experience? I was wondering what some of your schools policies and views were on that issue as well. Thanks.
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We were told not to name them, as they will be returned (cremated) to their families.
 
gplex86 said:
We were told not to name them, as they will be returned (cremated) to their families.
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I don't understand this. If you name the cadaver IN YOUR OWN MIND, that has no effect on their real, legal name and identity (which you will never learn). It's not as if you're posting your made-up name on the wall.

In fact, you could make an argument that it's good for students to name their cadavers, because that helps them to to remember that the donors were/are people, not things.

My school gave us a book of med student writings about dissection, and many of the pieces mentioned students naming their cadavers. But it's very much up to the individual.

I hadn't planned on doing this myself, but spontaneously thought of a name one day and felt that it was appropriate. (I kept it to myself, though.)
 
student1799 said:
I don't understand this. If you name the cadaver IN YOUR OWN MIND, that has no effect on their real, legal name and identity (which you will never learn). It's not as if you're posting your made-up name on the wall.

In fact, you could make an argument that it's good for students to name their cadavers, because that helps them to to remember that the donors were/are people, not things.

My school gave us a book of med student writings about dissection, and many of the pieces mentioned students naming their cadavers. But it's very much up to the individual.

I hadn't planned on doing this myself, but spontaneously thought of a name one day and felt that it was appropriate. (I kept it to myself, though.)
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I agree, though at my school, we are given the original cadaver names, their brief past medical and surgical history, and cause of death. I think the remembering that they were people is an important thing, and at my school, they emphasize this by having each lab group prepare a letter of appreciation to the donor and their families for an appreciation event at the end of the year, where we might even be able to meet some of the donor families.
 
Jolie South said:
This ^^^
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We were told "these were real people, they have names, it is disrespectful for you to give them a new one."

NYMC is a Catholic-affiliated school. The director of anatomy (and the human donation program) is a monk/anatomist.

(I didn't realize my sig wasn't showing)

EDIT: I suppose the idea is that, if you're giving the cadaver a new name, you are sort of replacing their identity. Thus, you are not appreciating that they had a life, that people loved them, and that what's left is being trusted to you.
 
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