Source
r/medicalschool•
Quicknewfox

Tips for anatomy lab from a 4th year

It is almost like a right of passage. I can still remember the excitement of meeting my tankmates and doing the first dissection. But I have noticed many posts lately about being nervous about going into the lab- which is completely normal! So I reached back in my brain to my first year and here are some tips and things I wish I would have done!

  1. Be respectful of your cadaver and your fellow students. Sometimes it is hard to remember when you have spent the last hour trying to get through 20 lbs of fat and had to change your slippery gloves five times, but they were people and really giving people at that.

  2. I am a snacker just generally, but during the prosection videos before actual lab, I would eat some chocolate or dries fruit. Something with a bit of sugar.

  3. Buy way more scalpels then you will think you need.

  4. Dull tools suck. Consider replacing your tools at least once.

  5. Prepare beforehand! Study netters or find prosections on youtube. Have a good idea what you are looking for before you start looking for it.

  6. Bodies are strange. Sometimes you just won't find stuff. Sometimes you will find weird stuff.

  7. Washing your hands with toothpaste will remove the anatomy lab smell. But by one month in, you won't care.

  8. Careful raising, lowering and turning the bodies. Go slowly, try not to splash everywhere.

  9. Be a team player.

  10. Ask for help when you need it. Go in on the weekends if you need it. Make a study group. Sunday mornings were my extra lab days. I hated waking up only to go to lab but repetition helps.

  11. If you get lightheaded, inform your tank and ta and take a quick breather outside. Power pose, breath, and go back in.

  12. Those with long hair- invest in bobby pins and elastic ties. No need to look cute. No one looks cute.

So there is probably a bunch of stuff I am missing, but this is what I have off the top of my head! Welcome to medical school first years!

Posted Jul 1, 2015, 8:36 PM UTC

6538
_Gubernaculum_ M-2•

Buy a $10 box of nitrile gloves off of amazon and double glove with the gloves provided in lab = no smelly hands.
Also, you don't need to use the scalpel as much as you think you do, fingers and blunt scissors are your best dissection tools.

32
SudowoodoM-2•

Blunt dissection is the way to go! Idk how many arteries and nerves were cut in the first couple of weeks by people only using scalpels.

15
QuicknewfoxOP•

Totally. I think a sharp scapel is better than a dull one however when it is needed though!

1
tksutsM-1•

Thank you so much for the glove tip!

1
SailorMewM-3•

Alternative to double-gloving: go wash your hands with your gloves on in the sink periodically. I tried double gloving and changing gloves in lab but found myself going through gloves too fast.

1
killerv103M-1•

Study on as many cadavers as possible. Unlike Netters, humans have a lot of variants and seeing as many as possible will help you learn.

Also if your school has a vigil, remembrance ceremony, or anything like that, I truly enjoyed going and honoring my donor.

25
blacktarrystoolM-3•

Unlike Netters, humans have a lot of variants and seeing as many as possible will help you learn.

Lol, forget variants, I can't even remember how it's supposed to look.

8
killerv103M-1•

The branches of the internal iliac artery are a mysterious area of what the hell is happening.

14
nauticalsunMD/MBA•

Yes! In my school, we do rotation days before Lab exams where each table (or tank, maybe, as you would call it?) would leave one person and everyone else rotates among the other tables to study the other cadavers. The remaining group member teaches the "visitors" about his/her cadaver. After a couple of groups, we swap the "teachers" so they get to learn from other cadavers as well.

1
TheThirdLevel•

Another tip - Netter's is a guideline. Don't freak out because some vein/artery/nerve is coming from somewhere it shouldn't be. Classify things based on where they are going (i.e. what it's supplying).

17
medicineUSA2015•

Another point - Anatomy does not matter. Its maybe worth 2% at most on the Step 1. Don't stress yourself out and always try to learn within a clinical context. (i.e injury to this nerve causes this deficit, etc). Don't stress out

16
QuicknewfoxOP•

I kind of agree and disagree. It really was not that big on step one but I got pimped on anatomy on clerkships. So I say learn it well now while you have to opportunity of a lab.

14
jvttlus•

Anatomy itself isn't tested highly, but you best know the fuck out of them blue boxes in Moore.

10
austinapMD/PhD-PGY2•

Unless you want to do something surgical, in which case it's one of the most important things...

0
medicineUSA2015•

You'll learn it again during the wards and during the operation. MS1 Anatomy is pretty useless

1
seansss•

I'd toss in blunt dissection too. You can fuck up a lot of structures real quick with knives and scissors. Probes and your fingers are also great dissection tools. Just don't stick your finger where some one is cutting. Happens more often than you think.

8
barnosaur•

I was the designated masseuse of our table.

1
seansssM-1•

Cut a few too many vital structures? Or strong hands? Lol

4
barnosaur•

...the first one

6
meh5419•

If you struggle with the smell, buy a pack of surgical masks and use a bit of Vick's vapor rub under your nose before dissecting.

Two of my partners couldn't quite handle the smells but got through it with that.

5
SailorMewM-3•

I tried the Vick's trick once but ended up even more nauseated than usual due to the mixture of peppermint smell and cadaver smell. It worked for some of my classmates though

1
YUNOtiger M-2•

Also, feel free to check out Anatomy Guy. His videos can be a little long, but very helpful.

5
Julia_ChildM-3•

I found the Acland anatomy videos to be a great study tool right before each practical exam

2
blendedchaiteaM-1•

Get yourself a scrub cap that makes you happy. Some days I was stressed out of my gourd and deeply unhappy to be going into anatomy lab to spend the day with a cadaver. Putting on my pink scrub cap always cheered me up.

Also it will keep chunks of fat from flying into your hair. Learn from my misfortunes.

5
QuicknewfoxOP•

I was like why would they need a scrub cap... then I remembered body fat gets everywhere. Shudder.

2
Sherlock633OMS-II•

Hemostats and blunt scissors are your friend. Hemostats to grab and scissors to insert then open. I call it the scissoring technique, not sure if there is a better name for it. Through experience you'll learn the right tension vessels and nerves can take. It's helped me all through this summers prosection.

4
whiplashWhoM-4•

We called it reverse-scissoring. Optimal technique.

4
SailorMewM-3•

It was called "scissor-spreading" at my school. Highly recommended, far and away the best method to dissect out tiny little nerves and blood vessels

1
ZombieMD•

If dissection quality counts:

  1. Go to YouTube and learn how to tie sub-q knots.
  2. Buy really fine suture or steal from OR.
  3. Suture shit you break later on in the day so your dissection looks perfect. Perfect nerves every time!
3
BoulderEricM-1•

I've heard that Krazy Glue works as well, and is probably easier.

2
ZombieMD•

Gotta learn knots sometime. Also, if you get caught you were 'just practicing!'

2
cbay18•

If you have lots of fat that you need to pick through, take the handle of a scalpel and scrape the long edge back and forth through the adipose. It will break up the fat without hurting the underlying structures and you can wipe away all that nasty fat juice with a paper towel.

3
astubenr M-2•

A good resource before you go into lab is the Acland videos to give you an idea what you are looking at

http://web.warwick.ac.uk/md/video-acland/content_main_1.htm

3
thirstysnake•

It's not a big deal. Put on a pair of gloves and listen to your instructors.

2
crappysurfer•

Buy different shaped scalpels. The different shapes have different utility depending on the situation.

Removing layers of skin may call for one shape while digging through muscle may be best approached with another.

2
Saisauce•

Rule #1- always double glove. Doesn't completely keep the smell off your hands but it's a lot less

1
[deleted]•

[deleted]

1
dumbms1•

By far the best thing you can do is ask someone that knows 100 percent what things are. You will not believe the amount of time wasting that happens when people argue over what shit is. The most effective way to study anatomy in my opinion is to het a group together and meet with a teaching assistant or a professor at a shceudled time and have them go over everything.

1
maaarz•

we'd apply liberal amounts of petroleum jelly all over our cadaver once we're done for the day to stop the cadaver from drying out. it also helped stop bugs from invading our cadaver for at least a month, along with lysol (our neighbouring group had maggots all over their cadaver on the second session)

0
QuicknewfoxOP•

Is this a joke? Why don't you have tanks?

1