Y We Have Cadaver Lab

Today we had our second cadaver lab! Our Anatomy course is 6hrs and each week we have a 4hr cadaver lab!  Our class has 4 cadavers and we are split up into groups of 3-4 and we will keep our cadaver for the entire semester.

I am not going to lie, I was a little nervous going into it, but once we got started I was fine. Last week mainly consisted of getting to the muscles.  This took a little time because our male is a little portly.  We started the dissection process by making a “Y” incision.  (Meaning you start at each shoulder and cut diagonally towards the middle until you reach the sternum and continue the cut along the midline until you reach the umbilicus.)  Then we started cutting through the skin and fat until we reached the fascia which overlies the muscle.  Then we tried to remove the fascia and fat as carefully as possible so we did not cut (too much) of the muscle.  Our first practical is next week and it is on the pectoral girdle and the upper limb so we just focused on the upper half of the body.  Today we dissected out the brachial plexus which is basically a network of nerves that runs through the armpit.  I got excited once we found it and started identifying the individual nerves because see it is much cooler to see on a human body rather than a diagram. 

The fact we have cadaver lab is really beneficial!  We get to learn the structures on an actual human versus just learning from diagrams and models.   Since there are only 3-4 people in a group we get plenty of cutting time and practice.  Another plus is, if we mess up and cut something that we shouldn’t it’s (kind of) okay!  Of course we never want to mess up, but as a student, now is the time to do it and learn from it!  It is important that we get practice with human tissue because if we never got that opportunity, then the transition into clinical rotations, where we will be responsible for grossing real specimens, would be much more difficult.

Like I said earlier, our first practical is next week so my classmates and I will be spending plenty of time studying in the lab.  Wish us luck!