<p>When I was a freshman at UCLA we worked on cadavers in Anatomy class. We didn’t do any dissections those were done in upper division classes. We just observed and identified blood vessels, muscles etc. In fact most of the time we just worked on body parts - one week we worked on legs another time torsos and so forth.</p>
<p>Oh, Lord, ready, that would give me nightmares.</p>
<p>“I was horrified when my friend told me that next year when her son is in his third year at Quinipiac as a physical therapy major he will be working on a cadaver.”</p>
<p>Wow, and I thought I was overprotective of my son. ;)</p>
<p>“My grandmother donated her body to Stanford after she died. Her gift taught many students about the human body that a 92 year old woman lives in.
And of course now our whole family takes pride in saying…“My grandma went to Stanford!””</p>
<p>LOL, ilovedcollege!!! :D</p>
<p>“I would certainly be looking towards an Ivy or a tippy top LAC.”</p>
<p>Well… what are your stats like, sorghum? :D</p>
<p>As Lafalum84 said - Elon has a human donor lab… from everything I have heard the teaching and caring for the donors is done with the utmost respect. </p>
<p>The general understanding is that the donors are the first patients for many students. </p>
<p>The students and the school know it is a privilege to attend the lab and it’s treated as such. </p>
<p>Each year in addition to counseling before the lab many students honor the lives of the donors and thank them. </p>
<p>Personally I would not feel better if these students were “practicing on cats” because I want caring health professionals who understand that each patient is unique and special. </p>
<p>Here is one of the notes from last year and a link to the story. … </p>
<p>“I am thankful for those that have donated themselves to science. They are wonderful teachers. They selflessly gave themselves and we should learn from their selflessness because we will have to put our patients first. It’s amazing to see firsthand how different and unique everyone is yet we all have the same bones, organs, muscles, etc. This will help me in the clinic – treat the patient, not the disease, because everyone is different.”</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.elon.edu/e-net/Note.aspx?id=946824[/url]”>Elon University / Today at Elon / DPT annual program honors human donors;
<p>I think it is a waste of an amazing gift to give third year PT students a human body to work on. In my opinion they are not mature enough or have a need to use a cadaver to study the human body as third years in a 7 years program. I would never donate my body to an undergrad school for a PT program. This kid is squeemish over a cat and they are wasting the gift of a human body on him.</p>
<p>Williamdad…This is not my son if it were, I know that cadaver would be respected, and the knowledge gained would be worthy of the gift.</p>
<p>By the way, I find this so disturbing and wasteful that I actually plan on calling Quinipiac to find out if this is even true. My body would never be wasted on a third studying anything.</p>
<p>Starbright and Martina understood exactly why this bothered me.</p>
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<p>Have you considered the possibility that there are people who are willing to donate their bodies to be “wasted” on undergraduates? What makes you think that such people shouldn’t be allowed to have their desires fulfilled instead of ridiculed?</p>
<p>My daughter is in the second year of her PhD program in neuroscience at Emory. She was amazed and awed when, in her first semester of the program (right out of undergrad), they were allowed to work with human brains. </p>
<p>She also participated in a program where she and others went to local area elementary schools for an after school program to teach the kids some things about learning, memory and the human mind. They also had a human brain for that, and the children were actually allowed to handle it, after they had a talk about respect and what a unique opportunity that was. She said the children were, each and every one, absolutely in awe of the experience. I can only imagine the number of children that were inspired by that to go on to eventually major in science and perhaps go into medicine or research later on. A very good result, IMO. I would gladly donate my body for such a purpose.</p>
<p>I don’t see the issue at all. At all. I was not in the sciences and my only exposure was when H was in medical school, I made him take me to the cadaver lab because I was curious, but I see no reason that a PT major might not get as much benefit out of a cadaver as a medical student, and I fail to see why there is a difference between undergrad and grad. And honestly I don’t get why you’d call the school at all. If they deem it an important instructional technique, how is it your business?</p>
<p>Btw, a student in a 6-year med program would be the equivalent of a college junior when starting med school. Do you have more respect for future doctors than future PTs? The world needs both.</p>
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<p>I guess you’d really be appalled then to hear about the daughter of a friend who several years ago as a senior, was in a special anatomy class offered by her high school. They had a cadaver available to them. She’s now in medical school, as are several others from that class.</p>
<p>The cadaver lab was part of our first-year anatomy course in med school from Day 1. Many, if not most, of us, had no prior study of anatomy. The lab was an integral part of the instruction.</p>
<p>Sure, we were a bit older than third year undergrad PT students, but we were no more experienced in the study of anatomy.</p>
<p>I think there may be some new techniques in digital graphics and so forth that could begin to take the place of the three-dimensional experience of dissection, but I can’t imagine that anything can fully substitute for being able to examine the structures and their spatial relationships in situ.</p>
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<p>First you read about the body in an UG anatomy class, then you work on one “for real” in the cadaver lab. </p>
<p>And, 6th or 7th year is waaay too late for the cadaver experience. By then a PT student should be well beyond navigating body parts. He should be interning or even treating live people.</p>
<p>Honestly, I can see someone calling a school and requesting that her kid not work on a cadaver for, say, religious reasons (if such objections existed) but I think calling a school where your kid doesn’t even go to complain about the cadaver situation will just get you labeled as a crank. What is the PT department or the school going to do when they hear some woman not affiliated with the school is on the phone complaining about their instructional methods? You’ll be politely turfed off the phone and the staff will roll their eyes. I don’t see what a phone call could possibly achieve.</p>
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I’m very confused as to why you seem to consider yourself an expert on the medical education techniques appropriate to undergrads, PT majors, MD’s or otherwise. Are you a doctor? An educator? If you don’t like the idea of undergrads dissecting you posthumously, then you don’t have to donate your remains to science. What qualifies you to dictate what Quinipiac should do?</p>
<p>My hs senior in AP Bio is going to visit a cadaver lab this year, fwiw.</p>
<p>My DS is a college junior and is taking an anatomy class complete with human cadavers. They learn to identify all body parts. IF someone is going into PT, knowing the human musculoskeletal system is very important. Knowing the musculoskeletal system of a cat will not help.</p>
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And, 6th or 7th year is waaay too late for the cadaver experience. By then a PT student should be well beyond navigating body parts. He should be interning or even treating live people.[\quote]
Speaking as another PT, human anatomy, taught as a separate course from physiology, is a base course. Then there are more advanced courses in neuroanatomy, advanced microphysiology, neuromuscular physiology as well as the practicum. By the final years, you are already tying it all together, doing case studies, clinicals, rotations etc. </p>
<p>When we had cadaver lab, we had to sign an agreement to abide by lab policy with regard to respect. We also shared/worked in groups as well as occasionally viewed others if there was something notable or unique. It was an invaluable part of my education and I am thankful to anyone who chose to donate their own or their loved ones in furtherance of our education.</p>
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<p>I agree.</p>
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<p>I’ve been wondering the same thing.</p>
<p>I wish I had been given the opportunity to study a cadaver in nursing school. It would have enabled me to really solidify what I learned in A and P and would have helped immensely to have had that learning experience prior to taking my nursing assessment class. I can assure the OP that as a college junior, I was certainly mature enough to handle the task and that immediately following the A & P class would have been the perfect time to study an actual human body. The experience absolutely would not have been “wasted” on me just because I wasn’t in grad school.</p>
<p>As a junior, my human anatomy course that I took for my major featured a lab with cadavers; they were donated from our medical school. The vast majority of us in my major were going on to health professions (MD, PA, PT, etc), and the knowledge gained in the cadaver lab was absolutely invaluable. In fact, I later took another anatomy course as a senior through the biology department in which we dissected cats and found the experience to be far less useful or applicable.</p>
<p>I believe that this is an appropriate time to be exposed to cadavers; as mentioned, 6th and 7th year students need to be focusing on how to treat and practicing on real people. The 3rd years need to focus on learning the anatomy to appropriately treat patients in the future.</p>
<p>I realize the whole idea of working with cadavers might be unsettling to those of us who are not in health fields, but I’m sure it’s a necessary part of the education process. Things generally have to proceed along a pretty defined path from A to Z. </p>
<p>I was trying this morning to relate the idea to my undergrad engineering education. We took Statics and Strength of Materials as sophomores, Structural Analysis I and II as juniors, and Steel and Reinforced Concrete design, plus more structural analysis, as seniors. The courses really couldn’t be taken in some OTHER order. I can only imagine what the department chair would have said if some random person had called and complained that Juniors really shouldn’t be taking structural analysis because they were too immature to properly respect or appreciate the significance of what they were studying.</p>