With 2 months left from exactly today before the 2024 Fall Semester officially starts, one of the questions that I frequently get from incoming Year 1s (and their parents) in the UMKC BA/MD program is “Should I study for Year 1 Anatomy over the summer?”
It’s very understandable to ask as unlike other Bachelor/MD programs, where the undergraduate portion and the medical school portion are very neatly separated (or sometimes the undergraduate and medical schools are totally different institutions altogether), the UMKC program is different in terms of the type of sciences that we initially take, since our students don’t tend to take all of the traditional premed prerequisites. And just naturally at baseline (no matter what prior preparation an incoming BA/MD student has had), there will be some incoming anxiety about the pace and intensity of the curriculum, so students will feel they have to study ahead with the required textbook for the course (see the list of required textbooks in my above post in years past: https://talk.collegeconfidential.com/t/umkc-6-year-ba-md-program/10343/7800)
I will say that the summer between the end of high school and the beginning of Fall Semester Year 1 will be the ONLY summer vacation that you’ll have, in which you’re not officially enrolled in any coursework. It doesn’t mean you get no real breaks in the program if you plan things right, but there is no period in the curriculum (at least for a student who is on track to graduate in 6 years) in which you just “get the summer off” with no course enrollment. So hardcore studying for Year 1 Anatomy now (which doesn’t help you over the long run, as Year 1 Micro in the Spring is a totally different in terms of study strategies) is counterproductive with not necessarily a lot to gain, but may result in early burn out.
This is why I recommend to BA/MD students that a much more fruitful endeavor would be to look at the “Life Skills” Word Document that I have shared (if you haven’t already, see my post above: https://talk.collegeconfidential.com/t/umkc-6-year-ba-md-program/10343/7801) and actually work on things that you won’t have as much time to work on once you start (you’ll have more than enough time to spend your days studying in this program, trust me) like doing your own laundry, doing your own chores, learning how to cook relatively healthy meals, how to shop at the grocery store, etc. Get your physical (start thinking and integrating an exercise plan) and mental health in order as well.
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Putting that aside though (as I realize that above answer, while being the correct one, won’t put any minds of students & parents at ease), I think there are some things you can probably do LIGHTLY to prepare for Year 1 Anatomy, especially if you’ve never had any type of Anatomy course before. Some high schools offer an Honors Anatomy & Physiology type of course in their course offerings, so if you’ve taken that course in high school, then Year 1 Anatomy will probably go somewhat easier & smoother for you. If you haven’t taken that course, don’t worry, Year 1 Anatomy is definitely still doable, but it will require you to keep up with the material, since you don’t have prior exposure and familiarity with it.
In the Fall Semester, Year 1 Anatomy is comprised of the lecture course of LS-ANATO 219: Functional Anatomy I (3 credit hours) and the lab course of LS-ANATO 219L: Functional Anatomy I Laboratory (1 credit hour). These are considered separate courses for grading purposes, and thus are given separate letter grades and grade points. You would think that the lab course would very closely follow the lecture course sequentially in terms of course content for that week, but that may not always be the case, so be aware of that in advance and don’t let it freak you out.
Also don’t make the mistake in the first several weeks of the semester of putting all of your study effort towards the first lecture course exam to the point that you end up doing poorly on the first lab practical exam in the lab course (exams in a 16 week semester are usually once a month, so these exams can sometimes end up being close together) which usually follows soon after within days, because then you end up playing catch up with later lab practicals (where the material can be more detailed). It’s better to somewhat overstudy for the first exams during the start of a semester so you know what it’s like in terms of testing and to start off on a good footing, after which you can then recalibrate your study intensity to avoid burnout.
Areas that are high yield to go through slowly to familiarize yourself with the names just because of the sheer volume:
- Bone names, including bone landmarks/markings
- Muscle names
- Histology - more to get more comfortable with seeing how things look under a microscope
Flashcards (whether you use actual physical cards or online through platforms like Quizlet, Anki, etc.) will be helpful for remembering the bones and muscles.
LS-ANATO 219: Functional Anatomy I
The Anatomy lecture course taken in Year 1 (sometimes referred to by upper year BA/MD students as “Baby Anatomy”) is very much taught at an undergraduate level, even though it can feel otherwise, as a lot of information is coming at you, just in terms of sheer volume. The truth is that Anatomy, as a science, is very much a memorization type of course. There really isn’t a way to rationalize why certain structures of the human body are named the way they are, although learning & understanding medical terminology in terms of the Greek and Latin roots, prefixes and suffixes can help in terms of description to help you remember a specific structure. For example, the prefix bucco- (which means cheek) is used in the name of the muscle that overlies it called the buccinator muscle.
If you don’t have the required textbook for the Year 1 Anatomy course yet (you can see the table of contents here for the 6th edition: https://lazytrader.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/9781260251357-p.pdf, although there is a 7th edition that just recently came out in the last few months, but the book is not going to change much if at all), here are some good helpful websites which I think will help in the meantime as the course content is very much the same for all undergraduate/college level Anatomy courses:
https://openstax.org/details/books/anatomy-and-physiology-2e (you can view this online or download as a PDF, ignore the physiology)
https://courses.lumenlearning.com/suny-ap1/
https://med.libretexts.org/Bookshelves/Anatomy_and_Physiology/Human_Anatomy_(OERI)/
https://wranatomyclass. weebly .com/anatomy.html (remove spaces in the URL)
https://www.biologycorner.com/2022/07/29/anatomy-and-physiology-full-course/ (click on the Google Docs button)
LS-ANATO 219L: Functional Anatomy I Laboratory
There is no student dissection in the lab course itself. Generally what is used are histology slides, anatomical models, pictures, sometimes imaging, to point out a particular anatomical structure (https://spot.colorado.edu/~saul/anatomy/tips.html). These are generally tested in a lab practical format (https://masteringclinicalanatomy.com/2018/03/13/how-to-prepare-for-an-anatomy-bell-ringer-exam/) in which you have many stations, with a set amount of time per station, to determine what the structure is. I can’t remember if lab practical exams were multiple choice or you had to actually write out the structure on your answer sheet, but that really shouldn’t change your study & learning strategy.
In some ways, I would say that the laboratory course takes a lot more hours of studying/work than the lecture course and it’s only for 1 credit hour! You only get 1 lab period per week, so don’t waste time as often there are a lot of structures to get through. What I used to do before that upcoming week’s lab session was to get the structure sheet given for that week and actually write down the page number(s) from the lecture textbook right next to it, where I could easily find the structure in the pictures/diagrams/figures. This is so that you don’t waste all of your time during the lab session incessantly flipping in the book trying to find the structure.
The laboratory is very much an independent endeavor in terms of learning. Meaning the professor or the graduate TA is not going to sit with you and go through every anatomical model with you, pointing out structures (in other words, they’re not going to “spoon-feed” the information to you). That being said, if you’ve actually done the preparation work in advance and it’s clear that you’re genuinely putting forth effort, they will help you if you’re having trouble and you ask nicely. What I recommend for lab is working as a group or with a partner and go through all of the structures on the structure sheet. With smartphones now, you can take photos of the actual histology slide through the ocular lens of the microscope, anatomical models, pictures, etc. so that you can review them outside of the laboratory session.
The Medical Education Media Center (now called the Experiential Learning Center: https://med.umkc.edu/ctf/elc/) at the UMKC School of Medicine is also helpful when you’re not in the lab on the UMKC Volker undergraduate campus. They have anatomical models – many of which are the ones you’ll see in your normal lab on the undergraduate campus, as well as TVs where you can see the histology using the video laser disc, “Histology: A Photographic Atlas” by Stephen Downing to get more comfortable with seeing histology. Unfortunately, it’s not open on the weekends so you’d have to go there outside of classes during the weekdays. Since many of us didn’t have our cars in the first semester, people who had cars were nice enough to take us in groups. There is also the UMKC shuttle bus route as well (https://www.umkc.edu/transportation/shuttle-bus/).
