Cadavers

[StudentSandra]

after reading some of ya'lls remarks about your a&p class i was wondering. who had human cadavers in a&p? if you do, what type/size school are you attending?

i attend a small community college, less than 1,000 students, but had a great a&p instructor. over 15 years ago, he insisted on having cadavers, he told the school they would not have a computer class without computers, so he needed human cadavers.we have 5, it is so great doing lab practicals on real bodies, i just can not imagine trying to learn muscles & arteries etc on cats or whatever is used by some schools.

he gets a new one every 2-3 years and has a dissection class. it is not required but i think it will be a great class to have. i have to brag on myself here for a minute. i was one of twenty-four accepted into the class. over 75 applied. i am so jazzed.

[moni rn]

congratulations on your acceptance into the class! :)

no cadavers here. i wish we could have had them. it would have been a great learning experience. you are definitely lucky! :)

[BrandyBSN]

We had cadavers for A&P. We are lucky, in that we had A&P lab with med students from the Osteopathic Medical College here. We also did cats, and pigs, then moved on to bodies. It was a wonderful experience.

BrandyBSN

[jessjoy]

Congrats! I absolutely loved my A&P1 and 2 classes. We used cadavers in our classes. Our cadavers are 10 YEARS OLD!! They didn't even look human, they looked more like beef jerky. I personally think I learned more from the cats

[pkmom]

I went to a community college, I wish we would have had cadavers. The pigs were just confusing to me the class couldn't tell what was being stuck, maybe thats just poor labeling, but I did learn a lot from a cat in high school.

[carlalogan]

I also went to a community college and we used cats from the local animal shelter. I think it would have been great to have had real bodies instead!

[Katnip, RN]

Boy are you cadaver folks lucky. Cats just aren't quite the same, are they.

[essarge]

10 year old cadavers???? EWWWWWW!!! I guess beauty is in the eyes of the beholder there!! LOL! We didn't have cadavers, just cats. It was still fascinating though!!

[StudentSandra]

as i said, we had 5 cadavers, the "oldest" 15 years. the instructor is very fastidious about them. we not in use they are kept "moist" and covered. a few of them have seen their better days, but still are very useful.

with everything in college, the instructor makes or breaks the experience. i feel extremly lucky, i don't think i could have had a better a&p instuctor even if i was at harvard.

can you tell, i just love my instructor!!!

[USA987, MSN, RN, NP]

Hi there,

We did not use cadavers at all, human or otherwise. Our a&p lab was completely computerized. We dissected via computer animation using the A.D.A.M. computer program. It was definitely interesting, to say the least, but I feel like I was missing out on something....

Christine

[BrandyBSN]

We used ADAM before we moved on to cadavers. I wasn't all that impressed with ADAM. It is not very realistic, however i did use it extensively when studying to remember all of the bones, muscles, and nerves. It made a good study guide, but its not the same as actually "getting your hands in it".

BrandyBSN

[Kerrie]

we used cats. We did get to watch an autopsy in clinical that helped. We used the ADAM also. Not bad. One gross thing was we used the same cat for two semesters! Pretty rank smelling by the end of the second semester!

We also dissected a sheep brain and a cow eyeball.

I go to a small state school.