Dem' Bones (A&P Help)

Nursing Students Pre-Nursing

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OMG! I am struggling with the skeletal system. I breezed through the first 5 chapters but now that we are in the skeletal system I feel like I am in way over my head. We have a quiz on Monday on the axial system and then another quiz on Wednesday over the appendicular system. Basically he will be showing images on a slideshow and we have to label the part of the bones that are being shown. All these bones in the skull are really giving me a hard time.

Anyone have any helpful hints for getting this down better/faster? I feel so overwhelmed with this system.

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im in the same boat! our first lab quiz is monday covering the osa coxae, femur (and patella), tibia and fibula, foot and all the markings!!! i have looked at the book and diagrams in the lab atlas, but is there any other trick to memorizing this stuff? are there any websites out there that quiz you on bones and bone markings? PLEASE HELP!! i have to know all that plus regional terms and directional!

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Specializes in Hospice & Palliative Care, Oncology, M/S.

It's completely goofy what I did, but it helped immensely.

I went out to the Halloween shops and bought foam bones. I took a sharpie and drew on sutures, trochantres, bumps and knobs, etc. I would then ask my boyfriend to hold up bones and point to a landmark, and I would name it. This worked great for those times that I couldn't spend in the lab looking at a real skeleton. :)

Also, there are many websites out there that test on the skeleton/muscle/whatever. I can't remember the name of the site that I used (it was about two years ago) but it should still be up. That was helpful too! Just do a search on self-test skeleton, or whatever and you should find a bunch. Good luck! :)

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That is such a great idea to use foam bones for practice! I wish I knew to do that when I took A&P.

One thing that helped me was to photocopy the good drawings/diagrams from the book, then white-out the names, then photocopy again. So now I had a nice clean diagram and I would color it, make it look nice a pretty LOL, and label it with just the stuff I needed to know (instead of the billion different things the book labeled). That helped a lot actually.

Another thing I did was type a study guide for the exam and I would list the different body parts. It would look something like this:

Skull

.....Occipital

..........connects to ___ and ____,

.....Frontal

.........._____ and ____ markings

It's late and I can't remember that stuff right now, but it did help me to type it out (same as re-writing notes helps me remember)

Good luck!

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I also white out pages and make photo copies. Repetition seems to be the only thing that works for me.

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Specializes in Critical Care, Postpartum.

We are now moving into Appendicular and Axial Skeletons. In lab we had bones of the femur, tibia, fibula, patella, ulna, radius, scapula, clavical, carpals and had to not only identify the bones, but all the indention and cavities of those bones and how to figure if it's a left or right side. Luckily my school provides tons of pictures and online practice. Since Halloween is around the corner, I plan to purchase a skeleton. We also found out for our Practical, we will have multiple choice answers to help us identify the bone lying on the table, instead of us not knowing how to spell it or not going completely blank once we see it.

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I think the idea of buying a skeleton from a halloween store is great. I used a life sized skeleton that my sister had for her business and I practiced at home going over and over and over and over you get my point :). Memorize is the best thing that worked for me. i was always nervous that I wouldn't be able to remember once I had to do my practical but it just came to me once i saw the bone in front of me. I did my best in Lab and always seemed to get A's. Just relax and stay positive and do the best you can. Memorize, memorize, memorize :). Good Luck!

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http://www.wiley.com/college/apcentral/anatomydrill/

Best website ever.

I know how you feel though. My first anatomy lab practical is Thursday, and we have to know the skull, the axial skeleton, and 20 different tissue types.

Also, get a coloring book. I really like the Kaplan one.

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