A&P II~~Arteries and Veins

*CJA* · Jun 2, 2006

How are you guys doing with this? Any tips for learning them? I am just learing about the arteries first, then I will move on to the veins. Man, our first unit is a doozie . We are doing the blood, heart, veins, and we are not even finished with this unit. It is slowly coming together.

I remember this being really, really hard, but it is also a unit that you will need to be very strong on when you start nursing school.

Are you trying to memorize arteries/veins in order to identify them on a cat or something? Pointing to them and saying them over and over and over again helped me.

If I had to do this again, I would start with the most important ones and the ones you really need for beginning n.s. and then add to that. I think the most important to start with are everything into and out of the heart including through the chambers - you must know this sequence like the back of your hand! Next I would add everything that goes off the aortic arch. Next would be the portal/hepatic system. Then I would make sure to know the ones we most commonly use for blood pressure and pulses: brachial, radial, femoral, popliteal, posterior tibialis and dorsalis pedis. Get those down pat. Then add the head and neck and then anything else you can hold in your brain.

That's just how I would do it.:) Good luck!

GAA30 · Jun 3, 2006

Go to wiley.com for practice.

Daytonite, BSN, RN · Jun 3, 2006

here are some links that might help you out.

http://www.bartleby.com/107/ - gray's anatomy. always a good source.

http://www.gwc.maricopa.edu/class/bio202/cyberheart/cardio.htm - cyberheart - tutorials for basic heart anatomy, physiology and ekgs from professor crimando at gateway community college in phoenix, az. has an interactive tutorial quiz

http://homepage.smc.edu/wissmann_paul/anatomy1/ - click on "the blood vessels" for pictures of the veins and arteries along with weblinks to sites of more information and some really good pictures and drawings as well as explanations

http://www.msjensen.gen.umn.edu/webanatomy/ - always my one of my anatomy favorites. click on "cardiovascular" on the left side of the opening page and another page of links into all kinds of page of diagrams of the heart, arteries, veins, and blood to label come up. this site is maintained by the university of minnesota as is for all students of anatomy.

neeniebean · Jun 4, 2006

I agree with CJA- just know the flow of the blood through the body, starting from the heart- going through all of the chambers, and then follow it throughout the body. Just keep pointing to it on yourself to have it 'set in'. When i was studying it, i would just get a blank piece of paper and write it down in the order that it went... over and over again (this way i also got used to spelling everything correctly- 1 letter wrong, and my professor would mark it as incorrect, so writing it down was good practice). After doing that a few times, you'll realize that its actually pretty easy (plus, it also helps that most of the arteries have veins with the same name... so its not really like you have to memorize double the amount of stuff). If you can get the blood flow through the body downpat, then you'll be fine :)