A&P lab: How does it work?

Shawn91111 · Feb 24, 2017

Depends on which A&P. AP1 was a lot of anatomy, going over the skull, spine, skeleton, muscles of the cat, certain organs. AP2 was more of the cat, but more so for organs, nerves, veins, arteries. Frog lab on the brain and AV nodes.. As well as the kidney lab using specific gravity, as well as a blood lab to determine blood types.

FutureNurseInfo · Feb 24, 2017

Depends on which A&P. AP1 was a lot of anatomy, going over the skull, spine, skeleton, muscles of the cat, certain organs. AP2 was more of the cat, but more so for organs, nerves, veins, arteries. Frog lab on the brain and AV nodes.. As well as the kidney lab using specific gravity, as well as a blood lab to determine blood types.

Thank you!

So for human A&P 1 and 2 you worked on dead animals????

Sandpiper12, ADN, RN · Feb 24, 2017

Yes, dead animals... If lucky. We get animal parts, lol. Cow eye, sheep heart.

Lots and lots of looking at slides of tissue types, blood, etc. Lots of using models to learn bones, muscles, organ systems.

ItsThatJenGirl, CNA · Feb 25, 2017

It's going to be different everywhere, but for us it was 90% models, and at the end of A&P I, we dissected a sheep eye and brain. At the end of A&P II we're dissecting rats. Everything else is just looking at and memorizing the models or photos of the organs/tissue/cells.

jess.mont, ADN, RN · Feb 25, 2017

Some schools structure anatomy separately from physiology, too. So you might have just anatomy one semester and just physiology the next semester. Mine isn't like that; we have 2.5 hours of lecture a week on physiology and then 2 hours a week on anatomy, which covers structures. My professor runs through all the structures and giving us info. about them, then we look at the models, and then we usually do an activity - dissect a sheep brain, a cow's eyeball, bloodtyping, etc. We have a quiz and a homework assignment each week. Also, most labs have practicals instead of exams - stations are set up around the lab and you need to identify the structures that are indicated at each.

Anatomy is a lot of brute memorization. Physiology is a lot of memorization, too, but it's about the processes involved. So, for example, in physiology, we learned the structures and the functions of each area of the brain, but in anatomy, we only talk about the structures.