cadavars

altomga, ADN, BSN, MSN, DNP, RN, APRN · Apr 2, 2003

sorry, I only T &B. What specific thing are you asking about?

vangmice · Apr 2, 2003

i am completely new at this and would like to know a little bit what to expect when working with cadavars...ill be taking a class this fall and... well isnt too confident with this cadavar thing... any suggestions?

P_RN, ADN, RN · Apr 2, 2003

I'd imagine that by the time you are ready for cadaveirc dissection you would already know what needs to be known.

What kind of course is this anyway??

vangmice · Apr 2, 2003

im not exactly sure... i spoke to my school advisor and she said ill be taking a class working with cadavars either fall or winter... *shrugs* should i be working with cadavars that early? for summer ill be taking bio and psy or ped

P_RN, ADN, RN · Apr 2, 2003

Is this nursing school? College? Premed? What?

vangmice · Apr 2, 2003

community college

hapeewendy · Apr 2, 2003

erm I can understand that you might be a lil nervous or anxious about dealing with cadavers

but you cant really do them any harm so to speak...

its not about working with cadavers too early etc, I went to a school with a cadaver lab and we didnt do much other than observe and landmark organs and anomalies

good luck

vangmice · Apr 2, 2003

do you group work on cadavars ?

RNonsense · Apr 2, 2003

:uhoh21:

NurseRachy · Apr 2, 2003

heheh THEY STINK!! and then ...wait for it.. after class YOU STINK LIKE THEM!! they are all cold and rippled and look like chunks of meat and yuck - not my favourite thing to see or touck (infact i double gloved and used knitting needles to poke them/ move bits and pieces) Half my class fainted and about 1/7 of us refused to even go in the room. - My final word in FERAL. We got to dissect and amputate and basically do any respectful thing to them! yuck - and then we had exams with pins in the body and we had to "name that body part" to me everything looked a little too familiar to each other!

Genista, BSN, RN · Apr 2, 2003

I worked with cadavers in anatomy lab (prereqs for nursing).

I was scared out of my mind when the teacher unzipped the body bag for the first time. Then again, I also felt ready to jump out of my skin when the instructor very casually lifted a saggital section of a human head out a bucket one day during lecture. ;-0

Yes, the smell of the preservatives is awful. I had never seen a dead human body before- and was afraid of "fainting" or having some other reaction. But I did not faint. In fact, nobody in our class fainted. Sometimes I had to go out and get fresh air when working on a dissection or something (the preservative smell is so unpleasant).

You know what got me through it? First of all, we always kept the cadaver's head shrouded. It was partly out of respect, and also partly because it's hard (emotionally) to view the face of the body you are working on. I prefered not to see the face when I was learning about the other body parts/organs. More than that, though- I realized that these were once real human beings. In fact, our main donor cadaver was a man who had purposefully willed himself to science. He was only in his fifties. It was somewhat of a comfort to know that the body I was working on, this former person's body...they wanted me to learn something. YOU will have the opportunity to see real human organs. You can learn all kinds of neat things!

Anatomy can be a fascinating class. Working with cadavers can be scary at first, but you might do better than you think.

I think it would be even more interesting to take that class again now that I have been a nurse a few years.

Good luck!