Mr Thrifty Skeleton........Your opinion????

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I am in anatomy right now.........I live a ways away from where I go to school. It will be impossible for me to go into lab, other than my actual lab classroom time. In your opinion, can I learn enough from pictures and the internet to do well or would buying a Mr Thrifty skeleton benefit me?

If I can do as well without him, I'll gladly save the cash..............but if it would really help and make a big difference, I'm willing to buy one.

Thank you for your input!!!

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Specializes in LTC.

You can do perfectly fine without a skeleton. I made flash cards. I printed out pictures of the bones and bone features I needed to know and went over them all the freaking time. The fun part was when I was in lab with a skeleton I'd flip the cards writing side up and go through them pointing out things on the skeleton.

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you can do without the skeleton. most likely single bones are going to be laid out for practical so having them all together won't be that helpful. is there a public library you can go to? the skull has a lot of features you will be required to know that would be helpful to look at a model of to ID. barrons anatomy flash cards are helpful and they cover more than just bones.

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I wouldn't bother with buying a skeleton. Bones are (IMO) the easy part of anatomy. Learning the nerves, muscles (including all their origins, insertions and actions), arteries and veins.... things that can't be seen on a skeletal model were much more intensive. And yes, you can learn certainly learn those names and functions from books (I second the idea of making flashcards - especially for muscles and cranial nerves) but if your class works with cadavers you need to make the time to get into open lab and familiarize yourself with them. Seeing something in a book (or even on a model) and having to identify it on a cadaver in a test are two different things.

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You can do it without the model but maybe search for a free interactive online model that you can zoom in on specific bones. The best tip I ever got from an intructor was to print out the lab photos without the labels and then put that sheet of paper in a page protector. Then with a dry-erase marker, label the parts of that photo. Do this over and over again until you get all the bones/muscles/organs correct. I have done this for all three of my biology classes.

Hopefully your lab website already has these types of photos set up but if not, you can find photos online without much trouble.

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Specializes in school nursing, ortho, trauma.

i bought an anatomy and phys coloring book and really thought it was worth it. I actually have a mr thrifty in my office that i'd love to trade for a budget bucky - as i think the kids would be more interested in a skeleton their size.

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honestly, you'll look at it in 3 months and it will feel like a huge waste of money.

i took pictures on my phone of all the real bones we had in lab (and there were a lot!) it let me study on the go, and study the actual material we were tested on. did the exact same thing (with more technical difficulties) with histology slides later on.

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I put my coloring book to use last night and I have to say that I really liked it. I think that will work for me just fine :)

Thanks so much for the replies, everyone!

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