Hi everyone! My name is Danyal and I’m a 3rd year medic at Newcastle University. In this blog, I’m just going to explain how anatomy is taught at Newcastle, and a few pointers for learning it based on my experience.
At Newcastle, anatomy is taught by prosection rather than dissection – this means that the Demonstrators and Anatomy Leads have already dissected the cadaver for us. There are obviously pros and cons to both methods but the benefit of this is that you do not risk damaging the specimen and ruining your own learning material!
In first year, you have a Dissecting Room session once every 2-3 weeks (more frequent in 2nd semester) and you learn the anatomy of the thorax, abdomen, reproductive organs, heart, and kidney. In second year, the first semester is anatomy-heavy and you are in the Dissecting Room 2-3 times a week. All of the anatomy of the upper limb, lower limb, face, brain, head and neck, etc. is learned in this first semester so it’s safe to say that it is initially a bit overwhelming. If you like anatomy or neuroscience though, you will definitely enjoy this semester.
I initially found anatomy quite challenging but I certainly enjoyed it, particularly in my second year. Below, I’m just going to list a few tips which helped me a lot and will hopefully be of some benefit to you:
- Prepare for the anatomy sessions beforehand! I didn’t do this for the longest time during first year and it really helps to look over things for even half an hour the night before a session. If you walk in with no idea what you’re going to learn about, it’s all a bit overwhelming and you don’t absorb any of the important material they try to show you with the cadavers. You won’t have access to cadavers later on so try to make the most of the time you have with them!
- Use TeachMeAnatomy as a guide – I discovered it in second year and I wished I knew about it in first year! It explains everything in a concise and understandable way and has just the right amount of information.
- Watch AnatomyZone videos on YouTube – each one is 12-15 minutes and explains things really well in a 3-D format which really helps. I also used the program that the AnatomyZone teachers use called BioDigitalHuman – you can google this and use the website to look at any of the anatomy in 3-D. I’d highly recommend this as it helps a lot to visualise things from different angles.
- Use mnemonics and draw things out to help you remember them – I found that drawing out the blood supply of something helped it stick in my memory a lot easier than just trying to passively memorise it.
- With regards to textbooks, Netter’s Atlas of Human Anatomy has really good pictures as does McMinn’s Atlas (more realistic images).
I hope some of those tips were helpful and that you feel a bit more excited about learning anatomy now. It really is very interesting and it’s definitely important because so much of it is clinically relevant. Good luck J
Danyal Ladha