Dissecting a human body is messy, smelly, and expensive.
In fact, more medical schools are resorting to so-called “virtual” gross anatomy, using sophisticated imaging and computer programs.
This is a mistake, says psychiatry resident Christine Montross, in a NY Times op-ed. And she has a point.
“Someday, [doctors] need to keep their cool when a baby is lodged wrong in a mother’s birth canal; when a bone breaks through a patient’s skin; when someone’s face is burned beyond recognition,” writes Dr. Montross. “Doctors do have normal reactions to these situations; the composure that we strive to keep under stressful circumstances is not innate. It has to be learned.”
Such talk about replacing real bodies with virtual ones continues the depersonalization trend in medicine. Already, today’s doctors rarely do thorough physical exams, instead relying on diagnostic tests and imaging studies. After all, why spend the time listening to a patient’s heart for a murmur, when an echocardiogram can simply be ordered?
Using computerized body replicas distances medical students from the human element in medicine, and indeed, “the dissection of cadavers . . . gives young doctors an appreciation for the wonders of the human body in a way that no virtual image can match.”
Related posts:
- Gross anatomy of the future?
- Gross anatomy and breast implants
- Gross anatomy
- Gross anatomy: Not enough cadavers to go around
- Virtual gross anatomy
- Are MRI results accurate?
- Radiation exposure and x-rays
{ 8 comments }
The learning is not as thorough and long lasting either when not all the senses are engaged. I am a psychiatrist decades out of medical school yet I can still visualize the anatomy when the situation occasionally arises which demands it–usually with a strong memory of the smell of formaldehyde.
Occasionally a situation does arise that calls for it.
Amen. Some of the most important hours in all of my education were spent in the anatomy lab. Without it, I’m certain I would have less of a sense of wonder and amazement that I get to work with this phenomenal creation than I do…despite how disgusting and smelly life can be inside those walls.
If nothing else, anatomy lab was useful to teach that people are different, there is not ‘normal’, just ‘normal range’.
Books, programs, etc don’t teach that, and youngsters expect that people were built on an assembly line.
I’m a very big fan of technology, and in general favour electronic solutions when available. That said, I would never opt for virtual dissection models over the real thing. I never considered real dissections a selling point when choosing my medical school, but now, one year in, I fully appreciate how much better they are than any virtual model ever could be. I’d never want to see them go, and am glad to know that my school’s committed to keeping them as part of the curriculum.
Macabre as it sounds, there is a possibility that unscrupulous surgeons at teaching hospitals orchestrate overtreatment of patients as a way of demonstrating anatomy and procedure on live human beings.
I refused proposed aggressive “treatment” before a diagnosis was determined , and agreed, following scare tactics & non-disclosure of relevant medical facts, to a diagnostic abdominal surgery. Afterwards, I found myself gutted and my quality of life enormously diminished.
A young student seemed very concerned about me and visited me a few times on his own kindness (the surgeon only spent about ten minutes with me and I never saw her again while in hospital.) The student remarked that numerous students, interns, and residents were invited to observe my surgery.
Months later, upon obtaining my medical records, the justification for extremely aggressive (and for me, unwanted and violent) procedure was : risk reducing. The “squelae” I have suffered since has prevented me from returning to a productive life of service in my own profession. The pathology report indicates all the organs and tissue removed were healthy in appearance and in fact. The cysts were benign.
Medical people at teaching institutions :
have you observed what you suspect are questionably aggressive procedures applied in teaching and learning settings that could be based upon the opportunity for real life anatomy education? I have always felt that I was used by the academic staff as an opportunity to provide raw material for a teaching event.
Many thanks to the reflective and thoughtful comments left by contributors to any and all of Dr. Kevin’s invitations to discuss. I have been learning much from your observations.
Many states have voluntary organ donor programs, usually linked to drivers’ licences. Would there be an ethical or legal problem to add “donate my body to a medical school” to those programs?
Anon 10:36 –
No, never. Honestly, your fears that you were simply used for entertainment are almost certainly completely unfounded.
The easiest reason to know that you weren’t used as an “anatomy example” is that no academic surgeon cares enough about teaching to do everything a surgery involves just to demonstrate to students. Seriously. It’s hard enough to get them to teach about patients they already are obliged to operate on.
Plus removing cysts is not brain surgery, and no-one would go around operating on people who don’t need it to show a surgery that people will see more times than they want to anyway.
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