[update] First dissection session, first test for MD

The past Thursday, I had my first ever dissection session for human anatomy. It was nice to have the privilege of being able to dissect cadavers, where people have agreed to donate their bodies to allow medical students to understand anatomy well. I handled it OK psychologically, as did others in my group that I could see.

That said, everyone in the Melbourne MD program had to have done anatomy before anyway as a prerequisite, and so almost everyone would have had experience with prosections anyway (and so they should feel pretty comfortable with dead human specimens by now); with dissecting being the next step.

Next week, there is the first test for the Foundations in Biomedical Science subject. It's worth 5% of the year long subject, so it's not that much. But I should still prepare for it. Right now, I am most confident in pharmacology (my major subject in biomedicine) and biostatistics (which I think is very logical, and doesn't require as much time to remember everything unlike most other subjects).

[update] First anatomy prac session for medicine

Today I had my first anatomy prac for medicine. It's been about one and a half years since my last anatomy prac in biomed, since I didn't major in anatomy. I was looking forward to it again; feeling the tough arteries spring back and poking at lungs.

When I heard that it was going to be "self directed" (or words to that meaning), I thought: "not again". But it was OK if you listened to demonstrators whenever they said something. Sometimes the demonstrators would teach beyond what questions were asked, and you could even feel as if it was a normal tutorial without thinking it was self directed.

The interesting part about today was seeing an anatomical variation on a specimen. I noticed that the arch of aorta of one of the specimens ran to the right of the trachea instead of to the left. It was good to see for myself, because in anatomy we usually just learn the case in the "majority" of people.

We don't seem to have many anatomy pracs in Melbourne, or lectures for that matter. Then again, we were all required to do a subject of anatomy before entering medicine at Melbourne as a prerequisite, so we all had to do about 44 hours of anatomy before entering to start with (according to the anatomy second year subject for Bachelor of Science handbook link from Melbourne).

Anyway, it seems like I'll be having a dissection prac in 3 weeks; after the midsemester break. I'm looking forward to it. I didn't do any dissections before in anatomy, since I didn't do my major in it and at Melbourne you don't get to dissect in the second year anatomy subject.