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  Watch a slideshow of “Gross Human Anatomy.”

“The cadavers are the best teachers; there is little doubt about that. We simply guide the students through the process”

Dale R. Fish

Senior Associate Dean for Academic and Student Affairs, School of Public Health and Health Professions

By SUE WUETCHER

Published: July 12, 2012

Walk around the South Campus or peek into the Health Sciences Library during the first summer session each year and you’re sure to see them, dressed in blue or green scrubs and toting copies of “Grant’s Dissector” and the “Color Atlas of Anatomy.”

They’re the students of “Gross Human Anatomy” (ANA 407). These exercise science, pre-physical therapy and occupational therapy majors have given up eight weeks of their summer to study the human body. The six-credit course includes lectures and dissection sections—using donor human cadavers—each weekday. This summer, 202 students are taking the course—the most in recent memory.

Dale R. Fish, senior associate dean for academic and student affairs in the School of Public Health and Health Professions, has taught Gross Anatomy for 25 years. He notes that it is unique for undergraduates to be able to take a human dissection course.

“Undergraduates in exercise science very rarely have this kind of opportunity” at other universities, Fish says, mainly due to the cost of providing cadavers.

At UB, eight or nine students are assigned to a cadaver that is provided through UB’s Anatomical Gift Program in the School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences. Tablemates then are broken down into smaller dissection teams, with each individual student dissecting every third dissection unit. Students spend up to 20 hours a week in the dissection lab, as well as 60 to 90 minutes each day attending a lecture.

“We have no delusions about our own teaching status,” says Fish, an associate professor of rehabilitation science who serves on the faculty of the physical therapy program. “The cadavers are the best teachers; there is little doubt about that. We simply guide the students through the process.

“Anatomy sells itself; the clinical relevance is obvious,” he says. “We don’t really have to convince them of that. We just give them examples of it from the clinic. The lectures are designed to show them patterns of organization, tell them what’s most important that they need to learn and to inspire them to learn it not for themselves, but for their future patients and clients.

“They do the work and we just guide them.”

The course covers almost the entire body, but focuses on the elements that are most important for exercise science, OT and PT students—primarily the musculoskeletal system.

“It’s very common for students to say that this was the most challenging course they’ve ever had,” Fish says. “They have to learn so much in such a short period of time, but the vast majority rise to the occasion.”

The course is only offered during the summer to accommodate the heavy use of the dissection lab by UB medical and dental students during the fall and spring semesters. But the summer schedule works to students’ advantage because it is the only class they take, allowing, Fish says, for “total immersion” in the material.

The course proves to be a huge commitment for students, Fish notes. Students often choose not to work many hours at outside jobs while taking the course due to the intensity of the workload and the need for focused study, he says.

“My experience has been that they have to be really good students; they have to be really bright and highly motivated,” he says of those students who work while taking the course.

The intense subject matter and long hours together breed a true camaraderie among the students.

“It really is an amazing environment. Everyone is going through this difficult challenge together, so tablemates get to know one another very well,” says Fish, noting that there have even been several marriages among tablemates over the years.

Even though it’s a large class, “there’s a very personal experience,” he says.

Alex Terbush, a pre-PT major, calls the class “a great bonding experience.”

“Everybody is going through the same process, doing the same work; we’re thrown together working toward a common goal,” Terbush says. “It’s a tough experience, but the fact that everybody is doing it together makes it manageable.”

Leah Fairbanks, another pre-PT major, says that despite the sheer size of the class, classmates maintain a “silent relationship” with each other, acknowledging those wearing scrubs as they walk across campus.

This “uniform mentality” makes it easy for classmates to approach each other, even if they do not know the other students’ names, Fairbanks and Terbush say.

Kristin Van Houten, an exercise science-nutrition major, agrees. She says everyone in the class is so friendly that it’s easy to seek help from classmates in the library. “Everyone helps each other,” she says.

Chad Gechoff, a pre-PT major, adds that some students even prepare study guides and post them online for the benefit of their peers.

The teamwork and sense of collaboration fostered through the class helps prepare students for the medical profession, notes Molly Dimatteo, an OT major.

“We have to learn to work with other people and collaborate” because that’s what happens in the medical professions, she says, calling Gross Anatomy a “first step” in that process.