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First-Year Med Students Enter the 'Gross' Lab
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Bodies lie covered on the dissection tables before lab work begins.
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Andrea Hsu, NPR /
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A group of students work on a cadaver.
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Melissa Block, NPR /
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Classes at the University of Maryland Medical School may have begun a few weeks ago, but for 160 freshmen dressed in scrubs, a real medical introduction didn't arrive until they entered the gross anatomy lab.
That was the day they picked up scalpels and cut into human cadavers for the first time.
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Inside the lab, or the "gross" lab as the students call it, 34 bodies were laid out on dissection tables. Draped with aqua sheets, there was just a hint of the human form underneath. Before dissection began, course director Dr. Larry Anderson offered words of encouragement and caution: "remember that donor is -- was -- someone's mom or dad, sister, brother, uncle, aunt… they decided to give you a gift, a privilege, to learn from them. And so use them wisely."
In part one of a series on gross anatomy and body donation, NPR's Melissa Block joins the students on their first day in the lab.
Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org. 9(MDA1OTI3MjQ5MDEyODUwMTE2MzM1YzNmZA004))
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