In the autopsy room, the decedent would be identified by a hospital toe tag/and wrist band. In the dissection lab, provide the Dissection Table # _____ and Cadaver tag # _______(usually a square, brass tag with a number embossed on it).Provide an estimate of: Weight ____ lbs?, Height ____ inches? Age at death _______ (will be provided by Anatomy staff) ***Begin a detailed survey of your cadaver with it in supine (face-up) position, then turn it over to prone (face-down) position.***

No abstract

Problem Despite numerous pedagogical approaches and technologies now available for medical gross anatomy, students can find it difficult to translate what occurs in a dissection laboratory into the context of clinical practice. Approach Using complementary and collaborative approaches at 2 different medical schools, Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) and University of Maryland (UM), we designed and implemented a series of clinical activities in the preclerkship medical gross anatomy laboratory that directly link dissected structures to clinical procedures. These activities specifically direct students to perform simulated clinically related procedures on anatomic donors during laboratory dissection sessions. The activities are called OpNotes at VCU and Clinical Exercises at UM. Each activity in the VCU OpNotes requires about 15 minutes of group activity at the end of a scheduled laboratory and involves faculty to grade the student responses submitted via a web-based-assessment form. Each exercise in UM Clinical Exercises also requires about 15 minutes of group activity during the schedule laboratory but does not involve faculty to complete grading. Outcomes Cumulatively, the activities in OpNotes and Clinical Exercises both brought clinical context directly to anatomical dissections. These activities began in 2012 at UM and 2020 at VCU, allowing a multiyear and multi-institute development and testing of this innovative approach. Student participation was high, and perception of its effectiveness was almost uniformly positive. Next Steps Future iterations of the program will work to assess the efficacy of the program as well as to streamline the scoring and delivery of the formative components. Collectively, we propose that the concept of executing clinic-like procedures on donors in anatomy courses is an effective means of enhancing learning in the anatomy laboratory while concurrently underscoring the relevance of basic anatomy to future clinical practice.

Traditional Medical Gross Anatomy courses are under considerable pressure to incorporate active learning tools while delivering clinically‐relevant material to large classes in a truncated schedule. Toward those goals, we have devised a course for 215 medical students that examines the basic regions of the body in 24 dissection sessions in a ‘flipped’ classroom format while involving longitudinal exercises and directly incorporating basic Radiology and Pathology. Prior to each laboratory session, students are required to view a ~30 minute custom‐made video introducing the basic anatomy of the exercise that also demonstrates the actual dissection steps. Following the 3‐hour dissection exercise, a faculty presentation extends the anatomical and functional information as well as introduces the clinical relevance of structures or region just examined. Each exercise culminates with a non‐graded self‐assessment quiz. In addition, a CT scan of each cadaver (n=32) and standard path reports for submitted tissue samples provide the students with additional structural and clinical insights into their cadaver. Observations obtained in these sequential exercises are archived in a daily dissection‐group log. A final, grand‐rounds style group presentation synthesizes the longitudinally‐obtained observations into a plausible clinical scenario consistent with a significant health deficit and/or cause of death. The effectiveness of the new curriculum will be evaluated by comparing board scores with those from classes prior to the curriculum change (data not yet available).