Human Structure Class Gives Students Ability to Investigate

By Spencer Watson

 
From left: Students Jasmine Haller, Alex Han, Drake Hardy and Karen Hall worked together on a team investigating congestive heart failure and its secondary effects.

Han and Hardy attach a cellphone to a SkyLight, which allows them to use the phone to take pictures through a microscope.

Haller and Hall examine a slide with team member Nathan Green.

Oct. 21, 2014 | A proverb going back around 500 years claims that “dead men tell no tales,” but several first-year UAMS College of Medicine students, might argue otherwise.

A grant-funded program supporting a revised approach to the medical gross anatomy class this year allowed biopsy analysis of — and exploration into the medical history of — students’ cadavers.

The results, presented in a conference Oct. 10, show evidence of critical thinking, said David Davies, Ph.D., an associate professor in the college’s Department of Neurobiology and Developmental Sciences.

In the past, first-year gross anatomy required a lot of memorization. However, the new course model, called Human Structure, encourages exploration and investigation, culminating in this conference, held for the first time this year.

“The reason this was important is that it allowed the students to make decisions about what they wanted to investigate,” Davies said. “It also simulated real life, in that they were dealing with limited resources and had to use those efficiently.”

Human Structure students selected seven biopsies from their cadavers. Those were processed into microscope slides, an expensive process covered by a grant from the Arkansas Medical Society’s Medical Education Foundation of Arkansas. From studying those slides, students were able to do things like guess a cause of death.

One surprising case found traces of plant material in the lungs of a cadaver that had appeared to have been in good health at the time of death. The conclusion? The subject developed pneumonia, possibly after accidental inhalation of a bit of food.

“We were very, very pleased with the students’ results, and feel they really did a superb job in the amount of work they put into it,” said Davies, who co-authored the grant with Charles M. Quick, M.D., an assistant professor in the college’s Department of Pathology.

Part of the grant funding was used to purchase SkyLights, which are adjustable mounts that hold a cellphone onto a microscope eyepiece lens and allow students to take pictures through the microscope. That accessibility not only appealed to students, Davies said, but made sharing information among teams much easier.