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Physician Assistant Program factors: Cadaver lab

Physician Assistant Program Factors: Cadaver lab

An often differentiating feature of programs is whether or not they have a cadaver lab. Let’s go over the aspects, benefits, and varying features of cadaver labs that are less obvious.

Prosected vs. dissected

  • There are two common formats of traditional cadaver lab – prosected and dissected. Prosected tends to be a little more common, meaning the body has already been dissected for you. Typically by other students at the same school but in a different program (sometimes MD/DO students, at my school the PT students dissect them). As opposed to dissecting them yourself.
  • Which do you want? Depends on your interests, if you are passionate about dissection that is one thing of course, but most like prosection for the reasons that dissection takes time. And as a PA student, you don’t have a lot of that as it is! So it’s kind of nice to go to lab and have that process done for you. That was my experience during my didactic year, and I was a big fan of prosection. That  being said, both are good for different reasons, and either is better than none!

Cadaver lab formats

  • There are variable formats of cadaver lab. Most are traditional with real bodies donated to science. These could be a variety of ages, have different disease states, or reasons why they passed. Another format becoming more popular is a virtual cadaver lab. This is done in a variety of ways, but involves a screen with a very in depth digital body.

Why you want a cadaver lab

  • Variable anatomy – the thing with having a cadaver lab, one with a real body at least, is you get to see variable anatomy. Anatomy varies from person to person much more than you think. From the 8 bodies I was able to work with, I can tell you all 8 had major differences. This is a great learning experience. In addition to that, they exhibited different pathology. I was able to see a mechanical heart valve and liver cancer as a part of the donors’ anatomy. These are benefits you can get from real cadavers.
  • Surgery rotations – regardless of the format, they can be particularly useful in preparation for your later surgery rotation. (These are typically always required by PA programs during your clinical year). Having previously seen real human anatomy, you will be at least somewhat more familiar than had you been taught simply with images. You can still be successful in surgery rotations without ever having a cadaver lab, but just something you perhaps didn’t think about.

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