Warren G. Harding students spent some time at the Case Western Reserve University Cadaver Lab on Thursday, March 2, 2023.
Here are some highlights from the trip and more information about the program:
- Victoria Midgett wrote a proposal for the Schermer DiYorio grant to take the CCP Anatomy and Physiology classes to the Case Western Reserve University Cadaver Lab and it was granted.
- The Cadaver Lab is the classroom for the Gross Anatomy class in the graduate program at CWRU.
- The course at CWRU is for both medical school students and students pursuing Master’s degrees in Applied Anatomy.
- The WGH students were the first high school students that had the opportunity to visit the Cadaver Lab.
- The lab had 8 dissected human bodies. These individuals chose to donate their bodies to science upon their death. The bodies came from a 50-100 mile radius of the university.
- The bodies are embalmed prior to coming to the Cadaver Lab.
- WGH students took advantage of the hands-on experience. Highlights included holding a human heart, liver, spleen, and lungs as well as feeling the spinal cord and the cauda equine, the collection of nerves at the end of the spinal cord that resembles a horse’s tail.
- The graduate students asked questions of the WGH students that helped them connect what they are learning in the Anatomy and Physiology class to the human bodies that were in the Cadaver Lab.
- One of the WGH students said “I am pretty sure this just changed my career path.”
- The graduate students demonstrated a passion for learning that was recognizable by the WGH students. The graduate students shared how they study for this course for 8-10 hours a day.
- During the time in the lab, students were seen standing on stools so that they can manipulate and move the organs of the body in order to see how the organs are all connected. The graduate students were excellent in guiding the WGH students around the body organs and systems.
- The cadavers in the lab were treated with great respect. Their faces/heads were covered with a cloth and there was a gentleness to how the organs were held and moved.
