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Cadavers in pa school?


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Does any one know if we have access to cadavers (human corpses) for anatomy? I am curious because I heard that some schools hand down what their medical students have used. Or some can't afford it all. I'm also curious about the extent we will be doing dissections? Anyone from Sophie davis pa program in new York? Also, it's a cuny state school, so maybe the available funds are lower?

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I interviewed at a program affiliated with a major medical school and a major health system. At that program, the cadavers were "handed down" after the medical students were finished with them. We were told at the interview that PA students didn't have time for dissections. I'm attending a program in August that is not directly affiliated with a medical school and we will have our own cadavers as well as some that are prosected.

 

I'm sure it's very much an individual thing. However, I would be willing to bet that PA programs affiliated with large medical schools are more likely to hand down cadavers. I would be skeptical of programs that provide no access to cadavers. Seems like a pretty important part of learning medicine.

 

Maybe someone familiar with NY programs can give you some more specific info!

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Azwerin,

I would imagine that you would have use of cadavers in your anatomy class at Sophie Davis. Have you asked them directly?

I interviewed in three schools in NY state and all made use of cadavers that were not prosected or hand me downs, though there is certainly sharing amongst different teams of PA students that work on the cadavers.

I would go right to the source on this one and ask your school or prospective school.

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Your best bet would be to look at the schools website or even ask them when you get called for an interview. I finished my first year at a school in NY(NYIT) and we used our own cadavers. The med students had their own and we had our own. We were lucky enough to cut from head to toe and learn each structure. Other schools I got accepted to used simulations not the real cadaver. Hope this helps.

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This is completely depended on the school. Some don't do any human dissection, some use those cadavers that have already been dissected (they call them "prosected" cadavers). At Yale, the PA students got their own fresh, uncut cadavers for dissection (I know University of Florida was the same way when I interviewed there).

 

Having our own cadavers was one of the "dealbreaker" criteria I gave myself when choosing a school. It generally speaks to the resources available and the importance placed on the PA program within the institution (with exceptions, I'm sure...).

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azwerin- click on "my profile" at the top of the page, go under the "about me" tab and click on the little pencil to edit your status. You may not think it's a big deal or that people can tell, but that is not true of all your posts and it *can* get you kicked off the site. HTH!

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Having our own cadavers was one of the "dealbreaker" criteria I gave myself when choosing a school. It generally speaks to the resources available and the importance placed on the PA program within the institution (with exceptions, I'm sure...).

 

This has been one of my criteria ever since I found out that some schools do not have dissections. Some schools list whether they do dissections or prosecutions in the class descriptions. Other schools you have to email directly.

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Some medical schools do not perform dissections (they have computer programs), while the PA and CRNA programs in the same university still do. I know University of Alabama at Birmingham is this way. The neuro PA that taught the med students in the cadaver lab thought it was a grave injustice to remove cadavers from gross anatomy. Point is, sometimes it's not a matter of resources. Some people just think it's not that important. All the more reason to avoid those programs IMO.

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I noticed a great deal of variety among different programs in their approach to human anatomy when my daughter was investigating PA schools. Some (few) schools give the PA students "fresh" cadavers. Most used prosected cadavers from a med school.

 

One school had the PA students drive an hour to another major urban university to "look over" the med school cadavers, and if I remember it was not mandatory that they do it. My daughter is not going to that school.

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I am currently a student at Marywood University in Pennsylvania. We are affiliated with a medical school but are given 'whole' cadavers to dissect. We have the medical students as TA's in our lab who answer questions and assist with our dissections but we are the ones with the scalpels! If you are wavering between schools, I highly recommend choosing a school that allows you to dissect the cadavers yourselves. It has greatly increased my knowledge of A&P by doing so.

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