Across state, UAMS shares willed bodies

Anatomical Gift Program aids allied-health students

Medical students have studied anatomy using cadavers for ages, but some other health-care students in the state have begun doing the same in recent years thanks to Arkansans who donate their bodies to science and the state’s medical school.

The Anatomical Gift Program at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences shares donated bodies, when it has enough, with three instate universities offering studies such as pre-medicine and physical therapy, said the program’s director, Bruce Newton.

Tim Wakefield, a professor of biological science at John Brown University in Siloam Springs, said roughly 25 undergraduates in such majors as biology, chemistry, biochemistry and sports medicine benefit from cadaver laboratories each fall.

Other teaching tools such as textbook diagrams and physical models are no comparison with real tissue, said Wakefield, who taught anatomy and physiology at other schools without cadavers.

“All the anatomical structures always look perfect because it’s a model and it never changes,” he said, whereas the cadavers show students the variations and imperfections of real organs, muscles and other tissues.

“This may not look exactly like what you’ve pictured in your head, or in this book or on this model,” Wakefield said, adding that most models depict a person in “peak condition,” rather than, say, an elderly person who has lived in a wheelchair or someone who led a sedentary lifestyle.

Kevin Garrison, an associate professor in the physicaltherapy department at the University of Central Arkansas in Conway, agreed.

For graduate-level UCA students studying physical therapy and occupational therapy, even the most cuttingedge 3- D computer models can’t compare with a real body, he said.

“I’m a bit of a traditionalist and feel like you can’t replace hands-on, kinesthetic learning,” Garrison said.

Dissecting bodies allows students to see 3-D relationships between organs, what’s above and below, and how deep structures are, he said.

“And for us, because we’re not surgeons, your hands are your scalpels,” Garrison said.

Under Garrison, future therapists learn to use their fingers to palpate muscles, tendons and nerves as part of their patient assessments and master massage techniques.

“Our students do the full dissection. We do the complete systems, head to toe,” he said.

This helps students pre-