Student ceremony honors anatomical donors

Students across UofL's Health Sciences Center took a break from their academic schedules April 17 to honor individuals who have bequeathed their bodies to the school to further the education of future doctors, dentists and other health-care providers.

More than 125 people packed into the Health Sciences Center Auditorium for "A Convocation of Thanks," a student-initiated program that featured musical performances and prose readings by students from the schools of medicine, dentistry and graduate studies, as well as the departments of speech pathology and audiology.

Those in attendance included faculty, staff and family members of individuals who have donated their bodies to UofL.

Cadavers are essential for teaching gross anatomy to medical students and helping train future surgeons on complex equipment like endoscopes, educators said.

Their use produces better-trained care-givers, which ultimately results in healthier patient populations.

"The decision to donate one's body helps medical, dental, graduate and allied-health training, and thus furthers scientific knowledge," said Fred Roisen, Ph.D., chair of the Department of Anatomical Science and Neurobiology in the School of Medicine and director of UofL's Whole Body Donation Program. "In turn, it has the potential to improve the welfare of patients for years and years to come."

Robert Acland, M.D., director of the School of Medicine's Fresh Tissue Dissection Lab and a professor of surgery, agreed.

"It's a fundamental precept among surgeons that knowing what you're doing means knowing exactly where you are in three dimensions," he said. "We understand that our knowledge of anatomy is the basis of our skill, the basis of our safety and, in a very real way, the basis of our patients' trust in us.

"Thanks to the generosity of our donors, our future surgeons are able to learn, in depth, the anatomy of the special fields in which they are going to be practicing; practice and use special equipment that's so difficult to use the first time, such as endoscopes; and learn essential surgical skills.

"I know in my heart that all of this will lead to better, safer surgical care for patients in our community and wherever our trainees practice the art of surgery."

Acland and Roisen joined second-year medical student Beth Payne in expressing thanks to the donors and their families for what Payne called "an incredible gift."

"I think it's important that we take a break from the intensity of our studies to honor those individuals and their families who have made the biggest sacrifice of all so that we may learn to become doctors, dentists, researchers, speech pathologists, nurses and so on," Payne said.

"I believe it is our obligation to give back to them in at least this small manner."

Payne, who helped organize the convocation, told audience members that she approached her first exposure to a cadaver with a sense of deep compassion.

"I like to think of my cadaver as my first patient," Payne said. "Dottie was the name that my classmates and I gave her, and we tried to image the type of person she must have been. We wondered what brought her to donate her body, and we also wondered about her family.

"We imagined her to be a headstrong and educated woman. We also decided that she must have been a very hip grandmother, as there was evidence that she had recently had a manicure and pedicure.

"My experience with Dottie had an enormous impact on me. Her gift enabled me to learn the anatomy of the human body, but it also taught me about respect."