How to Study Anatomy in Med School

Love it or hate it, anatomy is a foundational component of the medical training process.

Let’s cover how to effectively study anatomy, including key insights from the Med School Insiders team, what I wish I did differently, and the best resources.

 

How to Study Anatomy

Before we dive in, it’s important to understand that anatomy isn’t just a matter of memorizing as many erroneously believe. You must also understand the clinical significance. Once you memorize the brachial plexus anatomy and innervations, you’ll be able to figure out what deficits a patient might have with an injury at a specific spinal cord level.

It’s not just a matter of memorizing but also applying what you’ve memorized. You will be tested on not only the function of a structure but also what the clinical finding would be if it was injured.

 

1 | Embrace the Messiness

First, dive into the messiness of studying anatomy. Anatomy is less structured and less straightforward than anything else you’ll study in med school, and that’s okay.

Embrace it. Jumping from one resource to the next before reaching completion of a chapter or section is actually good. Not following a set path is what will help you immerse yourself in the subject matter, which will, in turn, help you retain what you’re learning.

Learning anatomy isn’t as simple as choosing a single textbook, set of flashcards, or app to guide your learning.

To truly understand anatomy, you’ll have to jump between various mediums and resources, including your traditional learning materials and the real-life thing.

 

2 | Dive Into Cadaveric Dissection

Which brings us to point number 2—get as much exposure to cadavers as you can.

When you start cadaveric dissection, the heads of the cadavers will be covered for the first several weeks. You’ll start by dissecting other parts of the body because, naturally, it can be disorienting and jarring to see a deceased human being’s face looking at you as you cut them open. After you acclimate to the cadaver experience, the head is uncovered for head and neck dissection. Of course, some students acclimate quicker than others.

Some people faint, and some need to wear a mask so the formaldehyde smell is not overbearing. While certainly challenging, remember that it’s what the person wanted, as they chose to donate their body to medicine for precisely this purpose.

The good news is it gets easier the more you expose yourself, and this extra exposure is vital to helping you better understand the human body.

Towards the end of class or later that day, look at and compare the multiple bodies and anatomical variations. For example, the appendix can be in slightly different spots at the start of the large intestine. Roughly 66% of people have retrocecal positioning, but that means a third of the cadavers have an appendix in a different location, and some bodies might not have an appendix at all because of appendicitis.

The best way to not get tripped up by anatomical variations is by studying more than your assigned cadaver. Make note of any anatomical differences and anomalies.

 

3 | Use the Feynman Technique

Third, use the Feynman technique, which helps you master and retain difficult concepts by teaching them to someone else in the simplest terms possible. A great deal of medical school is spent reading textbooks, so the opportunity to be social and study with others is a nice change of pace, and it’s incredibly powerful.

Changing your role from student to teacher means you must deeply comprehend the subject matter. This will greatly reinforce what you know and help you determine which aspects of the material you still need to work on.

You can do this with classmates, roommates, and friends, or even a partner or friend who is non-medical. My classmates and I would take turns drawing anatomy on the whiteboard and quizzing each other.

To maximize your understanding, use the Feynman technique in the cadaver lab after hours with classmates to quiz each other on different structures of the human body.

Many students who are interested in surgical fields volunteer to be anatomy TAs, where they conduct the prosections—these are the dissections the teachers complete to show the finished work to the students before they do the same dissection themselves.

When I was an anatomy TA in my final year of medical school, I volunteered to perform the prosecution for any areas relevant to my future training in plastic surgery. This is particularly helpful to those pursuing surgical subspecialty training.

 

4 | Choose Varied Resources

Next, use various study resources.

Start with textbooks, which are the gold standard as they’re the most in-depth and most accurate overall. However, the downside is they are 2 dimensional by definition, and can be limiting and difficult to understand. If spatial reasoning comes easily to you, this won’t be as big of a deal.

You should also use flash cards with screenshots from lectures or various textbooks. When I was studying, I would use an image occlusion plugin with Anki.

I can’t share my personal anatomy deck for copyright reasons, but I used plenty of mnemonics, like for the external carotid branches. Some anatomists like frolicking, others prefer S&M, but the more outrageous you make them, the more likely they are to stick.

Next, make use of anatomy apps, which are interactive and beautiful to look at but know that not all resources are 100% reliable.

I got pimped on the extensor indicis proprius and whether it was ulnar or radial to the extensor digitorum communis—which is crucial if you’re doing hand surgery. I remembered the answer from the app, and my memory was correct, but the app was actually wrong. Still, they’re accurate 95% of the time, and the 3D interactive nature is invaluable.

 

5 | Follow Through on Test Day

Of course, all of that studying won’t mean much if you don’t follow through on test day.

When you’re faced with an anatomy test, before you even start a question, be sure to take the time to orient yourself. If you get 1 minute on the practical exam, where you are looking at a tagged structure and need to answer a question about it, spend the first 5 to 10 seconds figuring out how everything is oriented. For example, is the body flipped over? Is the forearm pronated or supinated? Is the head in the opposite direction as compared to the previous question?

You can lose a few points if you don’t take time to notice you’re looking at the posterior compartment and not the anterior compartment or vice versa. Don’t lose points over silly mistakes.

Next—and this cannot be overstated—read each answer choice extremely carefully!

Test makers will sometimes get tricky with you and have these subtle differences in answers, so be sure to read everything as carefully as possible.

For instance, many bones, muscles, and tendons have multiple names, often named after the researcher who first explained what they do. These are called eponyms. A great example of this is Lister’s Tubercle, which is the distal dorsal tubercle of the radius.

Test makers sometimes get tricky by using the less common name to differentiate the students who actually took the time to learn their anatomy in close detail from multiple sources.

Another example is that visually, it’s sometimes difficult to discern an artery from a nerve on a cadaver due to their color. This is where reading the question carefully comes in handy. It may read “which muscle does this structure innervate?” for the nerve or “which muscle does this structure supply?” for the artery. While arteries and veins can sometimes be differentiated by thickness and shape, among other factors, similar differences in the wording of the question can be useful, such as whether this vessel drains or supplies a given organ.

Not only is anatomy messy, it’s also different from anything else you will study. Embrace that messiness by jumping into the world of anatomy with the effective resources and study strategies we’ve outlined in this guide.

But you know what doesn’t have to be messy? Getting into medical school. Med School Insiders has helped thousands of premeds gain acceptance and succeed in medical school. Our team of physicians has been where you are now, and they became top of their class, were accepted at their top-choice medical schools, and matched into the nation’s best residency programs.

And we’ll teach you step by step how to do the same. Visit our services page to make your physician dream a reality.