Systemic Human Anatomy 3319
Anat 3319 is a third year human anatomy course. Anatomy is the branch of science that deals with underlying structure of living things. It is a full year course limited to students who have taken Biology 2382B and registration in third or fourth year of a module offered by one of the Basic Medical Science departments or the Department of Biology; or permission of the department..
Term 1
An introduction lecture was given by Dr. Merrifield on embryology and Dr. Cechetto gave the first series of lectures on the nervous system. We covered the details of the brain and spinal cord as well as the nerves that innervate them. Memorizing the nerves isn’t too bad, especially if you can think of what their functions are.
Term 2
There’s a bit more nervous system stuff e.g. peripheral nervous system. The majority of the second term covers the musculoskeletal system though.
Term 3
Musculoskeletal system: You will be learning all the limb muscles (approximately 70-80). This part of the course was pretty straightforward: you have to know the origin, insertion, action and innervations of the limb muscles.
Cardiovascular system: you will be learning about all the heart and blood vessels. Traditionally, the average for this exam has been in the mid 80s and is considered by most students to be the “easiest” exam.
Term 4
Respiratory, digestive, urinary and reproductive systems. This unit is basically a mix of everything: you have to know the structures, muscles, and blood vessels. You’ll have to know the muscles mainly for the respiratory system and the blood vessels that surround the stomach.
Tutorial
The Anat 3319 also holds a 1 hour tutorial on Tuesdays led by TAs. Many of the TAs are in the Masters of Clinical Anatomy program (http://www.uwo.ca/anatomy/grad/msclinic.html). You may be interested in this program as it’s only a masters program that is only 20 months long and helps you develop your teaching skills, particularly in anatomy.
For us, the tutorial session was divided into 2 stations with each station covering a different set of topics. During tutorials, it is mostly the TA explaining concepts and students asking questions. The TA will usually bring in prosections (a part of a cadaver) to show students e.g. during the muscle section, we got to see some dissected cross sections of the body and muscles etc. At the end of the tutorial, there is a short quiz (10 questions). The quizzes count for like 0.25% of your final mark but it’s still important to do well on them. Studying BEFORE tutorial is key! And take these quizzes seriously because personally, I found them quite difficult! At the beginning of the year, they’re pretty straightforward but as things go on, the quizzes will become harder.
Quiz Format
Most often, you’ll be asked to identify a particular structure. For example, they’ll give you a diagram of the heart and point to one of the valves and ask you to identify it. Occasionally, you will get some questions that are related to the function or something specific about that structure e.g. what nerve travels to the structure. As the term progressed, I found they put more fill in the blank type questions rather than multiple choice. Some multiple multiples too in the second semester.
Reflection on Quizzes
For quizzes, knowing the diagrams in the textbook are key! Make sure to know the different views for each diagram e.g. study both the anterior and posterior views because they probably are not the same! Personally, I didn’t find the tutorial hour helpful since most of the quiz preparation has to be done on your own time (To give you an idea of how strenuously people prepare for this 0.25% quiz, it’s not uncommon to spend 5 hours studying for it). Tutorial could be a good refresher though and for some people who primarily learn by having explanations, it could be beneficial. Some TAs are nice enough to offer some hints too about what will be on too and it’s nice that we could actually see the actual body parts in real-life. Overall, I found the weekly quizzes pretty challenging, but I think the quizzes help students keep on track with the huge amount of information that they need to know.
Tips for Exams
Exam Format: 75 multiple choice questions. Different types of multiple choice questions:
- Which of the following statements is correct or incorrect (LOTS of these in the third and fourth exams)
- Questions with options “two of the above” or “none of the above”
- Identify the indicated structure (diagram)
This year’s exams did not have standard multiple multiple questions.
Some of the best advice I can give you is to focus on knowing the lecture notes very well and going through the objectives on the lecture slides at the beginning of each lecture. If you know the answers to each of the objectives, you should be able to answer most of the questions on the exam. Surprisingly, there aren’t too many diagrams on the exams. Considering how the amount of diagrams that we need to know for quizzes, an exam will usually only have 2-3 diagrams (they asked us to identify 2-3 structures in each of these diagrams or ask you what nerve etc. passes through the identified structure). Cue cards can be pretty useful for exam preparation.
Reflection
I really enjoyed this course, mainly because there was so much new stuff that I learned. The course is very detail and memorization heavy. In preparing for this class, I would suggest staying up to date with all the material and definitely memorizing everything before you go to tutorials. I didn’t do so well in the first exam because I think I focused too much on the textbook material while neglecting lecture notes. I would suggest reading the textbook before class, consulting it for diagrams, and using it to pick up the little details when preparing for exams. Focus on knowing the lectures notes very well. The exam averages in this course are also very high (ranges from low to mid 80s). Although most of the students who take this course are already very strong academically, I think this is one course where if you put in the time, you will be able to do very well.
Term 1
An introduction lecture was given by Dr. Merrifield on embryology and Dr. Cechetto gave the first series of lectures on the nervous system. We covered the details of the brain and spinal cord as well as the nerves that innervate them. Memorizing the nerves isn’t too bad, especially if you can think of what their functions are.
Term 2
There’s a bit more nervous system stuff e.g. peripheral nervous system. The majority of the second term covers the musculoskeletal system though.
Term 3
Musculoskeletal system: You will be learning all the limb muscles (approximately 70-80). This part of the course was pretty straightforward: you have to know the origin, insertion, action and innervations of the limb muscles.
Cardiovascular system: you will be learning about all the heart and blood vessels. Traditionally, the average for this exam has been in the mid 80s and is considered by most students to be the “easiest” exam.
Term 4
Respiratory, digestive, urinary and reproductive systems. This unit is basically a mix of everything: you have to know the structures, muscles, and blood vessels. You’ll have to know the muscles mainly for the respiratory system and the blood vessels that surround the stomach.
Tutorial
The Anat 3319 also holds a 1 hour tutorial on Tuesdays led by TAs. Many of the TAs are in the Masters of Clinical Anatomy program (http://www.uwo.ca/anatomy/grad/msclinic.html). You may be interested in this program as it’s only a masters program that is only 20 months long and helps you develop your teaching skills, particularly in anatomy.
For us, the tutorial session was divided into 2 stations with each station covering a different set of topics. During tutorials, it is mostly the TA explaining concepts and students asking questions. The TA will usually bring in prosections (a part of a cadaver) to show students e.g. during the muscle section, we got to see some dissected cross sections of the body and muscles etc. At the end of the tutorial, there is a short quiz (10 questions). The quizzes count for like 0.25% of your final mark but it’s still important to do well on them. Studying BEFORE tutorial is key! And take these quizzes seriously because personally, I found them quite difficult! At the beginning of the year, they’re pretty straightforward but as things go on, the quizzes will become harder.
Quiz Format
Most often, you’ll be asked to identify a particular structure. For example, they’ll give you a diagram of the heart and point to one of the valves and ask you to identify it. Occasionally, you will get some questions that are related to the function or something specific about that structure e.g. what nerve travels to the structure. As the term progressed, I found they put more fill in the blank type questions rather than multiple choice. Some multiple multiples too in the second semester.
Reflection on Quizzes
For quizzes, knowing the diagrams in the textbook are key! Make sure to know the different views for each diagram e.g. study both the anterior and posterior views because they probably are not the same! Personally, I didn’t find the tutorial hour helpful since most of the quiz preparation has to be done on your own time (To give you an idea of how strenuously people prepare for this 0.25% quiz, it’s not uncommon to spend 5 hours studying for it). Tutorial could be a good refresher though and for some people who primarily learn by having explanations, it could be beneficial. Some TAs are nice enough to offer some hints too about what will be on too and it’s nice that we could actually see the actual body parts in real-life. Overall, I found the weekly quizzes pretty challenging, but I think the quizzes help students keep on track with the huge amount of information that they need to know.
Tips for Exams
Exam Format: 75 multiple choice questions. Different types of multiple choice questions:
- Which of the following statements is correct or incorrect (LOTS of these in the third and fourth exams)
- Questions with options “two of the above” or “none of the above”
- Identify the indicated structure (diagram)
This year’s exams did not have standard multiple multiple questions.
Some of the best advice I can give you is to focus on knowing the lecture notes very well and going through the objectives on the lecture slides at the beginning of each lecture. If you know the answers to each of the objectives, you should be able to answer most of the questions on the exam. Surprisingly, there aren’t too many diagrams on the exams. Considering how the amount of diagrams that we need to know for quizzes, an exam will usually only have 2-3 diagrams (they asked us to identify 2-3 structures in each of these diagrams or ask you what nerve etc. passes through the identified structure). Cue cards can be pretty useful for exam preparation.
Reflection
I really enjoyed this course, mainly because there was so much new stuff that I learned. The course is very detail and memorization heavy. In preparing for this class, I would suggest staying up to date with all the material and definitely memorizing everything before you go to tutorials. I didn’t do so well in the first exam because I think I focused too much on the textbook material while neglecting lecture notes. I would suggest reading the textbook before class, consulting it for diagrams, and using it to pick up the little details when preparing for exams. Focus on knowing the lectures notes very well. The exam averages in this course are also very high (ranges from low to mid 80s). Although most of the students who take this course are already very strong academically, I think this is one course where if you put in the time, you will be able to do very well.