Author: mattpete

As students of the Honors class NHS Scotland- Policies, Problems, and Innovative Solutions, our study abroad program provided us the opportunity to tour the University of Dundee’s Center for Anatomy and Human Identification laboratory. Throughout the two-hour experience, we learned about the comprehensive and complex donation system, whereby many donors are local residents. The tour was segmented into three different parts. The first part of the tour was an introduction session where the head of the donations department discussed the responsibilities and policies followed by curators, researchers, and students to ensure the utmost respect is had when handling donors’ bodies. The second was an immersive exploration of the dissection zone; the third was an informative walkthrough of the storage spaces and preservation techniques.
This event was a first for me, like many other students in the program. While some students, such as myself, were more curious than others, I believe the situation had both positive and negative aspects. Cadaver donation is paramount to furthering our modern understanding of the body and its systems, whereby strides in learning can lead to innovation and a more well-rounded approach to healthcare. I found it extremely interesting and valuable to witness how medical students and researchers examine the body via cadavers. Comparatively, the experience required a great deal of emotional processing. Most of us have never seen a corpse in real life, thereby making the dissection aspect of it both rewarding but also challenging to evaluate. However, I am incredibly grateful to the program administrators at UNC-Chapel Hill and the University of Dundee for organizing the tour and the cadaver donors for giving us an opportunity that few our age are offered.
This experience changed my perspective about healthcare because, in retrospect, I learned how essential body donation is to improving healthcare. For medical students in training and degree-holding researchers/medical professionals, a wide array of skills, techniques, and ideas can be gained and created using a cadaver. As mentioned in the tour, med-students in residency can practice surgery before operating on a live patient, reducing the number of mistakes or errors in a real-time surgery. Alternatively, forensic pathologists can access parts of the body that enable them to better understand anatomy systems in ways that cannot be achieved using a living patient. Concerning biomedical engineering, a new product/part could be manufactured and outfitted to a cadaver before trials on a live patient to achieve the lowest levels of invasiveness or scarring on the body during insertion. In summation, I would highly recommend and strongly encourage prospective students of this UNC study abroad program to participate in this experience, as it was both eye-opening and enriching for someone interested in healthcare.