By james art 
For those who have played Operation as a child, the Central Wyoming College carcase lab will feel at home.
This is where Tara Wamak teaches anatomy and physiology classes at college, which includes an anatomy class. The school and the students receive two human bodies every 16 weeks to explore, study and do dissection.
She is so careful that she handles the corpse as if he plays the popular game, teaching students not to injure the parts of the body. They are shown how to carefully remove any organ from the body cavity with the greatest respect. Although the operation is a good warming, it really does not hold a candle to cut and remove parts of a real body.
“The hardest part for me was cutting the skull without touching the brain,” said student Julia Tofani Villasbas. She is enthusiastic in the class and is excited to immerse herself in the lessons, literally smudging her hands and pulling buckets with fluid when needed.
The class is not a requirement and is only for a limited number of advanced students who want the opportunity to work on real bodies – and have a stomach for it.
It is definitely not for the weak, Villasbas admitted. She was amazed at the process.
This innovative class is one of the reasons for CWC to be ranked in the top 2.4% of all colleges in America according to a niche, according to Dr. Katie Wales, Vice President of Academic Affairs. When the College of Health Science was originally designed, a corpse lab was included in the plan to help teach human anatomy at a deeper level
“It was not a new or innovative way to study anatomy,” Wales said. “We knew we were unique by putting a public college laboratory laboratory, but we knew this was an important aspect of training.”
Usually, programs that have access to the anatomy of the corpse are in large state universities and even this access is usually limited to medical students. This is not a widely available training tool and one that Womack treats with the greatest respect.
Wales said the laboratory is key to college health programs and is accessible to anyone who wants to progress in the profession of health sciences. They just have to have “A” in their anatomy hours and be approved by their instructors.
Practical training
Womack works with his Casper College colleagues to create his carcasted laboratory. The difference in programs is that Casper carcasses are used for their occupational therapy program and are not dissected.
Every summer, Womack receives two corpses from the University of Utah, a man and a woman. All dissections are made during the autumn semester for a period of 16 weeks and must be carefully disassembled. Every aspect of the body is examined and dissect carefully. Fabric slides are prepared and photos are taken.
Each corpse has an edited death act, its first name, age, profession and cause of death, if known, along with the medical history that the family offers. This helps as students study the body and get to know the individual posthumously.
Womack emphasizes that the advantage over textbooks and virtual dissection tools is that you get an assessment of the size and size of some of the body cavities. Students wear laboratory aprons to protect their clothes as they get acquainted with the organs they extract.
“We can remove the lungs in the corpse laboratory without cutting it or removing it,” Woman said. “We can remove it from this cavity so that they can see the size of the lungs, and this just gives them a better appreciation of the human body.”
During their studies, students have made surprising discoveries that include diseases that have not previously been documented in the corpse medical records.
The corpses come unsuccessful and the only incision that is made is on the neck where the bodies have drained the blood and added the canning fluid.
Corust anatomy students are responsible to make all the dissections, and then students in the anatomy class of a person who do not want to do the actual dissections, can see what students have done by anatomy of a corpse.
Dissection
The corpses are stored in a sample cabinet and are taken to the laboratory. The students then have to connect ventilation with a long hose that runs from the table with the corpse to an outlet.
Each corpse has arrived in a plastic bag and a hospital apron.
“I remind my students that they should keep in mind humanity,” Womak said as they carefully removed them from the bag of corpses and placed them at the laboratory tables.
“I have to distinguish itself to make real dissection,” Womak admitted. Out of respect, she holds the faces of the bodies covered all the time.
A dissection guide is followed and Woman leads his students through careful examination of the body. They first look at the skin and then the muscles. As the semester progresses, they open the chest cavity and carefully remove the bag around the heart. They can see how each organ is located.
“I tell my students that we are probably more careful with bodies than during surgery,” Womak said. “We treat them with the greatest respect and deal with them carefully.”
The laboratory is kept clean as they continue their exam throughout the semester. This will also include dissection of the muscles of the back and spinal cord.
After each dissection, the students cover the body with a nylon sheet after spraying them with a mold delay to keep the tissue moist.
At the end of the semester, the corpses are cremated. If the family wants the remains, they return to the family. Otherwise, the University of Utah has a cemetery for its donors and everyone may have a ceremony where they worship those who have donated their bodies to science.
The students
Anatomy students who choose this carcass class come from different environments. They include nursing students and last fall were a future doctor and physiotherapist assistant.
As one of the most enthusiastic students, Villasbas says this class has prepared her for her future career. She is a medical student and plans to be a traumatologist and was grateful for the opportunity to study real bodies.
She knows that not everyone wants to participate in the class, but advises future students not to be afraid and just do it.
“It helped me a lot with all the research I was able to do,” Villasbas said. “I received an attempt to dissect every thing myself, from muscles to organs.”
For Vilabas, she found the experience of incredible, and she confirmed her desire to go to the medical field. It removed the lessons from the textbooks and applied them in real life. She also learned how to handle the corpse properly.
“I learned a lot, for example, how deep you can enter any part of the body,” Villasbas said.
“Every student who is interested in any area of health or other areas that would take him on the medical course will benefit from this class,” Wales said. “Each of these students should take an anatomy because you need to know how the body works.”
Is not a requirement
The classroom class is not a requirement as not every student wants or needs this experience. Villasbas knows students who have even refused to consider taking the class. She tries to encourage them to go to the lab because she personally believes that the class must be taken from those who want to go to the medical field.
Although they do not attend the class themselves, they will still learn from the troupe class, as careful notes are held throughout the process. This includes photos and slides that are taken.
“The student should never deal with the corpse if he does not want to,” Wales said. “Only a few students can really engage in dissection, and so far this is very good for us.”
Virtual reality
Instructors at Central Wyoming College also implement virtual reality and expanded reality in their training. In this way, students can study human anatomy through software programs to exceed textbooks and help those who do not want to dissect a corpse themselves.
“In this way, they can visualize the path of blood flow through the human heart,” Wales said. “They can see how structures encourage or disease structures impede blood flow.”
There are things that virtual reality can show students who cannot learn on a corpse, and things that students still learn better when they are in their hands, she said.
“Anatomy classes and the corpse laboratory are definitely creating stronger healthcare professionals,” Wales concluded. “This is the first layer of a building block on which the rest of their education is built. It is now much stronger than ever because of its flexibility. “
Jackie Dorothy can be reached on [email protected].