look anatomy is polarizing some medical students love it but let's be real most medical students hate it but here's the thing it can be painless in fact anatomy can even be fun if you study it properly here's how i studied it what i would do differently and what i would recommend for you what's going on guys for those of you who are new here my name is kevin jabal physician entrepreneur based in las vegas formerly in plastic surgery love it or hate it anatomy is a foundational component to your medical training at a fundamental level you need to understand what the human body is the various organs the various structures and how they relate to one another even if you're not going into surgery having an understanding of that is still critical to physiology and pathophysiology let's say you're an im doctor and the general surgeon is explaining to you that they resected the ilium from a crohn's disease patient now if you didn't really know your anatomy you'd be like yeah hold up what part of the small intestine is that how much is remaining how does that influence their nutrient absorption it just wouldn't be good so here's how i studied anatomy i used four primary methods first being textbooks of course this was my textbook of choice the theme atlas of anatomy i use this throughout medical school as well as residency it's my favorite anatomy book but there's of course grays there's netters of course the two classics and then snell's clinical anatomy is another one that a lot of medical students swear by you can find links to all of them down in the description number two is going to be anatomy apps the 3d anatomy apps on your phone tablet computer the two that i used were essential anatomy and complete anatomy and i'm sure there's a lot of other great ones that are available now if you have a suggestion leave it with a comment down below so others can learn from your experience number three is flash cards and because i'm just old school like that i bought the actual physical neter anatomy cards you can get on amazon and they were okay i'm not gonna lie i preferred using anki i made my own flash cards with image occlusion but you can also use pre-made decks with anking with 100 concepts with michigan deck and so on and number four is of course real life with a cadaver now before we dive into each type i want to emphasize that most people think learning anatomy is just rote memorization it is a lot of memorization don't get me wrong but if you incorporate clinical understanding clinical significance with that memorization it's gonna make so much more sense it's gonna be so much easier to learn trust me you're gonna be tested on not just what the structure is and not just what a structure does but also the deficit if that structure is injured so once you memorize the brachial plexus and its various innervations let's say a patient comes in with an injury at a certain cervical spine level you're gonna know what exactly their deficit is and this is broadly applicable like take the cranial nerve exam so if a patient can't accommodate to light then you're thinking about the afferent you're thinking about the efferent and you're incorporating that clinical significance which actually makes the anatomy stick all right now let's break down each of the methods so first being textbooks these are going to be your gold standard they are the most thorough the most reliable the most accurate the issue is that of course they're two-dimensional and they're not inherently interactive so i find that for students who struggle with spatial reasoning these 2d textbooks aren't going to be as helpful still they should always serve as a reliable reference all right next up anatomy apps they're interactive they're beautiful i think because they're so impressive visually we over emphasize and put too much weight on their utility they're not the end-all be-all in fact they're not always totally accurate which i learned the hard way so i was rotating on an away rotation and again i wanted to specialize in hand as a subset of plastic surgery so i'm working with this hand surgeon and he pimps me on the extensor appropriate indices and whether that is radial or ulnar to the extensor digitorum communist now this is a really small detail but again if you want to go into hand surgery this is relevant this is really important and i remember closing my eyes thinking to what i remember from the app and i was like oh yeah i got this and i gave my answer i remembered it correctly from the anatomy app and that app was wrong not the end of the world but these apps are like 95 accurate they're gonna have a few inconsistencies here and there next up flash cards so back when i was in med school back in the 1900s there weren't any pre-made decks to use so i made my own cards and i actually really enjoyed doing so because i wouldn't make cards on everything i would only make cards on the things that i really struggled with things that were hard for me to remember so i would incorporate mnemonics very reliably and the more ridiculous and outlandish they are the more they're going to stick all these years later i still remember the external carotid which was some anatomists like others prefer snm the cool thing too about making your own flash cards with anki is that you could use the image occlusion plugin and i have a video on the medical insider channel link to that in the description that makes it super quick super painless it's like a couple seconds to make flash cards on the image that you want especially if you know all the all the shortcuts to take a screenshot et cetera et cetera and the fourth one is actually learning from real life i would say this is the most valuable way to learn anatomy there's two methods here if you're pre-clinical it's going to be primarily your cadaver lab and then when you're in your clinical rotation that's going to be in the actual operating room now pre-clinical studying in the anatomy lab with friends not just during your assigned classroom time but even after hours i thought was so valuable we would bump some kanye west and me and like two guys would go down there and we would go through everything that was going to be on the practical and teach each other it was essentially us incorporating the fineman technique and doing so was a very active form of learning it was also a good break from just like the constant textbooks and primarily studying solo it was being more social interactive we had music it was fun i have fond memories of being in the anatomy lab we would go through each structure ask each other quiz each other and then also incorporate clinical significance and those were the moments when i actually learned the fastest and things stuck the most and if you get the chance i definitely recommend you become an anatomy ta in your fourth year and you'll you'll be teeing for the first years you'll be doing the pro sessions you'll be teaching them and it really solidified my understanding of anatomy prior to entering residency now in your clinical years you should be actively testing yourself in the operating room like in your head not out loud and as you see the surgeon enter the abdomen or the layers of the scalp you know you're not doing it yourself you're suctioning or you're retracting but you should still be quizzing yourself and trying to identify the various structures you see with the various layers that you're entering through and if you don't remember something that's fine don't i wouldn't really recommend you ask the surgeon that won't really make you look good in your evaluation but you can make a mental note of that to check it up later say hey you know what i forgot the layers of the abdominal wall i need to refresh on that later all right so here are my recommendations for learning anatomy first is to embrace the messiness a lot of our learning in medical school is more or less straightforward we learn in lecture we do a few boards and beyond videos we do some pathoma we do some practice questions and then repeat to the next thing anatomy is not so linear it's a little bit more messy so you're going to be jumping between the textbook the cadaver lab the 3d anatomy apps the the various things you're going to be hopping between them it's supposed to be messy that's okay number two is to make the most of cataveric dissection it's a tremendous opportunity you won't get it again in your medical training and the thing here is yes in your actual cadaver labs when you have to be there when you have to dissect through things be present don't just be watching like even if you're not interested in surgery don't just watch and and be in the sidelines get involved to be active you'll learn much faster but then also don't be afraid to come in after hours assuming your school allows that to to learn and quiz one another prior to your practicals that is the most effective way to learn from my experience number three is to of course embrace active learning with things like anatomy that are a lot of roach memorization people think that oh just repetition repetition repetition if you're just repeating and doing recognition rather than active recall you're gonna have to do a lot more repetitions to actually get that information solidified into your long-term memory and number four is to use high-quality resources which brings us to kenhub the sponsor of today's video kenhub is a single comprehensive resource to learn anatomy if the scattered approach to learning anatomy is a bit overwhelming a bit disorganized then kenhub actually takes the guesswork out they streamline the whole process of learning anatomy because remember you can't just focus on a text but you can't just focus on cadaver lab and what kenhub does is they actually combine various ways of learning anatomy in a single page it's super streamlight it's really easy to use they start with a very easy to understand clean well laid out videos that explain the anatomy after that you reinforce the information immediately by quizzing yourself using active recall next you can further refine your understanding with their atlas which has high quality images and then you finish it off with a summary of the anatomy you learned now who do i think kenhub is for if you're a pre-med or a pre-clinical medical student in your first two years then kenhub is definitely gonna be valuable to you if you're a third or fourth year and let's say you're specializing in orthopedics or in plastic surgery you need to know the nuances about like the the tendons in the hand and whether they're radial or ulnar then it's not going to be as well suited but again for pre-meds and pre-clinical medical students i think it's a fantastic resource check it out today you can get a 10 discount by using the link in the description all right guys that's it for this video if there's anything i missed when it comes to learning anatomy and you want to share with the other viewers then please do leave a comment down below if you enjoyed this video then check out this one or that one much love and i'll see you guys there you