Anatomy at Birmingham

I have an offer from Birmingham medical school for next year. I am obviously ecstatic because the course seems really clearly structured, they have fortnightly GP placements and well above average success in postgraduate exams (MRCP etc). I am however concerned about the apparent lack of anatomy teaching, specifically prosection and dissection. When I went for interview the student who showed me around said she only gets to go into the 'prosectorium' once a term and occasionally for exams. She also said that some anatomy demonstrators don't even let you touch the bodies! There is also no dissection at all, not even as part of an intercalated degree. How can you learn where things are inside a human body when you barely actually see the anatomy in the flesh? I dread the thought of having to try to learn anatomy in an abstract, textbook based way. I wondered what your opinions are on the necessity of dissection/prosection? I also wondered whether anyone can support or refute what the student told me about Anatomy teaching at Birmingham?


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I'm at a uni that does dissection and I find it really hit and miss how helpful it is. Like one of our consultants say 'patient's haven't read the textbook' i.e. you can't always learn the 'normal' because patients vary so much. It is also hard to know if you're dissecting correctly and you can easily destroy or damage important structures.

Last term we did dissection for the GI system and very few of us found it helpful. This term we have the muscular skeletal system and its more worthwhile.

Basically dissection does have its benefits but I certainly don't think its a necessity. I actually learn anatomy best from an online programme called net anatomy.

So do you think it would be possible to learn anatomy to a good level without dissection or (regular) prosection?


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I learned anatomy from a combination of lectures, textbooks, dissection and prosection. I found the the online anatomy stuff to be pretty useless and too fake. If Birmingham really doesn't allow you to even do prosection then that is going to be an issue for anatomy teaching.

Thankyou. I won't lie and tell you that my worries have been soothed, but if I don't get any other offers I don't have a choice anyway!


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I honestly wouldn't let it worry you. Anatomy teaching is perfectly good, and learning clinical medicine and therapeutics is far more important than anatomy in being a junior doctor.By the time you are in final year you only really remember the anatomy which is relevant to clinical medicine. And as somebody above said, if surgery is your goal, you'll learn it as you are doing it!

Perhaps I'm over-estimating the importance of anatomy as an undergraduate.

I agree. Can any Birmingham students tell me how often they had prosection in the first 2 years, and how effective it was (ie. too many students, allowed to touch?, enough time? Etc) ? Would really appreciate it

Hiya, im a Birmingham student, and although it was a long time ago I did anatomy (2009-11) I'll try and answer your questions. We had approximately 3 sessions of prosection per year in first and second year, and a session in third year. They lasted two hours and we were in small groups of 2-3 rotating around different specimen tables, with anatomy demonstrators there to help and answer any questions.

It was useful and you are allowed to touch the specimens, and I think that one benefit it has over dissection is that the specimens have been dissected by experts to show specific important things.


Overall I'd say it really doesn't matter whether you have dissection or prosection. There are plenty of ways to learn anatomy and there's far more too medicine than anatomy, so I wouldn't let it influence your choice of medical school.

If you have any other questions about the medical school just ask






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