Human corpses are a key training tool for future doctors and dentists, but in some medical schools donations have declined since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. Officials remind people that body donation is important for research and education.
“In terms of learning, having a real human body has superiority. This allows you to actually feel, touch and view the different structures the way they normally are, rather than in a synthetic corpse or 3D model, ”said Dr Olusegun Oyedele, Associate Professor in the Department of Cell and Physiological Sciences at the University of the UK. Colombia.
The University of Vancouver has had problems receiving its usual number of donated bodies, as has West University in London, Ont., Where donations have fallen by 20 percent from pre-pandemic levels, said Hailey Linklater, who oversees the body testament program at Schulich. Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry and manages the anatomy laboratory.
There have been reports of reduced body donation this year in Nigeria, the UK, Sweden and the United States.
“I’d like to have 100 or more each year so I can help with all of our teaching and contribute to our research, but we get a little less than that, usually 75 to 85,” Linklater said.
“In 2020, we only had 18 accepted donors because we really weren’t sure what the academic year would be like, but in the following years, 2021 and 2022 so far, we only had 60 to 65 donors.
“First teachers”
Linklater is unsure of what to attribute the drop in donations, although she suspects people were unable to arrange a funeral service for their loved ones during the pandemic and want to have a body for a more traditional service.
Close relatives play a large role in the donation, and donors usually want to help with research or future medical students because they have been supported in some way by the health system.
Armagan (Army) Alam is a medical student at the University of British Columbia who says the donated human corpses that students work with are respected. (Submitted by Army Alam)
Both Western and UBC, like most other medical schools that use donated human bodies, teach students respect for corpses.
“Donors are really their teachers. What we do to repeat this kind of respect and homage to them is that we have a short service at the beginning of each school year for each class to remind them that this is a sacred place, that they “received a gift, and that they are expected to treat these donors as their first patients and first teachers, “Linklater said.
Armagan (Army) Alam, 25, was an engineering student when he took a course in human anatomy at McGill University in Montreal. The students were shown human corpses and the experience led Alam to change his major from medicine.
“The first person I saw was this 30-year-old man in perfect, virginal condition. It was very shocking and I felt awe and gratitude that someone not much older than me made this decision to donate his body, “said Alam, who is now in his fourth year of medical school at UBC. He organized a memorial service at the end of the year for the corpses, to which relatives were invited.
Preserved body parts in a laboratory at the University of British Columbia help students learn anatomy. (Delivered by the University of British Columbia)
“It is an honor and a privilege for me to have this training, a very special experience,” Alam said. “I had a corpse that had tattoos and we decided to try not to cut the tattoos if it wasn’t necessary, because this man, we didn’t know their exact history, but this man had a long and influential life. It was a reminder to be incredibly respectful and considerate. ”
Every human body is different, complex and detailed, and that’s not something you can learn in a textbook, Alam said.
That is why medical schools hope that the decline in corpse donations is an omission rather than a trend.
“I like to have personal conversations with potential donors, to repeat that not everyone can be a donor, that they have to inform their relatives, that they have to hire a funeral service to transport their bodies to us,” Linklater said.
The memorial service at the end of the year leaves family members, staff and students with a sense of pride and gratitude, she added.
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