UofTMed Alum: Why all those hours in the anatomy lab make us better doctors
Do you ever have those moments in your practice where you’re carried back to the anatomy lab? Where in trying to diagnose a challenging case, you remember following those nerve connections with your gloved hands — feeling the muscles, arteries, ligaments, bone. And through this deep understanding of the human body and its anatomy, you piece together a logical explanation.
As an ophthalmology resident, this happens to me often. I recently saw a patient who had a baseball hit to the face. The eye hung lower than expected, and was red and engorged with blood. The patient wasn’t able to move it as normal, and was complaining of double vision and numbness of the teeth. In trying to fathom how all of these symptoms might be connected, I was brought back to my anatomy training as a U of T MD/PhD student. I could visualize the likely orbital floor fracture in my head — the eye sunken into the sinuses, the muscles entrapped and the nerves compressed. I could see that specific anatomical spot in the head, where bones, nerves, and muscles lie in close proximity, explaining all of this patient’s signs and symptoms.
Does this sound familiar?
When you see, touch and feel the intricate connections of the body — that knowledge sticks with you. This is why, in the years I spent studying inflammation at the cellular level for my PhD, I jumped at the opportunity to teach anatomy to medical students. I came to see it as almost akin to a core science, along with biology, chemistry and physics — as one of the building blocks of medicine.
And over the years, so many colleagues have told me how their memories from the basement anatomy lab in MSB ended up helping them in their clinical work — this includes doctors with many years’ experience, and not just in the specialties that you might suspect, like surgery. Anatomy memories reminded one colleague where to find certain small arteries and avoid them during a gallbladder operation; they convinced another not to rule out appendicitis even when the pain wasn’t in the usual spot. And they helped guide others through challenging surgical procedures.
If you have a story about how anatomy shaped or informed your work in medicine, I would love to hear it.
Jacob Rullo is an ophthalmology resident at Queen's University and a University of Toronto MD/PhD graduate.
Email your reflections or anecdotes to alumni.medicine@utoronto.ca, and note whether you’d like them kept private, or shared in the MedAlumni e-newsletter.
