Inside Health: Last but not least: donating your body to advance medical science

Published on Monday 26 January 2009 21:05

ARRANGING for your body to be donated to help train medical students may not be high on people's to-do lists when they are preparing a will.

But the need for more bodies – or cadavers as they are affectionately known in medical schools – is growing, leading to calls from doctors and students for people to consider donating.

I've heard that in some parts of Scotland anatomy training using actual bodies has almost ceased.

But this is not entirely due to a lack of people donating their bodies. Changes to medical training have also meant less time has been devoted to dissection in recent years.

One medical student said while there was no longer the need for very detailed anatomy training as was seen in the past, there still needed to be a "middle ground". In some medical schools students still practice dissection on an actual body, while in others training focuses on the use of already dissected body parts – so-called "prosections" – and other techniques such as hi-tech scans.

"There have been advances in recent years in terms of the use of MRI and CT scans, and students are taught using ready dissected and preserved tissue, but it is not the same as the hands-on experience of dissection," the student said.

"It is one of the best ways to teach anatomy to students."

Last year 163 bodies were received by medical schools in Scotland – the highest level ever recorded.

But another factor driving demand is changes in the law that mean bodies can now also be used in surgical training.

So while in the past medical schools have had to turn down bodies because they did not need them for anatomy training as much, they now need them again for surgical practice.

Doctors and students now hope people will hear their pleas and consider donating their body to medical schools.

"I think it is just lack of awareness that people don't know about the possibility of donating a body and how it would be used to help train future generations of doctors and to the benefit of patients," the student said.