For those who have played Operation as a kid, the cadaver lab at Central Wyoming College will feel right at home.
It’s where Tara Womack teaches the anatomy and physiology classes at the college, which includes a cadaver anatomy class. The school and students get two human bodies every 16 weeks to examine, study and dissect.
She is as careful handling the cadaver as if she were playing the popular game, teaching students not to bruise the body parts. They are shown how to carefully remove each organ from the body cavity with the utmost respect. While Operation is a good warm-up, it really doesn’t hold a candle to cutting into and removing parts from a real body.
“The hardest part for me was cutting the cranium without touching the brain,” student Julia Tofani Vilasbas said. She is enthusiastic about the class and excited to dive into the lessons, literally getting her hands dirty and hauling off buckets of fluid when necessary.
The class is not a requirement and is only for a limited number of advanced students that want the opportunity to work on actual bodies -- and have the stomach for it.
It is definitely not for the weak, Vilasbas admitted. She herself was amazed by the process.
This innovative class is one reason CWC has been ranked in the top 2.4% of all colleges in America by Niche, according to Dr. Kathy Wells, vice president for academic affairs. When the college’s health science building was originally designed, a cadaver lab was included in the plan to help teach human anatomy at a deeper level
“This was not a new or an innovative way to learn anatomy,” Wells said. “We knew we were unique by putting in a cadaver lab at the community college level but we knew that it was an important aspect of learning.”
Normally programs that have access to cadaver anatomy are in big public universities, and even that access is usually restricted to medical students. It is not a widely accessible learning tool and one that Womack treats with the utmost respect.
Wells said that the lab is pivotal for the college’s healthcare programs and is available to anybody who's looking to advance into the health science profession. They just have to have an “A” in their anatomy classes and approved by their instructors.
Hands-On Learning
Womack worked with her colleagues at Casper College to set up her cadaver lab. The difference in the programs is that in Casper, the cadavers are used for their occupational therapy program and are not dissected.
Each summer, Womack receives two cadavers from the University of Utah, a male and female. All the dissections are done in the fall semester over a 16-week period and must be carefully pieced out. Every aspect of the body is examined and dissected carefully. Tissue slides are prepared and photos taken.
Each cadaver has a redacted death certificate, their first name, age, occupation and the cause of death, if known, along with any medical history that the family offers. This helps as the students study the body and get to know the individual posthumously.
Womack emphasizes that the advantage over textbooks and virtual dissection tools is that you get an appreciation for the dimension and the size of some of the body cavities. The students wear lab coats to protect their clothing as they get close up and personal with the organs they are extracting.
“In the cadaver lab, we can pull a lung out without cutting it out or removing it,” Womack said. “We can pull it up out of that cavity so they can see the size of the lungs, and it just gives them a better appreciation of the human body.”
During their studies, the students have made surprising discoveries which include diseases that had been previously undocumented in the cadaver’s medical records.
The cadavers come undissected and the only cut that has been made is in the neck where the bodies drained the blood and added the preserving fluid.
The cadaver anatomy students are responsible to do all the dissections, and then the students in the human anatomy class who don’t want to do the actual dissections, are able to see what the cadaver anatomy students have done.
The Dissection
The cadavers are stored in a specimen closet and wheeled out into the lab. Students then must hook up the ventilation with a long hose that goes from the cadaver table to a vent.
Each cadaver has arrived in a body bag with a plastic sheet over them and a hospital gown.
“I remind my students that they have to keep the humanness in mind,” Womack said as they carefully remove them from the body bag and place them on the lab tables.
“I have to dissociate myself in order to do the actual dissection,” Womack admitted. Out of respect, she keeps the faces of the bodies covered at all times.
A dissection guide is followed and Womack leads her students through a close study of the body. They first look at the skin and then at the muscles. As the semester progresses, they open up the thoracic cavity and carefully remove the sac around the heart. They can see for themselves how each organ is positioned.
“I tell my students that we are probably more careful with the bodies than during a surgery,” Womack said. “We treat them with the utmost respect and handle them with care.”
The lab is kept clean as they continue their examination throughout the entire semester. This will also include a dissection of the back muscles and of the spinal cord.
After each dissection, the students cover the body with a plastic sheet after spraying them down with a mold retardant to keep the tissues moist.
At the end of the semester, the cadavers are cremated. If the family wants the remains, they are returned to the family. Otherwise, the University of Utah has a cemetery for their donors, and they have a ceremony every May that honors those who have donated their bodies to science.
The Cadaver Lab at Central Wyoming College is where a select few students can dissect and learn on actual cadaver’s. It is the only community college in Wyoming that offers this opportunity. Nursing students who wish to participate in the Cadaver Lab must pass their anatomy class with an “A” and get instructor approval. 
The Cadaver Lab at Central Wyoming College is where a select few students can dissect and learn on actual cadaver’s. It is the only community college in Wyoming that offers this opportunity. Nursing students who wish to participate in the Cadaver Lab must pass their anatomy class with an “A” and get instructor approval. 
The Cadaver Lab at Central Wyoming College is where a select few students can dissect and learn on actual cadaver’s. It is the only community college in Wyoming that offers this opportunity. Nursing students who wish to participate in the Cadaver Lab must pass their anatomy class with an “A” and get instructor approval. They also work on dummies. 
The Cadaver Lab at Central Wyoming College is where a select few students can dissect and learn on actual cadaver’s. It is the only community college in Wyoming that offers this opportunity. Nursing students who wish to participate in the Cadaver Lab must pass their anatomy class with an “A” and get instructor approval. 
The Cadaver Lab at Central Wyoming College is where a select few students can dissect and learn on actual cadaver’s. It is the only community college in Wyoming that offers this opportunity. Nursing students who wish to participate in the Cadaver Lab must pass their anatomy class with an “A” and get instructor approval. 
The Cadaver Lab at Central Wyoming College is where a select few students can dissect and learn on actual cadaver’s. It is the only community college in Wyoming that offers this opportunity. Nursing students who wish to participate in the Cadaver Lab must pass their anatomy class with an “A” and get instructor approval. 
The Cadaver Lab at Central Wyoming College is where a select few students can dissect and learn on actual cadaver’s. It is the only community college in Wyoming that offers this opportunity. Nursing students who wish to participate in the Cadaver Lab must pass their anatomy class with an “A” and get instructor approval. 
The Cadaver Lab at Central Wyoming College is where a select few students can dissect and learn on actual cadaver’s. It is the only community college in Wyoming that offers this opportunity. Nursing students who wish to participate in the Cadaver Lab must pass their anatomy class with an “A” and get instructor approval. 
The Cadaver Lab at Central Wyoming College is where a select few students can dissect and learn on actual cadaver’s. It is the only community college in Wyoming that offers this opportunity. Nursing students who wish to participate in the Cadaver Lab must pass their anatomy class with an “A” and get instructor approval.
The Students
The anatomy students who opt into this cadaver class come from a variety of backgrounds. They include nursing students and, this past fall, were a future physician's assistant and physical therapist.
As one of the most enthusiastic students, Vilasbas says that this class has prepared her for her future career. She is a pre-med student and is planning on being a trauma surgeon and was grateful for the opportunity to study real bodies.
She knows not everyone wants to do the class but advises future students not to be scared and to just go for it.
“It helped me a lot, with all the research I was able to do,” Vilasbas said. “I got the experience to dissect every single thing on my own, from muscles to organs.”
For Vilasbas, she found the experience amazing and it confirmed her desire to go into the medical field. It took the lessons out of the textbooks and applied them to real life. She also learned how to handle the cadaver’s properly.
“I learned a lot, like how deep you can go into each part of the body,” Vilasbas said.
“Any student who is interested in going into any the healthcare field or any fields that would take them the medical route would benefit from this class,” Wells said. “Every one of those students has to take anatomy because you have to know how the body works.”
Not A Requirement
The cadaver lab class is not a requirement since not every student wants or needs this experience. Vilasbas knows students who have refused to even consider taking the class. She tries to encourage them to go into the lab because she personally believes the class should be taken by those wanting to go into a medical field.
Despite not attending the class themselves, they will still learn from the cadaver class since careful notes have been taken through the entire process. This includes photos and tissue slides that have been made.
“The student never has to engage with the cadaver if they don't want to,” Wells said. “Only a few students can really engage with a dissection and so far that's worked out really good for us.”
Virtual Reality
Instructors at Central Wyoming College are also implementing virtual reality and augmented reality into their learning. This way, students can study the human anatomy through software programs to go beyond the textbooks and helps those that don’t want to dissect a cadaver themselves.
“This way they can visualize the pathway of the blood flow through the human heart,” Wells said. “They can see how the structures promote or disease structures inhibit the blood flow.”
There are things that virtual reality can show students that they can’t learn on a cadaver and things that students still learn better when hands on she said.
“The anatomy classes and cadaver lab are definitely making for stronger healthcare professionals,” Wells concluded. “This is that first layer of a building block that all the rest of their education builds on. It is so much stronger now than it ever has been because of its flexibility.”
Jackie Dorothy can be reached at jackie@cowboystatedaily.com.
