Cadavers Help Students Prepare For Professions In Medicine. But Some Are Donated Without Consent.

Arlington TX

03 April, 2022

4:29 PM

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By Alexis Allison, Fort Worth Report April 3, 2022 The fourth-year medical students who'd gathered around cadaver No. 86886 made mistakes. The first student, who'd volunteered to attempt a cricothyroidotomy — an incision just below the Adam's apple — didn't push the scalpel deep enough into the dead man's neck. A second student couldn't find the trachea. The lab's guest lecturer, a trauma surgeon at John Peter Smith Hospital, adjusted her grip on the forceps. Another student slipped one hand instead of two into a freshly carved opening in the cadaver's chest. In the anatomy lab at The University of North Texas Health Science Center at Fort Worth, medical students interact with what some consider their very first patients: dead people who, more often than not, chose to donate their bodies to science through the school's Willed Body Program. They provide the repetition that leads to confidence for students who will one day treat living patients. But about one in four cadavers belong to those the county calls "unclaimed": people whose families couldn't afford or chose not to provide funeral services, or those whose next of kin couldn't be found. Not only has the program saved Tarrant County hundreds of thousands of dollars in its first three years alone, it's provided a more diverse donor pool from which students can learn. To read the full article, click here. Fort Worth Report is a nonpartisan, nonprofit news organization that produces factual, in-depth journalism about city and county government, schools, healthcare, business, and arts and culture in Tarrant County. Always free to read; subscribe to newsletters, read coverage or support our newsroom at fortworthreport.org.