i start my degree in physiotherapy tomorrow, as i have a hard 4 year slog ahead of me, i was wondering what you guys found was the easiest or most effective method of learning anatomy?
any help will be much appreciated!
thank you
Repetition, and lots of it. Thats how I learned it, try to understand the information before you repeat it though. Understanding basic physiology can often make the anatomy portion make more sense.
I had to learn anatomy the hard way, we study from the old books, Rouviere, Testut etc… Starting with the systems, then finally topographical anatomy. The best way, is in my opinion using pnemonics, for example the twelve pairs of cranial nerves: Oh Oh Oh To Touch And Feel Virginal Girls Vagina And Hymen (sorry it’s dirty but that’s the way we learn’t it) gives you the first letter of all the nerves : Optical Oculo-motor Olfatic Troclear Trigeminal Abducens Facial Vestibulocochlear Glosopharyngeal Vagus Accesory Hypoglossal.
Just make the pnemonics dirty and it’s easier to remember 
Oh and I almost forgot, you want a good set of books, The Treatise on Anatomy by Rouviere is a three volume beauty (looks really good on your bookshelf too), but a nice simple anatomical atlas is the Human Anatomy by Netter.
Hey, the best way to understand human anatomy is through cadaver based learning. You will need the textbook repetition to remember the specific names, but it is much easier to identify and understand the structures involved once you have seen it ‘in the flesh’. Plus, chicks dig it when you tell them your cadaver dissection stories (or they’ll be completely grossed out and won’t let you touch them for a few weeks).
Pneumonics: awesome.
I remember using this way back in highschool (but not knowing what it was). I used to have trouble remember the pairing of the DNA bases, so I made up “Ass Tits, Green Cock.” (A-T, G-C)
Has a certain rhyme to it and soon all of my friends caught on, even to the point where I heard someone muttering “…green cock” during last year’s biology exams.
Good luck with your physiotherapy degree.
I gotta agree with Herb. I spent a lot of time in Gray’s Anatomy during my undergrad. The pictures are so detailed, I justed ended up downloading them all and studying directly off of printouts instead of using my university text.
I found the video format by Robert Acland to be a valuable learning tool-
They videos now come in DVD format and have 6 disks (used to be 4)
The dissections are of fresh cadavers and the images are rotated from a variety of angles.
The videos are produced by Lippincot, Williams, & Wilkins.
Here is a link-
For learning pretty much anything, I’ve found it really helpful to get into the material and not just see it as foreign stuff to memorize . . .let’s see if I can explain that.
Let’s use chemistry as an example. If you accept as real an atom, then see how it can combine with other atoms to form molecules, and those molecules, because of their properties, interact with other molecules in certain ways, etc. then it makes each new level much easier to absorb and retain; you don’t need to “remember” it because you understand it.
Presumably you’re into physiology already, so anatomy should be interesting too, but a lot of students seem to dread all the learning they must do(I do this too sometimes). Rather, isn’t it cool that there’s so much knowledge available in a field you’re interested in?
You got some great advice here already so I will just tell you what I did for my 3 different anatomy courses and going on to my 4th. For the lecture information I would audio record my lectures, ALL of them. This is a killer, b/c it will keep you up at night, especially if you’re the type to tape all your course lectures. I would not waste my time in reading anatomy texts, it will just confuse you even more and believe me, anatomy can be quite confusing b/c no 2 anatomy texts are the same, I learned this the difficult way.
Instead what I would do is get my hands on Frank Netters Anatomy Atlas book or his CD ROM equivalent, this book will only give the different plates, in other words it will only be a book filled with slides (no text) and for the theory I would rely on how the professor presents the information, which is what you want come exam time (hence the usefulness of the audio recordings).
Also, very important, you will also be tested on the practical lab exam on identification. For this get your hands on a video camera, do not rely on the text book or a camera (I don’t care if its digital and great quality), you need a 3-D analysis, 2-D will NOT help. Also, try and get a friend to help, most likely you will have a lab partner so both of you should agree on a convenient time slot in your schedule and go tape it, this will help cut down taping time, b/c as I’m sure you can imagine, it would be hard to point and tape at the sametime. This will also cut down on time to go to the lab, you can tape everything in a couple of lab classes and never have to show up at the lab again.
Also, b/c you taped it, you can edit the movie with editing software and add the names of the identification points, you can make it quite professional. Although, I would go to the lab couple times before the practical exam, jsut so you can get the “real” look and after reviewing your tape, you will be in and out in no time, believe me.
And on a good note, you can make some copies on DVD and sell some to your classmates, I did! and made some good money too. They will pay, as the exam date gets closer and closer. Although, in a professional program I dont know if they will allow that. Good luck.