Cadavers share their silent lessons with Clark students

When Tony Chennault first studied anatomy and physiology at the University of Puget Sound, he said his professor wheeled a single cadaver into the lab and the entire class huddled around the body in a poorly ventilated room. He still remembers the amazement surging through him.

Now, the roles are reversed and Chennault is the one teaching an anatomy and physiology class at Clark College, where he and his colleagues introduce Clark students to working with cadavers.

To students, the experience of coming in close contact with death offers unparalleled insight into the fragile nature of life. And after the initial shock of seeing a cadaver wears off, students often find themselves developing eye-opening understanding.

“I never felt like I could know a person more,” said Michael Golden, 31, a nursing student at Clark. “You see them in ways that are deeper than you’ll ever see another person, even though you have no actual interactions with them.”

Golden, a sophomore at Clark who plans to transfer to Concordia University in the fall, has watched his mother’s physical abilities falter due to multiple sclerosis, and he now wants a career caring for others.

Golden’s professor, Mark Bolke, showed sensitivity to students the day he introduced them to the cadavers, Golden said. The first day of lab lasted only about five minutes, he said. Then the professor ushered students out of the room. ” ‘Whatever you guys need to do, if you need to go meditate or have some alone time, go for a run, do whatever you need,’ ” he told them.

Golden felt contrasting emotions, he said.

“It was a mix of excitement and uncertainty, and I think the uncertainty was because I had to challenge, in my mind, what I’d always thought about being around dead bodies,” Golden said. “It took away anything that death usually makes us feel because these people, after they died, were exactly where they wanted to be.”

Bolke said he helps students cope with the emotional impact of working in the labs, but he always reminds them the future holds a career of living patients. Until then, they need to understand what’s inside a body.

He said students often report they are more awestruck than alarmed.

“I think they’re able to reconcile their negative emotions and their apprehension with the positive outcome of being able to study,” Bolke said.

Brooke Nuorala, 23, another one of Bolke’s anatomy and physiology students, said it took her a month of classes twice a week to get used to working with the donors.

She said there were many things she didn’t expect, like lungs having a memory foam texture and arteries and muscles being shades of white, gray and brown.

Her perspective toward anatomical structure changed when she observed the lungs of a person who’d smoked.

“Imagine black paint on my fingers and I’m just painting your lungs,” she said, holding up two fingers and motioning streaks through the air.

The smell of formaldehyde can cling to personal items, Nuorala said. She wanted to go straight home to wash her clothes when the smell lingered on them.

“Seeing a body’s not a problem anymore but if you touch it to your things that you associate with your life outside of the lab, that’s where it gets a little funny,” Nuorala said.

Yet even with momentary discomfort, Nuorala said working so closely with the donors creates a connection, as if they teach silent lessons. She said she appreciated Clark’s program because it got her over her initial shock. She can now visualize where the roots of disease are within the body based off the anatomy she’s learned.

“When you first go in there, everybody’s really quiet,” Nuorala said. But by the end of the course, it becomes “a new standard of normal.”

Ainslie Cromar is a reporter for The Independent, Clark College’s student newspaper. This story was written as part of a collaboration with The Columbian called Voices From Clark College. It was also published in The Independent.

Clark College’s use of cadavers unusual for a two-year school

Clark College’s use of cadavers in its anatomy and physiology courses is rare for a two-year college, said Tony Chennault, an anatomy and physiology professor.

Clark has two separate labs with six anatomical donors gifted annually from the University of Washington School of Medicine’s Willed Body Program.

“Talking to other instructors from other schools and hearing from students,” said Chennault, “it’s a pretty unique opportunity that we have.”

The anatomy and physiology and human dissection classes allow nursing and dental hygiene students to gain enhanced perspectives on human anatomy, a unique student experience that can help smooth students’ transitions to four-year colleges, professors said.

Before using cadavers, Clark used plastic anatomical models, 3D computer simulations and cats, biology professor Rick Rausch wrote in an email. Rausch said John Martin, a former biology professor, opened Clark’s first lab in 1990 after noting the invaluable benefits of working on humans.

Rausch said Martin found a metal shop in Battle Ground to craft the cadaver tables, which he put in one of the Clark’s old storage rooms with a restored ventilation system to keep the scent and toxic effects of formaldehyde low.

Chennault said cats are often injected with latex dyes so their veins, arteries and other areas are visible to students, but human cadavers provide a clearer learning process.

“It’s hugely important that they have a chance to learn real anatomy on real humans,” Chennault said. “When you have real human body donors, you have imperfection … even though we share so much of our anatomy with our fellow humans, there are some variations that can happen from person to person.”