At one Indiana medical school, students are taught to think of their cadavers as their first patients and may even meet their families. Critics contend this may cross an ethical line and put students in an uncomfortable position.

Charles Dharapak / AP

First year medical students dissect a cadaver at a gross anatomy lab at Georgetown University Medical Center in Washington, Nov. 5, 2009.

Kyle Gospodarek expected to feel nervous about seeing a dead body up close on his first day of anatomy lab. He steeled himself for the smell a pungent blend of latex, embalming fluid and something indescribable whose odor would cling to his clothes for days but he never imagined he would have to get in touch with the cadavers family. Ill be honest: when I first heard about what we were doing, I was weirded out, he says. I didnt know what to say to them.

At Indiana University Northwest, an IU branch campus located in Gary, Ind., anatomy professor Ernest Talarico instructs his medical students to probe beyond the nerves and muscles of the bodies lying on their examination tables and think of the cadavers as their first patients. We ask students to use the name of the patient out of respect and to acknowledge that this was a person, he says. His students also typically exchange letters with family members to glean more information about their patients medical histories, hobbies and interests. They may even meet the family in person at the conclusion of the course during a memorial service held in the laboratory.

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The annals of medical school training are filled with sordid tales of students taking glam shots with corpses or assigning unflattering nicknames to cadavers. When Talarico was in medical school, he remembers his classmates calling one cadaver Salty because of the tattoo of the naked woman on his chest. These people had lives and names, he says, and to use other names disrespects them.

Talarico believes his approach not only helps students be more respectful of the individuals who have given their bodies to science but also prepares them to act as empathetic clinicians when theyre faced with the cold, hard medical decisions theyll have to make in their careers. He has no formal data to prove his approach gets better results, but anecdotally, the students say they feel better prepared to address patients as individuals and consider their feelings. As one student, Adam Harker, explains: I think it translates into better post-op care and compliance.

While Talarico has won praise from many of the individuals involved in the program, hes also raised concerns among critics who question the ethics of his teaching technique. When donated bodies are passed on to medical schools, the institutions are usually only given the basics the donors name, gender, age and immediate cause of death. The name of the donor is typically not shared with students, and students do not usually interact with the donors next of kin.

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Why Some Med Students Learn Cadavers' Names