Between October and November, University of Vermont first-year medical students had the unique opportunity to attend cross-sectional radiology education sessions hosted by Assistant Professor of Neurological Sciences Sarah McCarthy, Ph.D., and fourth-year radiology resident Katherine Barton, M.D.
Between October and November, University of Vermont first-year medical students had the unique opportunity to attend cross-sectional radiology education sessions hosted by Assistant Professor of Neurological Sciences Sarah McCarthy, Ph.D., and fourth-year radiology resident Katherine Barton, M.D. The sessions were part of a project meant to increase students' exposure to radiology and cross-sectional anatomy through the study of magnetic resonance (MR) images from four anatomical donors.
During each session, students were asked to focus on a specific region of the body and assess MR images of the lower extremity, thorax, abdomen, and pelvis. Many of the attendees spoke glowingly of the structure of the sessions and Barton's passionate presentation style.
Marc Hammond '21 expected the sessions to reiterate and solidify what he'd already learned in class and was pleased to find the sessions offered him much more than that. "I knew that the left and right were reversed in CT scans, but I didn't truly understand why until attending," Hammond said. He also recalled learning the mnemonic "I ate 10 eggs at noon," in order to remember that the inferior vena cava passes through the diaphragm at T8, the esophagus passes through at T10, and the aorta at T12. Alexa Golden '21 who also attended echoed Hammond's praise of Barton's presentations saying that she now feels like she can walk up to a CT scan and confidently figure out "what [she's] looking at and what's going on." For her, the sessions were "a nice [way] to learn...without the pressure usually assumed by our coursework."