Week 2 - Anatomy

By now you should have created some flash cards for the muscles which you are going to be tested on, and should have sorted out a schedule of time for practicing palpation of anatomical structures with your classmates.

Remember to pass the assessment you need to demonstrate by palpation

• Origins & Insertions
• Shapes, extents and lines of action

If you're not sure what any of these mean by now, make sure you ask and find out (either one of your lecturers, or your classmates)

You should probably be using a multi-modal study method – meaning use your flash-cards, palpate on your classmates, do ROM with reference to the muscles, visit the Winking Skull website & test yourself (see below). Take into account what works for you given your learning preferences and what you have already learnt about yourself and the way you learn.

Here is an indicative study timetable. I recommend that you concentrate more on memorisation at this stage, and more on palpation of structures later, but again this should be decided by you and how you learn.

Indicative study timetable
Week 2 (4 - 8 Aug)

• Extensor hallucis & digitorum longus
• Flexor hallucis & digitorum longus

Week 3 (9 - 15 Aug)

• Peroneals
• Tibialis posterior
• Popliteus

Week 4 (16 – 22 Aug)

• Tensor fascia latae
• Adductors

Week 5 (23 – 29 Aug)

• Deep laterial rotators
• Piriformis

Week 6 (1 Sep – 5 Sep)

• External intercostals
• Internal intercostals

Week 7 - 9 (8 Sep – 25 Sep)

• Integration – Practice, practice, practice. Do lots of palpation, and concentrate on memorisation of the muscles that you find more difficult.

Web-based practice

The textbook that we’ve been recommending (Gilroy, MacPherson, Ross: Atlas of Anatomy) has a website associated with it. You can set up a free account, or if you’ve bought the text can register for a “plus account”.

1. Go to the website - http://www.winkingskull.com
   And sign up for an account.
   
   
2. See how many of the muscles of the lower leg you can identify at this stage. There are two ways to test yourself with Winking skull. I suggest starting with the first one, then progressing to the second one.
   
   When you open up each image, there should be a bunch of lines pointing to each anatomical structure. Have a look at the picture and decide what you think the name of the structure is, then click on the area at the end of the line. The label will be revealed, so you can test yourself.
   
   
3. You can test yourself. Once you’ve logged in, there will be a button on the right side of the screen. If you click on this, you will be tested on all structures within the picture. I recommend that you use the following settings.
   
   Time type: count down
   Time allowed: 60 seconds
   Show me: One label at a time
   
   This will ensure that your test is fairly close to the actual clinical test that you’ll go through. Once you’re happy with this test, try dropping the time allowed down to 30 seconds or less. How fast can you do it? This should help you to think fast, which is very useful in the anatomy assessment.
   

One more thing
Sometimes the images are too large relative to the labels. There’s a zoom option on the right hand side of the screen. You can zoom in until you can read the labels. When you do this part of the image will disappear. If you click on the image and drag it, you can drag it up and down, left and right until you can see the part of the image that you want to work with.