I believe human anatomy and physiology is one of the hardest subjects to master. And it is not only because an enormous number of terms that’s tough to memorize even English terms let alone their Latin names. I had to study anatomy myself. I know how painful can it be to master everything. To make the learning process easier I broke it down into three steps. Once I did that the learning process became much simpler and almost effortless. These are the three steps that can improve your study of anatomy and physiology.

Physiology and Anatomy is a visual science

People learn the best if they see the subject of study. It is good if you have an opportunity to go to the lab to study anatomy first hand. But it can be done even at home. Do not underestimate the power of visualization and animation. The pictures in your textbook are good but I prefer something more detailed. The technology nowadays has reached such a level that you don’t even need a lab. All you need is a piece of software that can show you the muscular and bone structures on your screen in three dimensional representations.

Creating connections between anatomy terms

It is always frustrating to try to memorize the words you don’t know the meaning. Creating some mnemonic rules or combining them into groups or pairs can tremendously help in your effort to memorize those anatomy and physiology terms. As an example I will use directional terms. You can create a simple pair like anterior/posterior. They are opposites. The only thing to memorize is that they go together. You know that posterior is back so subsequently anterior is front.

By: Stanley Callow