Dissection Workshops Make the Grade

Dissection workshops for health-care professionals are booming: Doctors, nurses, physical therapists and massage practitioners are flocking to hands-on demonstrations that reveal what lies beneath the skin.

But increased demand for these workshops is also raising new concerns. In March, an ABC News report, “Harvesting Cadavers for Medical Research,” explored some of the problems associated with this growing arena. Among the most serious concerns: ethical and legal donation of the cadavers used in the seminars; proper storage, including transport, of the specimens; and sanitation conditions where seminars are held.

MASSAGE Magazine sought the expert opinions of two of the massage field’s most well-known dissection-workshop leaders about potential risks associated with these kinds of seminars, David Kent and Gil Hedley, Ph.D.

Each educator works through established university medical or dental schools to obtain specimens for teaching seminars. In fact, federal law mandates that such schools are the only ones allowed to distribute donated cadavers. “Medical and dental schools serve as the legitimizing clearing houses,” Hedley says.

However, the increased demand for medical seminars is making it harder for outsiders, such as massage-therapy workshop leaders, to reserve cadavers, say Kent and Hedley. Both have run into problems with the shortage of donated cadavers due to the increase in dissection workshops for medical professionals. “Outside programs, for massage therapists for example, don’t have first dibs,” says Hedley.

Most massage-therapy dissection workshops are held in medical-school labs, or some other health-care laboratory. Kent conducts most of his full-body hands-on dissections at Gross Anatomy Lab at the University of South Florida, College of Medicine. He says that when he conducts dissection seminars at conferences, which are often held in hotel conference rooms, he provides all the materials needed to secure and sanitize the area where work is done. Students at Kent’s conference workshops do not participate in dissections; instead, they observe him performing the dissection on large television screens.

Hedley conducts his workshops out of medical or dental laboratories.

Both educators say they are guided by a clear intention of wanting to share the gift of dissection with caring massage-and-bodywork professionals who want to learn as much as they can about the human body. “I consider it an honor that I’ve been able to bring this to massage therapists,” Kent says. “I wish everyone could get the chance to be exposed to such an amazing and valuable experience.”

“Massage therapists are the best dissectors,” adds Hedley. “They are accustomed to handling the human body. The people who come to my classes are artists.”

— Kelle Walsh