Collegium Anatomicum

When you enter the building, CHECK IN YOUR JACKETS / COATS at the coat check (Polish: Szatnia). You cannot bring jackets/coats nor food nor drink (including water) into the lab room. After entering the main entrance, turn left and walk down the corridor. Before the corridor turns left, you will see a staircase and elevator on your left. The class/labroom is opposite this staircase and elevator. As a general rule: if you are the last to enter a room, always close the door. Lectures, labs, and quizzes (aka tests) take place in here. The final practical (aka lab exam) also took place in here.

www.histologia.ump.edu.pl

• • Ask the course instructor how to access the 4-year MD program webpage.
  • Lecture slides and test results will be found here.

Prof. Patrycja Sujka-Kordowska, PhD, MD
psujka@ump.edu.pl

Lab notebook

• Required for completing lab exercises
• You can buy a notebook with blank pages
• Or, you can buy Wysocka et al.’s notebook, which includes a table of contents (the TA’s need a table of contents to sign off completion of each exercise), all of the slides that you will be drawing, staining information, and example drawings

 

Textbooks

• Junqueira’s Basic Histology
• An atlas (e.g. DiFiore’s Atlast of Histology) is helpful because it is full of slide diagrams and identifies the components of a slide

 

Practice questions

• Histology World (http://www.histology-world.com/) contains practice questions that are often similar to the internal test questions
• Lippincott’s Illustrated Q&A Review, BRS, and Pre-Test, Kaplan QBank, UWorld (not necessary to do all) are good practice for the NBME.

 

Other

• Shotgun Histology is a YouTube channel that gives brief summaries of important slides. Search for a slide (eg, spleen), add ‘Shotgun Histology’ to the search query, and look for videos made by ‘WashingtonDeceit’. For example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kl5L01BCYC8
• The Histology Guide has a slide box (http://histologyguide.com/slidebox/slidebox.html), which allows you to examine virtual slides. This is good practice for identifying features of slides on your own, which will be useful for the lab practical exam.

Lectures

• Lectures and labs occur in the same room. Lectures are not mandatory. Each lecture will cover a specific organ or a group of related organ systems.

 

Seminars

• This course has no seminars.

 

Labs

• You will need coloured pencils, a sharpener, and a lab notebook with a table of contents (you can make your own or buy one that comes with one)! Labs and lectures occur in the same room. Labs are mandatory. They usually occur the day after the lecture. You will be examining and drawing slides of the organ(s) covered in the previous lecture. First, you will be given a short review of the organ(s), then be told which slides you will need to draw. Each person uses the computer to examine a slide and draw. You may work in pairs. At the end of the lab or once you have finished, the TA will examine your drawing to make sure you have included and labeled the important components. They will sign the corresponding entry in the table of contents. You need to accumulate 19 signatures to be able to sit for the practical exam.

Internal Tests

• There are four tests based on lecture material. Each test is made of 50 multiple-choice questions. In order to be eligible to write the practical exam and the NBME, you need to accumulate a minimum of 120 points out of 200 (60%). If you do not, you will need to write and pass (achieve a minimum of 60%) the integrative test.

 

Practical

• To be able to sit for this exam, you must have accumulated a minimum of 120 points across the four internal tests and 19 signatures in your lab notebook. This is an oral examination where you are asked to identify five out of six slides correctly. The TA may also test you on the staining and ask you to identify and/or locate specific components of the slide. The practical occurs before the NBME.

 

NBME

To be eligible to write the NBME, you need to have accumulated 120 points across the four internal tests and passed the practical exam. Each NBME is usually composed of 125 questions. You have 3.5 hours to complete it. You may takes breaks but the timer continues to countdown. Keep in mind that while the course focuses on histology, the NBME contains histology and cell biology. When studying and doing practice questions (using Lippincott’s, Kaplan, and/or UWorld), make sure you cover cell biology as well.

Do lots of practice questions, especially from Histology World to prepare for internal tests, and Lippincott’s, Kaplan, and/or UWorld to prepare for NBME. For the practical exam, after each lab review the important components of the slide on your own using The Histology Guide. On weekends, do a quick review of the labs you have completed so far. If you find yourself weak on specific slides, ask your TA or the professor for help at the next lab! This is one of the first courses of your first year of medical school, the evaluations for this course occur before the others, and histology and cell biology contains a lot of material. For these reasons, you do not want to delay studying to the days leading up to the practical and NBME exams. Regular review will help you avoid cramming and stress in the days leading up to the exam.