What is a virtual cadaver lab? Why is King Tut in this title? (Read till the end to find out about Tut!)
Technically possible because of 21st century IT, a 'Virtual Reality' lab provides a 3D, anatomical exploration of the human body in real time, with the useful ability to record and playback procedures, practice on multiple "specimens", regenerate features and delete mistakes. As there are over 100K medical students, hundreds of thousands of allied health workers and millions of high school students studying anatomy, and as only about 20,000 cadavers become available annually, virtual labs (really a high-tech, touchscreen table) are exceedingly important to medical education at all levels.
Why does a college consoler (intentional spelling!) care about virtual labs? I’m always asked about jobs! Well, you probably know that the job outlook for the allied health profession is healthy and growing: the demand for RNs— with an median wage of about $93,600 per year— results in a 5% job growth rate over the next ten years. Nearly 66,000 potential nurses are turned down in admissions from colleges annually. Why? GPAs being equal, alongside a shortage of faculty, did you know that another constraint on many allied health training programs is the lack of clinical placement? This is why virtual training labs are so important. Virtual labs, while not cheap, can extend the number of "placements" thus educating more students.
Cool, you read to the end! What does King Tut, a 3,300 year-old pharaoh, have to do with 21st-century nursing? Scientists built a life-size 3D reconstruction of his body, using a virtual anatomy table like the one in the photo, and took more than 2,000 CT scans of his mummified remains. Controversy ensued but that’s another story. The table itself, first manufactured in 2011, was popularized in the BBC documentary about Tuts’ scans in 2014. Now, there are roughly 5,000 of these tables in institutions worldwide! Fun fact: a premium table costs about $100,000.
