Best Practices

Teaching anatomy to students through cadaver dissection has been an age old, time tested practice. Despite of technology revolution and advances in instrumentation nothing could surpass the traditional cadaver dissection. The benefit afforded by this method is its contribution to all three domains i,e cognitive, affective and psychomotor of learning. Also the cadaver skills lab has helped in developing surgical skills and sculpting an efficient surgeon out of postgraduate trainers.

Bodies have also been helpful in continued medical education hands on workshops in various surgical skills. But there has been a dearth demand for supply of cadaver to achieve these virtuous learning requirements. To take care of the need of Cadavers for UG / PG student learning of Anatomy and utilisation of body for research & training purposes the body donation association was started


Objectives of Practice

  • Video based teaching
  • Museum
  • Voluntary body donation programme
  • To sensitize the public on significance of body donation in learning and research
  • To develop registry of willing to donate and donated bodies
  • To employ standard operating procedure of BDA
  • To utilize donated bodies for novel cause
  • To teach Anatomy from a real human bodies
  • To take up research work on different disease condition
  • To train faculty and PG students through hands on workshops

Resources Required

  • Manpower to disseminate information on voluntary body donation , preserve and store cadavers
  • Manpower to respond to the calls by relatives including odd hours, holidays & festival days (24/7)
  • Ambulance to transport the bodies
  • Trained faculty to embalm the cadavers efficiently
  • Infrastructure to preserve the cadaver preservation and storage materials to store them

Obstacles if any and strategies to overcome them

Very few. Some sentimental feelings of relatives, some of the family members not very comfortable for donation cause inconvenience & delay in the process. This is overcome by counselling & discussion to convince them the advantages of body donation with examples of previous donors, which in majority of cases solves the problem.

Very few. Some sentimental feelings of relatives, some of the family members not very comfortable for donation cause inconvenience & delay in the process. This is overcome by counselling & discussion to convince them the advantages of body donation with examples of previous donors, which in majority of cases solves the problem.


The Practice

Impact of Practice

The JSS Body Donation Association working since 21 years and overwhelming response was obtained from public and this is depicted by number of registered and donated bodies.

Number of registered bodies: 3542

Number of donated bodies: 468

Number of schools visited to museum: 10 per year

Number of external activities organised from BDA: 6 programs per year

Number of cadaver skills workshops organised: 2 per year

The family members & friends are extremely happy about the whole procedure & in turn motivate other to register for a good cause and this led to increase in number of registrations.

No Of Body Registered and Donated


Contact details of Secretary, Body Donation

Name: Dr.Vidya C S, Prof. and Head of Anatomy

Mobile No: 7760759821

Email Id: anatomyjssmc@jssuni.edu.in