Students Thank Families of Some of Their Most Respected Teachers

For some teachers, you could leave an apple on their desk at the end of the year to say thank you. For others, you might need to try a more intangible act of gratitude.

Every year after completing their anatomy lab, students at Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM) and the Henry M. Goldman School of Dental Medicine (GSDM) organize a memorial service to honor their anatomy donors, the teachers who gave them the invaluable right of passage as future health-care providers.

“Being trusted with a human body is a hallmark of the medical profession,” said Kara Kleber, a first-year medical student, during this year’s service on Tuesday, May 5. “Our donors’ most amazing gift was to trust us without knowing us.”

Medical and dental students as well as graduate students who take gross anatomy worked as teams on 33 donors’ bodies this year—a special milestone for many of the students who consider this their first patient.

“I remember being moved to see the tiny blue stitches in the chamber of the heart—knowing medicine kept this heart beating, that someone was here before me,” said Kleber.

Rob Bouchie, the anatomy laboratory director and keynote speaker at the service, makes the donor program possible. When a previously identified donor dies, he gets a call and needs to quickly decide to accept or decline the cadaver and embalm the body, he explains during the service. He then prepares teams of students for their lab to examine and learn every detail of the human anatomy.

Before the lab starts, Bouchie tells the students the age of the donor, how they died and their occupation in order to give the students a sense of the life behind the body on the table.

Natalie Rizzo, a first-year medical student and member of the memorial service committee, spoke at the service, saying it’s hard not to wonder about the lives of her and her classmates’ donors.

“Though a big part of me is sad that I’ll never know [details of my donor’s life], I’m comforted by the idea, and really the hope, that if I could ask her right now, ‘Tell me the story of the very last thing you did,’ she might say something like this: ‘I spent my time in the company of nine very excited, very nervous first-year medical students. And they made sure that my wish to be part of their education was fulfilled. And in exchange, I taught those nine students that, even if your patient can’t hear you, or see you, or feel your hand on their arm; that as long as you act with compassion and respect, and you keep them in your thoughts, then no matter what the barrier, they’ll know that they’re not alone, and that you’re there to take very good care of them just as you did with me.’ ”

Seventy-five family members, representing 15 families, joined the students in Hiebert Lounge. It was the first chance for the students to meet their donors’ families. It also was the day that, if the families chose to share, the students learned a little more about the people, who many consider their first patient.

Photos of the donors sat on a table with notes from the team of medical students during the spiritual, but not religious, service. Third-year medical student Mauro Caffarelli sang Neil Young’s “Tell Me Why” and Nick Capezio, a first-year dental student, read an original poem. BUSM’s a capella group Doctor’s Notes also performed.

The memorial service committee chairs then lit candles as they read out the names of each of the 33 donors. After the service families and students chatted over a reception of food and deserts.

“We look forward to carrying out our part to live up to the trust our donors placed in us,” said Kleber.