Columbus Dispatch: Anatomy Lab Wizard

They say that practice makes perfect. But how do you get that hands on practice when you are preparing to be a doctor or a surgeon? At OhioHealth, there is a team that specializes in making sure it is as real as it can be.

Within OhioHealth Medical Education lives a group of very passionate workers. One of those team members inside the Human Simulation team is Katie Minser. Minser, 27, has a background that you wouldn't necessarily think would be in charge of an anatomy lab, but it is right where she wants to be. You see, Minser has a theater set design background. Now, she is in charge of ordering cadaver parts, setting up scenarios, and building trainers for others to learn from.

“It was kind of the left brain-right brain pull,” she told The Columbus Dispatch. “I still wanted to be artistic, but I still wanted to help people, and I wanted to work in medicine, because I always thought it was kind of like a fascinating puzzle.”

Minser takes great pride and care when it comes to setting up orders from a tissue bank in Arizona. She knows that what they are working on is beyond this life, the work being done could save a life now.

“You have to remember that this, at one point, was somebody’s mother, somebody’s father, somebody’s somebody,” she told the Dispatch.

For some of the work being done in the labs, Minser actually uses animal parts. She says many of those parts are as close to human anatomy as you can find. On occasion she will call up a butcher shop and order cow eyes, pig lungs, and more.

She says the people working there are usually curious at the start of their conversations, but once they learn about what the animal parts will be used for, they are very impressed.

On the other hand, trying to get Minser's mother to be able to describe to friends and family exactly what she does day in and day out isn't as easy!

"I'm kind of the wizard behind the door. So Mom will tell people, well, she deals with some dead people, she is in the lab, well, I'm not sure what she does all the time. I tell her mom, just say she works in medical education, and we'll stick to that!"

"It's weird," she acknowledged to the Dispatch. "It is like having my own creature shop."

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