Subject Code/Name: BIOM20002: Human Structure and FunctionWorkload: 6 x 1 hr lectures per week, 4 x 2 hr anatomy practicals throughout semester, 1 x 3 hr physiology practical throughout semester
Assessment: 2 x intra-semester tests (10% each), Physiology Practical Report (10%), Anatomy end of semester exam (35%), Physiology/Pharmacology end of semester exam (35%)
Unlike for Science students, there is no percentage or formal assessment attached to the PRS clicker questions used in physiology lectures. Lecture attendance is not recorded and attending lectures is optional. I therefore suggest you save yourself the $10 or $20 clicker rental charge at the beginning of the semester. They will try to scare you into renting one in the first lecture but I honestly suggest you don't get it. They are nothing more than a stupid novelty and if you lose or don't return it, you pay for a new one otherwise your results are withheld. I can guarantee that your learning experience will not be hampered by not getting one.
Lectopia Enabled: Yes, with screen capture
Past exams available: Yes, all papers since 2009 when the subject began are available from the library website and LMS. The anatomy past papers were all very useful and similar to the actual exam. Seeing as a new coordinator has taken over in 2012, the physiology component of the assessment has completely changed and the past physiology papers are basically all useless because the new physiology coordinator does not use essay style questions whereas the previous one did. The past pharmacology questions however are recommended as they too were repeated on the actual exam.
I strongly recommend you look at past Human Physiology (PHYS20008) papers for physiology practice, as this is more along the lines of questions which you will be asked. There are probably over 50 of them available on the library website, although they may be under the name 'Principles of Physiology'. If you would like more anatomy practice, then you would probably have to contact students in science studying Principles of Human Structure (ANAT20006) for extra work. Likewise, contact Pharmacology: How Drugs Work (PHRM20001) students for additional pharmacology resources.
Textbook Recommendation:- Eizenberg, N., C. Briggs, C. Adams & G. Ahern. General Anatomy: Principles and Applications. Sydney: McGraw-Hill, 2007.
- Silverthorn, D.U. Human Physiology: An Integrated Approach. San Francisco: Pearson, 2007
- Anatomedia USB Stick
Unfortunately, there is no getting away with it. You must have access to the two books in my opinion.
General Anatomy: Principles and Applications is co-authored by anatomy lecturer Chris Briggs and covers the general anatomical principles only. It is therefore useful for only about a week but the lectures given have all the content/images taken from this book, so you pretty much need it. Try not to buy it though. It is overpriced and only necessary for about 7 lectures. Either borrow it from the library or perhaps a science student who no longer requires it.
As for a textbook which covers regional anatomy, none is recommended. The lectures are usually sufficient and cover the content which you need to be aware of. This is probably a good thing because as someone else has mentioned in an anatomy subject review, reading and trying to learn anatomy from a textbook is both overwhelming and excessive. Nonetheless, occasionally you may need to look something up.
Gray's Anatomy for Students is the most popular anatomy book.
Clinically Oriented Anatomy is also decent. In terms of diagrams of muscles, bones, organs, joints etc., I found
Netter's Interactive Atlas of Anatomy (CD-ROM) to be very good. All of these resources are available online. The good thing about anatomy is that Google is your friend and you can often look up diagrams and basic info without even really needing a book.
The
Anatomedia USB Stick is a little hit and miss. The layout/design/user interface is terrible. However for ~$18 from the uni bookshop, I guess it is still worth it. It has some decent diagrams of dissected cadavers and has a lot of the answers to many questions posed in past exams and ADSL (Anatomy Directed Self Learning) tasks. Again, it is more of a 'look up' resource for when you need to find small bits of info or get a diagram clarified. Certainly do not waste your time reading through the entire program, as it will take you an eternity and is both overwhelming and pointless.
Human Physiology: An integrated approach by Silverthorn is 110% required as the prescribed pre-reading for all physiology lectures comes from this book and the pre-reading is indeed examinable. Thankfully, the 5th edition is available online if you look around. You don't need the 6th edition. Everyone I know used the 5th edition and was fine. This book is not that great in my opinion. The explanations are often indirect and tend to use silly analogies. The diagrams are good though and they often come up on exams with spaces missing.
I also used another book for physiology called
Human Physiology: From Cells to Systems, 7e by Sherwood. Most of the time I found I preferred the diagrams and explanations in this book. They seemed much more direct and to the point. This book is also available for download online. Between these two physiology texts, I think you have all the physiology content covered.
In terms of Pharmacology, the department recommends
Rang and Dale's Pharmacology. I found an e-text and had a quick read through it. I personally found it woeful and confusing. The pharmacology lectures and slides should suffice. If not, then as mentioned above, get additional resources from students studying second year pharmacology.
Lecturer(s):Physiology- David Williams [Subject Coordinator] (Neurophysiology, Cardiovascular Physiology, Respiratory Physiology)
- Stephen Harrap (Renal Physiology)
- Joel Bornstein (Digestive Physiology)
- Mary Wlodek (Reproductive Physiology)
Anatomy- Chris Briggs [Anatomy Coordinator] (Anatomical Principles, Upper Limb, Lower Limb, Back)
- Colin Anderson (Embryology)
- Peter Kitchener (Neuroanatomy)
- Jenny Hayes (Cardiovascular System, Kidneys + Renal System, Lower Respiratory Tract, Digestive System + Thoracic/Abdominal Viscera)
- Jason Ivanusic (Upper Respiratory Tract, Reproductive System and Pelvic Viscera)
Pharmacology- Alastair Stewert [Pharmacology Coordinator] (Pharmacodynamics, Drug Design)
- Michael Lew (Pharmacokinetics)
- Graham Mackay (Drugs affecting the nervous system, Autonomic Nervous System)
Year & Semester of completion: 2012, Semester 2
Rating: 2.4/5 (Overall)
- Anatomy 1.6/2.0
- Pharmacology 0.6/1.0
- Physiology 0.2/2.0
I have split it up by department and topic to be a bit more objective. For mine, the overall coordination and physiology lectures/practical made this subject a complete pain...one which I never want to re-live again.
Your Mark/Grade: H1 93
Comments:I will make some general comments before commenting on each topic area.
HSF has been the least impressive subject which I have taken in this degree and in my opinion undermines the whole point of having a biomedicine degree. It is a subject which combines anatomy, physiology and pharmacology. In theory it sounds great but in practice it does not really work. Firstly, there is no integration whatsover between the topics. One department comes in and lectures their part (e.g. anatomy of the kidney) and then another department comes in after and lectures their part (e.g. physiology of the kidney). So far this sounds great. The first part of the problem is that the lectures are not tailored for the biomed course. They are the EXACT SAME as the lectures in science which really makes you question the point of the whole exercise. On top of this, about a dozen anatomy/physiology lectures get ripped out of the course to make way for the pharmacology component. You miss out especially on important physiology lectures to make way for some ordinarily taught pharmacology, which creates even more confusion. The most pointless part of the whole subject is after making a half assed effort to try and "integrate" the topics in the lectures, the anatomy and physiology exams are separate anyway.
...the point is that this subject is little more than what you get in science, except taught, coordinated and examined very poorly for the most part. /end rant
AnatomyI found the anatomy component by far the most enjoyable and best taught part of this subject.
Chris Briggs is a legend and Jenny Hayes is basically the Anatomy version of Sandra Uren from Microbiology.
Jason Ivanusic is okay, although he absolutely hates answering questions by email.
I think the key to anatomy is to get over the initial phase, especially the 'Principles' lectures.
These are boring and somewhat confusing. Luckily, all of the content from these lectures is taken from the textbook so it is worth having access to a copy. Once you begin learning about actual bones, muscles and specific organ systems, it becomes a lot more interesting. A key theme with the anatomy content seems to be relating things back to diseases, so it is worth basing some of your learning around this.
PhysiologyI will try to be objective here, but I absolutely hated physiology. This was all mainly due to the lack of any kind of quality teaching.
The main lecturer would never finish his lectures and would waste copious amounts of time reiterating the same point and rubbishing on with PRS. The best part is that he expects you to know all of the content in the prescribed readings, so you will need some form of the textbook and on top of this you are going to actually have to read it. Stephen Harrap and Mary Wlodek were fairly decent, but as they are minor lecturers, they have basically no say with what ends up in the exam. Joel Bornstein... words cannot describe how bad he is so I will not even bother to try.
Seeing as the lectures in HSF and Human Physiology are usually the exact same (as are the exam questions, but I will get to this later), my best advice is to get a hold of some of the Human Physiology lecture recordings given by Charles Sevigny. This guy is an absolute legend and teaches everything clearly, quickly and best of all he is very entertaining. He is the only reason I got through this subject.
PharmocologyThere is not a lot to really talk about here other than to say that if you are concurrently taking the second year pharmacology subject, then you have a bludgy 10 lectures whilst if you aren't, you will have your work cut out.
Graham Mackay is a really nice lecturer and explains things very well and concisely. His content is also good in that you can shrink it down into a couple of tables which you can then just memorise. No one seems to like Alastair Stewert very much. Granted, he is somewhat boring, but he is actually good at explaining things. Michael Lew on the other hand seemed very disinterested and almost like he didn't want to be there. He was more interested in going off on tangents and telling pointless stories than he was in lecturing.
Best of all, he explained a concept completely wrong so watch out in case he makes another confusing blunder. Overall, I liked pharm but found that it was taught poorly and this will always leave a sour taste in your mouth. The department recommends 'Rang and Dale's Pharmacology' however I found that this did not help at all. It is probably best to focus on the lecture content and try to ask questions if there are things which are unclear.
PracsThe anatomy pracs are optional and there were four of them. They are more of a learning aid than anything else.
They are cool though so it is definitely worth trying to make the effort to go. Some of the demonstrators are good and others are not so good so try and find one who wants to teach rather than just leaving you there to work stuff out for yourself. The anatomy pracs are not assessed in any way.
The physiology prac is a nightmare. Our prac was on the cardiovascular and respiratory response to exercise, something which was never addressed in the lectures. Once you have done the prac and gotten your data (which is train wreck and makes no sense), you then have to write up a discussion and explain the results. The fact that the content is never taught and the data is inconsistent makes this a major drag. We were left trawling through textbooks, journals etc. trying to make sense of everything.
It is best to work with friends on this because it is the only way you will come up with a semi-decent discussion and get some of the right answers. I also believe that the prac content changes each year so this may be good news if you are taking this subject in the future, because you may get something that was actually taught.
Anatomy ExamThankfully, this exam is rather straight forward. It has MCQs, fill in blanks and essay questions. Our year however did not have any choice with respect to essay topics and we had to do them all. The good thing with this exam is that it only addressed the lecture content and better still, many of the MCQs and some of the essay topics were the exact same as from past exam papers.
The prac content and ADSL worksheets were not assessed, but these would make for good revision if you had the time.
Physiology/Pharmacology ExamThis exam contains combined Pharm (25%) and Physiology (75%).
The Pharm component is really good and relatively straight forward. Again, there is a lot of recycling questions from past papers so if you are familiar with these and know the lecture content well, then this part will be fine.
Ever since the new coordinator has come in, the past essay style physiology questions are ABSOLUTELY USELESS. Do not waste your time on them. This new coordinator prefers to test 'concepts' and hates marking long essay questions so he is unlikely to put them in the exam. He has introduced new menu style/fill in the blanks questions.
Anyway, with this exam, it did not even cover all of the content taught. The coordinator decided that because Renal Physiology was already tested in the MST, he did not test it again in the exam. Instead, he took a random question from the Human Physiology exam and gave it to us. Likewise, he could not be bothered writing a new cardiovascular question so he took that from the Human Physiology Exam as well.
Better still, the digestion and reprodution questions were also taken from the Human Physiology exam.
If you are wondering which exam I am talking about, it is the exam which the Human Physiology students sit in the exact same exam period.
Therefore, the moral of the story is to make friends with Human Physiology students because firstly, they actually get taught the lecture content properly and this is what the exam is based on...so this is what I recommend you focus on. Secondly, the HSF exam is likely to contain copious amounts of ripped off questions from the Human Physiology paper, so you can potentially know a lot of what you are going to get asked by simply finding out what was on this paper, assuming it is before the HSF paper.
Honing in on the questions which are likely to get asked on this paper, basically, David Williams is obsessed with questions where you are given a bunch of scenarios and then have to choose whether a parameter will increase/decrease/not change or whether there is not enough information. He has done this with neurophysiology and also with respiratory physiology. These questions are an absolute pain. It requires you to think like him. Sometimes you are allowed to make assumptions whereas other times you are not and the correct answer is 'not enough information'. Good luck trying to work this out because only he knows what is going on in his mind.
Also, it is very much worth going through past Human Physiology papers. There are literally over 50 on the library repository.
The neurophysiology and reproductive questions on our exam were taken from these.
Again, focus on the ones which require filling in tables, one word/line answers, circling stuff etc.
Basically, in case you haven't noticed, physiology is a nightmare and you will have your work cut out in this subject trying to work out what you need to know, mainly because very little of it is taught in the lectures. The best chance you have of succeeding in this subject is to collaborate with friends and together try and work out some of the ridiculous answers to some of the questions which will be asked on the exam.