Anatomy Anki Decks
Should I use Anki for anatomy?
Yes! Most of your anatomy grade will be determined by how well you memorize the structures and their relationships. Anki is the perfect tool to memorize large amounts of information. Even better, past medical students have already spent the time making high-quality, meticulously tagged Anki decks.
For a one sentence TL;DR of the decks I would use if I did it over again, jump to the TL;DR.
Decks
The following is a summary of popular anatomy Anki decks. If you want a more opinionated guide on what deck(s) to use, jump ahead to Recommended combination of decks.
The best place to look for more Anki decks and additional information is the medical school Anki sub-Reddit. The Reddit links for each deck are the original posts by the deck author's (or a re-post if the original post was deleted).
If you have not already, check out the AnKing's YouTube channel, which has playlists on how to set up Anki for medical school and what the AnKing Step 1 deck is.
Dope Anatomy
Cards: 3,399 | Card type(s): Image Occlusion, Q&A | Tags: Poor
The Dope Anatomy deck was made by an IMG (an Australian I think). It uses the British spellings for anatomical terms (oesophagus vs esophagus), so make sure you check with your school resources for the spellings your professors want. Most of the cards also have the Latin terms, which is a big plus if you study outside the US. The deck is concise and overall a good deck. Along with Ranatomy, it makes up the Complete Anatomy deck, which adds great tags for both decks.
Dope Anatomy is the only deck in this guide that has muscle attachments and innervations in a question and answer format (Netter Better has image occlusion of muscle tables). However, muscles tables (or your school's equivalent) are actually the main situation in which I recommend making your own cards. The main weaknesses of this deck are poor tags (fixed in the Complete Anatomy version) and the Q&A format. The latter is a personal preference of mine. Even if you do not want cadaver-based cards (the Ranatomy deck part of Complete anatomy), I would download the Complete Anatomy deck version of Dope Anatomy because the tags are better.
Ranatomy
Reddit post | Download - the original download link is a little sketchy, so I have just linked to the Complete Anatomy deck which includes Ranatomy (with better tags)
Cards: 1,586 | Card type(s): 100% Image Occlusion of Cadavers | Tags: Good
The Ranatomy deck is made from Rohen's Photographic Anatomy which means it is cadaver pictures. Using cadaver pictures in your Anki cards is a great way to prepare for practical exams! Seriously, make sure you use Ranatomy or the UMich deck to prepare for practical exams. The only reason to not use one of these decks is if your tests have no in-person cadavers or cadaver pictures.
Complete Anatomy
Cards: 4,953 | Card type(s): Image Occlusion, Q&A | Tags: Excellent
The Complete Anatomy deck is a combination of Dope Anatomy and Ranatomy with excellent tags added. Make sure you read the sections on the two original decks. This ia a great deck and the foundation of my recommended combination of decks. The best part about this deck (aside from the tags) is how concise it is. You could realistically keep your reviews for this deck going into 3rd year if you are...motivated to do that.
Netter Better
Cards: 21,248 | Card type(s): 100% Image Occlusion | Tags: Excellent
The Netter Better deck is over 20,000 image occluded cards based on Netter's Atlas. The tags are excellent with every plate having its own tag (one plate = one page in the Atlas). This deck is a beast, and if you are gunning for a 110% in anatomy or getting your anatomy PhD, you could use this deck in its entirety. Otherwise, it is probably best to use this as a supplement to other decks (see recommended combinations of deck).
UMich Cadaver
Cards: 2,992 | Card type(s): 100% Image Occlusion | Tags: Excellent
The UMich Cadaver deck is image occlusion cards of the UMich BlueLink Atlas. The UMich BlueLink Atlas is an awesome website with high quality osteology and cadaver images. I would check out both UMich Cadaver and Ranatomy and just pick the one you prefer. You can always supplement your primary cadaver deck with the other cadaver deck, or if you have time, use both.
Custom decks
Complete school-specific deck
If a comprehensive school-specific deck already exists for your school, use that! Make sure to ask upperclassmen if the deck leaves out anything important.
Incomplete school-specific deck
If the school-specific deck is not comprehensive or poorly tagged, either trash it completely or salvage it for high-yield cards throughout the year. Do not use a half-baked school-specific deck as an excuse to make your own deck on top of it.
Custom-made deck
If a school-specific deck does not already exist, do not waste time making one. The pre-made decks mentioned above cover many gold-standard resources and are very well tagged. See Recommended combination of decks to learn how to cover almost all of your school's anatomy curriculum with pre-made decks. Time is too valuable in medical school to make all of your own cards.
Recommended combination of decks
TL;DR
I recommend:
- Dope Anatomy (Complete Anatomy version) (Download).
- A cadaver deck: Ranatomy (Complete Anatomy version, already linked) or UMich Cadaver (Download).
- Netter Better cards added as needed for your curriculum (Download).
- Cards that you make as a last resort.
Why these decks?
Dope Anatomy forms the foundation with excellent tags and a combination of image occlusion and Q&A cards. Dope Anatomy also has Latin terms for students who need that. A cadaver deck is a necessity if any of your exams involve cadavers, either in-person from dissections or prosections, or pictures. Netter Better is comprehensive and extensively tagged, but it is also huge. Therefore, Netter Better is recommended to help prevent you from making your own cards if the first 2 (or 3 if you use both cadaver decks) decks are missing something. As a last resort, you might have to make your own cards. The only way I have seen this happen is if your professor has an obsession with a region or organ system that is not covered in medical school level resources. Finally, it is recommended to make image occlusion cards of your professors' muscle charts/tables if those exist in your curriculum.
When to make your own cards
Some people argue that making Anki cards is studying in its own right and is a great way to learn new material. This is plausible in subjects like physiology and pathology, but for anatomy, making cards is just busy work. An image occlusion card of femur osteology provides you the same value whether you downloaded it from Reddit in one second or you drew the occlusion boxes yourself.
With that being said, if your anatomy professors provide school-specific muscle charts/tables, I recommend making those into image occlusion cards. This YouTube video explains how to make image occlusion cards. Muscle charts can vary considerably between professors. You want to learn their preferred way the first time, not relearn it after memorizing the Netter Atlas way, for example. Most other terms are fairly universal and will be covered in pre-made decks.
Conclusion
There is a lot of understandable anxiety around medical school anatomy. Working with cadavers can be jarring, especially at first, and there is a ton to memorize. Fortunately, since you are already looking for Anki decks, I can promise you that you will be far better prepared than your peers who do not use Anki. Smash the spacebar every day and anatomy will be one of your easier classes in medical school.
If a link is broken, you find any another errors, or you want more advice, feel free to email me at support@trymemoria.com.