Silent, and Excellent, Teachers

MED’s anatomical gift coordinator teaches students to honor the dead

By Caleb Daniloff. Video by Devin Hahn

In the video above, School of Medicine anatomical gift coordinator Robert Bouchie (far left) discusses his philosophy on working with dead bodies. Photo by Kalman Zabarsky

This year, teams of eight first-year medical students are taking part in an annual rite of passage: gross anatomy. They are dissecting human bodies donated through BU’s anatomical gift program, familiarizing themselves with skin, muscles, organs, and bones in a way no textbook could match. Robert Bouchie (SMG’92), BU’s anatomical gift coordinator and anatomy lab manager, considers medical cadavers an aspiring doctor’s greatest teacher — and the embodiment of selflessness on the part of the donor. He encourages students to view the bodies as human beings worthy of the utmost respect, dignity, and honor. Bouchie leads by example. At the end of the anatomy course, he conducts an in-lab ceremony, helps students organize a memorial service for the families, and hand-delivers the cremated remains to the donor’s loved ones.

“Sometimes the people who have the position that I have don’t want to sensitize the students that this was a person,” Bouchie says. “They want the students to just view it as a vessel, as a tool. I’m from the other side of the street.”

Read a profile of Bouchie and more about BU’s willed body program in the fall 2009 issue of Bostonia.

Caleb Daniloff can be reached at cdanilof@bu.edu. Devin Hahn can be reached at dhahn@bu.edu.

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