For Med Students, One Size Slits All

Before medical students make the first cut on a living, breathing patient, some are getting the chance to feel exactly where the scalpel will go. The Incisions Gown, conceived by a British medical professor, is made of silk materials that feel almost like human tissue and has nine zippers at incision sites for such common operations as open-heart surgery and appendectomy.

John McLachlan, an associate dean of medicine at Durham University School of Medicine and Health, who produced the gown with British textile artist Karen Fleming, wrote in an e-mail that he "longed for a way of helping students understand the personal/subjective dimension to anatomy and surgery."

Students who wore the gown in their anatomy training said zipping and unzipping helped reinforce their knowledge of incision sites, while wearing the gown gave them an emotional feel for being a patient or treating one, McLachlan said.

The inventors hope the gown can also be used in the hospital or doctor's office, to explain procedures to patients.

-- Ranit Mishori