Planning for our 2022 Body Donor Memorial Service

Next week, family and friends will gather at Heritage Hall to honor loved ones who have donated their bodies for the benefit of medical education and research. This time-honored tradition, known as the Heritage College’s Body Donor Memorial Service, provides an opportunity for medical students to convey their condolences and deep appreciation for the ways in which these bequests have supported their training. The ceremony will take place at 3 p.m. on Friday, April 15 on our Athens campus.

As you know, body donations are critical to the training of future physicians. Each gift enables students to further their understanding of medical complexities, initiate their mastery of surgical procedures, and improve their patient care. In many ways, body donors benefit physicians throughout their careers, as physicians draw on experience with their “first patient” as they apply knowledge gained in the anatomy lab to treat their patients.

We believe that witnessing the Body Donor Memorial Service is important to the growth and development of our student physicians. For this reason, viewing this event is a mandatory curricular activity. All first- and second-year students on the Athens campus are expected to attend the live event, while Dublin and Cleveland students gather to watch the livestream. Campus deans will be in touch with students later today regarding specific campus arrangements.

Athens campus employees are asked to avoid the Heritage Hall atrium and atrium stairwells between 3 p.m. and 5 p.m. on April 15 to minimize potential disruptions to the ceremony. Faculty and staff on all campuses who are interested in viewing the ceremony may do so through the livestream: https://btpstream.co/OUHCOMService. An event program is attached.

Due to COVID, we were unable to host the Body Donor Memorial Service in 2020 and 2021, so this will be a new experience for nearly all our students and many of our employees. I encourage you to use this opportunity to honor our body donors while extending compassion to their loved ones.