A New Approach to the Teaching of Clinically Relevant Anatomical Sciences and Compassionate Medicine “Clinical Anatomy — The Structure of the Human Body”

Abstract

An integrated, clinically relevant approach to teaching the anatomical sciences, with built-in features designed to teach compassion and professional conduct toward the student’s first patient, the human cadaver, will be described in this paper. The course focuses on the structure of the human body at the gross, developmental and microscopic levels. Lectures emphasize organ relationships, neurovascular arrangements, normal and abnormal developmental processes and normal cell and tissue structure. The approach to teaching emphasizes concepts important in understanding the spread of disease, the pathogenesis and pathophysiology of birth defects, abnormal cell and tissue function, and principles of diagnosis and treatment. Lectures are followed by student dissections of the human body, histology laboratories, patient-attended clinics, and small group casebased problem-solving sessions, where students apply the principles of anatomy to clinical situations. Radiology and diagnostic imaging is taught with this course, primarily in small group, problem-solving sessions. The highlight of the course is that it features small group discussions on issues centering around the dissection process, such as dealing with student reactions to a cadaver for the first time, attitudes toward death and dying, compassion in the practice of clinical medicine, and moral and ethical professional conduct in the gross anatomy laboratory and in training and practice.