Animating Primary Hemostasis for Medical Student Education

Abstract

Physicians have difficulty recognizing and diagnosing disorders of primary hemostasis. The root of this may lie in their education, where students are often taught hemostasis using static graphics. We aimed to create a didactic animation on primary hemostasis for medical students to be used in North American medical schools. To promote widespread use of the animation, we surveyed hemostasis educators from Canada and the US on the animation’s learning objectives. The animation’s script and storyboard were developed using the Animation Processing Model (APM), a psychological processing model that addresses the perceptual limitations of learners. This animation is the first biomedical animation to use the APM in its design. Furthermore, this is the first didactic hemostasis animation which sought peer consensus for its learning objectives.