Abstract
This qualitative and quantitative study offered students the opportunity to participate in engaging and inspiring activities “outside the classroom”, to extend their experience and knowledge of surface anatomy. Medical and health science students benefit from studying surface anatomy as it is relevant to their future professions that deal with patients and clients. Surface anatomy is an essential part of the learning process that allows students an opportunity to identify anatomical structures on living people and to develop their palpation and tactile skills for physical examinations of patients. Body painting is a student-centred, engaging, and motivating approach to learn surface anatomy in anatomy practical classes. In this study, anatomy learning was extended “beyond the classroom” through extra-curricular body painting projects. These projects were run by student teams consisting of a student model, student artists (4–5), and a student photographer, under the direction of the chief investigator. A total of sixteen body painting projects were carried out from 2010 to show the skeletal system, the muscular system, pregnancy, respiratory and gastrointestinal systems, and the neurovascular systems of the entire body. A SurveyMonkey of 31/41 active participants suggested that participants enjoyed the projects (94–100%), found them relevant to their future profession (80–87%), and considered them to assist with deeper understanding (94%) and long-term memory (93%) of anatomy. Learning anatomy outside the classroom through extra-curricular body painting projects was a successful way to engage, motivate, and inspire participants and first year anatomy students to study surface anatomy and to develop their physical examination skills.
Highlights
There have been few reports of anatomy learning outside the classroom, a shift has been reported from didactic methods to self-directed and independent study in medical education
body painting (BP) is an important tool for learning surface anatomy and clinical skills, and is important for future health professionals and clinicians that will be working with patients or clients and as such need to identify anatomical structures on real bodies
Many previous BP studies reported regional learning, dedicated to one or two regions per session and under supervision of an academic, the current study is novel as it includes BP the entire body, as a living, and dynamic model, with the student team being able to improve their physical examination skills, anatomy knowledge, and engagement as observed by the chief investigator during the projects and self-assessed by participants
Summary
There have been few reports of anatomy learning outside the classroom, a shift has been reported from didactic methods to self-directed and independent study in medical education. Self-directed learning helps students to develop their self-reflection and life-long learning skills and active learning of anatomy allows students to interact with the learning process It Surface anatomy, which is the identification of anatomical structures on living human beings, has been studied using anatomical body painting (BP) at several universities as a novel approach to teach human anatomy [4, 9–18]. BP is an important tool for learning surface anatomy and clinical skills, and is important for future health professionals and clinicians that will be working with patients or clients and as such need to identify anatomical structures on real bodies It is a highly captivating and fun approach for students to learn human anatomy by observing, identifying surface anatomy features, palpating, drawing, and painting [4, 9–14, 16–18]. BP has been used successfully in veterinary anatomy on horses [25]
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
