Cadaver dissection videos as an effective lab instruction tool for medical and other graduate level health professional students

Abstract

Human anatomy laboratory remains to be one of the most challenging courses in medical school. Students are required to perform high quality dissections, even though most of them do not have previous experience and struggle with learning by merely reading a lab manual. To make this task less daunting we produced a series of anatomy dissection videos to visually and audibly teach students the landmarks to focus on and how to dissect. Videos are approximately ten minutes in duration and illustrate dissection techniques and important anatomical relationships. Student feedback of the videos was overwhelmingly positive with 68% increased satisfaction from a group of students utilizing the dissection videos versus a control group. Student comments include “I have greater confidence and understanding of the dissections” and “I couldn't understand what they described in the book, but the video helped it all make sense.” Furthermore, dissection quality of the students viewing the videos was significantly better than the control group (p<0.01). We discuss the process of producing the videos and advocate the use of dissection videos to help guide students in human anatomy dissection.