Abstract
BackgroundOne of the most important objectives of modern medical education is to empower medical students to become humanistic clinicians. Human anatomy plays a crucial role in this mission by using cadavers to cause reflections on death, dying, illness, and the role of medical practitioners in humanistic care. The objective of this study was to introduce, describe, and evaluate the impact of a ceremony in honor of the body donors on ethical and humanistic attitudes of medical students.MethodsWe used a phenomenological research approach to explore and understand the lived experiences of the anatomy teachers as they teach anatomy in the context of humanism and ethics. A separate survey of third-year medical students was carried out to understand their perceptions of changes in themselves, respect for donors and donor families, and their relationship with patients. Data were collected in two phases: a desktop review of teaching materials followed by in-depth interviews of the main anatomy teachers followed by a self-administered, 5-item Likert scaled questionnaire given to students.ResultsIn the present article, we describe the rituals conducted in honor of body donors at our School of Medicine. We also describe the lived experiences of anatomy teachers as they work on improving humanistic education quality through the introduction of the concept of “silent mentor” which refers to a cadaver that quietly allows medical students to learn from it. In turn, a ceremony in honor of body donors who have altruistically donated their bodies so that learning anatomy through dissection would be possible is also introduced. A survey of the impact of the ceremony in honor of body donors on medical students revealed positive responses in terms of promoting studying anatomy (3.96 Vs 3.95) as well as reflections on own death (4.44 Vs 4.35), the life of body donors (4.07 Vs 4.04), and how to humanely view future patients and their significant others (4.32 Vs 4.24) relative to those that did not attend the ceremony (5-item Likert scale). The majority of the students that attended the ceremony also indicated that it had a positive impact on their future doctor-patient relationship, thinking about the possibility of donating their body for teaching as well as about medical ethics. Most of them also think that attending the ceremony helped reduce their anxiety, fear, and disgust of seeing corpses or dissecting and 90% insisted that memorial ceremonies should continue being conducted at Zhongshan Medical School.ConclusionThe combination of the anatomy component of the basic medical curriculum and gratitude ceremonies as well as activities to promote body bequeathal programs might help to accomplish the goal of cultivating high-quality medical students and professionals for the future. The long-term benefits would be a medical graduate who exudes empathy, relates well with patients and their significant others, leading to a productive doctor-patient relationship.
Highlights
One of the most important objectives of modern medical education is to empower medical students to become humanistic clinicians
In the present article, we describe the rituals conducted in honor of body donors at our School of Medicine
We describe the lived experiences of anatomy teachers as they work on improving humanistic education quality through the introduction of the concept of “silent mentor” which refers to a cadaver that quietly allows medical students to learn from it
Summary
One of the most important objectives of modern medical education is to empower medical students to become humanistic clinicians. The modern history of medical humanities is rooted in crises such as revelations of routine research abuses, rising cost, and exclusiveness that rocked medicine in the twentieth century During this time some American teachers and preachers were concerned about “depersonalization,” “the centrality of molecular biology, ” and “the teaching of mechanistic medicine” which they attributed to disrupting relationships between doctors, patients, and society [1]. In 2008, the Chinese Ministries of Education and that of Public Health issued a joint “Undergraduate Medical Education Standard-clinical medicine specialty” (proposed regulations) policy document which contained a set of standards structured according to three areas namely: ethics and occupational quality, knowledge objective, and technical objective All these standards emphasized the importance of ethics and humanistic education. We have sought to infuse these attributes into the anatomy course involving human cadaver dissection
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