Difficulty of Dissection: Which Anatomical Regions Are Hardest For Medical Students To Dissect?

Abstract

Cadaveric dissection in gross anatomy courses has long been considered the gold‐standard for instruction, but the difficulty associated with some dissections may lead to negative learning outcomes for those students adversely impacted by dissection experiences. Therefore, this investigative study aimed to identify medical students' perception of the difficulty associated with each dissection completed during a 16‐week medical gross anatomy course. The purpose of this study was to provide better insight into the relationship between the difficulty associated with dissecting anatomical regions and student performance on practical examination questions pertaining to those regions. To answer this question, 10‐point Likert scale surveys with values ranging from 1 (easy) to 10 (difficult) were utilized to ascertain the perceived difficulty of each dissection completed during the course. The surveys were distributed to the students (n=160) prior to each of the block examinations given throughout the course. Following collection of the difficulty surveys, student responses were analyzed in order to determine if any of the dissections were rated as significantly more or less difficult than others. Difficulty rankings were also compared to previously collected data from the same course to determine if there is a relationship between the difficulties associated with dissecting each region, and how medical students have historically performed on questions pertaining to each region analyzed. Preliminary results indicate that medical students' perception of the difficulty associated with completing different dissections varies significantly. The average perceived difficulty of the dissections was 4.6 (SD=2.3), the minimum mean dissection difficulty reported was 2.9 (SD=2.0) and corresponded to the knee dissection, while the maximum mean dissection difficulty reported was 7.5 (SD=2.3) and corresponded to the axilla dissection. Concurrently, results from the difficulty survey were compared to historical records of medical student performance on practical examination questions. Preliminary results from these comparisons seem to indicate a relationship between the difficulty associated with dissecting anatomical regions and the ability of medical students to learn structures related to the dissection. Students have historically performed worse on practical examination questions pertaining to structures from difficult dissections and better on questions pertaining to structures from easy dissections. As such, it is important for anatomy educators to consider the difficulty of each dissection they require their students to complete, and the potential impact each dissection has on the students' ability to learn the material.This abstract is from the Experimental Biology 2018 Meeting. There is no full text article associated with this abstract published in The FASEB Journal.