Digital radiological integration into the first year medical anatomy course: A systematic literature review

Abstract

As diagnostic digital radiology is becoming the standard in medicine, numerus medical schools have incorporated digital radiology (i.e. CTs, MRIs, Xrays and Ultrasound) into their preclinical curriculum. There are a lack of resources that provide a comprehensive insight into the most common methods of digital radiological integration into the first year medical anatomy course. The purpose of this study is to perform a meta‐analysis on most common methods of digital radiological integration and to determine the overall trend in the usefulness of this technique as a teaching method. Utilizing the PICO (Population, Intervention, Comparison, Outcomes) reporting system, two of the following questions are proposed: (i) What is the most common method of integration of digital radiology in the first year medical anatomy course? (ii) What are the learner outcomes for assessment of anatomical knowledge using digital radiological imaging? The systematic literature review is conducted in accordance with Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta‐Analysis (PRISMA) guidelines. Identification of citations (n=1688) were obtained searching keywords “radiology” AND “anatomy” AND “medical student” in the following four databases: PubMed, Embase, Web of Science, and Scopus (Table 1). Duplicates were excluded using the “find duplicates” tool in Medeley citation software and articles published prior to 2009 were excluded (n=276). A reviewer team will be assembled to analyze the degree of inclusion of remaining articles screened (n=1412). Results indicate that there are diverse ways to incorporate radiological images into a gross anatomy course and the method of incorporation may affect the successfulness of the method.A summary of the screening process. Out of 1688 articles, 1412 advanced to be analyzed by the reviewer team based on the eligibility inclusion criteria.Figure 1