Examining Color Vision Deficient Health Professional Student Performance and Attitudes in Histology

Abstract

All United States medical and dental schools incorporate histology into their curricula. Histology is the microscopic study of tissues and often involves specific colored staining. Histology's role in health professional education and practice underscores the need for students to understand and apply histological concepts. It has been proposed that color vision deficient (CVD) students may struggle learning histology and it is estimated that 8% of men and 0.5% of women in the general population are CVD. No studies have quantifiably assessed students' color vision and performance in histology. This research objectively assesses health professional students' color vision and performance in histology, as well as obtains subjective information about student attitudes and experiences about histology. The objectives of this study are to compare normal visioned to CVD students in terms of performance and time on task on an image‐based histology assessment and to compare their histology study experiences. It is hypothesized that compared to the normal visioned students, CVD students are expected to spend significantly more time on the image‐based questions and score significantly lower. It is also expected that CVD students will be unaware of their disadvantage in histology; thus, are likely to seek help from professors at similar rates as their normal visioned peers. To date, first‐year and second year medical students at Oakland University William Beaumont School of Medicine and first year students at University of Michigan (U of M) Medical School and U of M School of Dentistry have been invited to participate in the study. Participants (n= 72) completed an online Qualtrics survey consisting of demographic questions, a validated colorblindness examination, 52 multiple choice image‐based histology questions and a post‐survey on student attitudes and study experiences in histology. Analyses will compare CVD students and normal visioned students on time spent, correct answers (independent T tests), and attitudes and experiences in histology (Mann‐Whitney U). Recruitment is ongoing to increase responses from the small population of CVD students. The results are expected to quantify that CVD medical students are both unaware of their disadvantages in histology and receive lower scores on histology assessments relative to their normal visioned peers. This information would show histology and health professional educators the need to specifically identify and accommodate CVD students, who otherwise may not know to seek help with their learning.This abstract is from the Experimental Biology 2019 Meeting. There is no full text article associated with this abstract published in The FASEB Journal.