Incorporation of virtual enhancement in anatomy, physiology and clinical pathology instruction in medicine and veterinary medicine basic sciences

Abstract

Classic anatomic dissection of humans and animals has been an essential element of the gold standard in medical and veterinary medical education for many decades, but in recent years has encountered previously unforeseen obstacles including the COVID‐19 pandemic and restrictions in laboratory and classroom participation. Included among the factors are a decreasing availability of cadaver donations to medical schools, combined with increasing costs of obtaining suitable cadavers. Specifically, class sizes and individual participation have waned over time, as has student interest in participating in the traditionally months‐long cadaveric dissection labs, and the attendant potential chronic exposure to the noxious embalming preservatives and their possible health risks from inadvertent over‐exposure. In addition, a decreasing trend in the prevalence of graduate education in gross anatomy, a primary source of new anatomy faculty. While physical cadavers have proven their spectacular function in providing anatomy content for medical and veterinary students for decades, their limitations of delivering adequate physiology and clinical pathology content under current requirements are more limited. To this end, we redeveloped our anatomy lab to include SPOC (Small Platform Online Course) and didactic lectures in anatomy, physiology, and clinical pathology, including targeted virtual instruction in small group settings both during cadaveric dissections and with the Anatomage®, and culminating with an abbreviated cadaveric dissection employing fresh, unembalmed cadavers over structured 2 day‐long dissections with small groups of now well‐prepared students with surgical microscopy and 3‐D fabrications. The additions to this lab have provided great benefits to veterinary anatomy instruction, which can now include up to two hundred different animal species and exposure to rare species not easily visualized in an academic laboratory setting. A pioneer in medical education, William Harvey was one of the most influential physicians of all time, and recognized the crucial role of cadaveric dissections in anatomy learning and their applications to clinical medicine, but the physiologic and pathologic implications were more limited in content and application than are needed in today’s instruction. The fields of medicine and veterinary medicine have now made extraordinary advances in content and detail, requiring inclusion of ever more content at the molecular, cellular, and organismal levels within the constraints of a traditional four‐year curriculum, and where the outcomes and expectations have also increased to meet the demands and vigor of current practice standards soon after graduation. The results of our incorporation of extensive virtual anatomy and physiology modules in our curriculum have demonstrated significant increases and improvements in student participation and in content retention upon entering later phases in their academic programs.