Osteology and Radiology of the Back and Upper Extremity: an Integrated Exercise for a Large Medical School Class

Abstract

Curriculum reform in 2015 for our medical school class of 230+ students provided an opportunity to revise teaching of osteology and to integrate it with an introduction to radiographic anatomy. This new exercise is part of an integrated Human Structure course (Anatomy, Radiology, Embryology) for pre‐clerkship students, consisting of live and online lectures, cadaver dissections, online modules, team‐based learning modules, and several hands‐on exercises, such as the one presented here. The course is divided into 3 blocks, each of which ends with the assessment of didactic and dissection laboratory material.This 2‐hour long osteology/radiology exercise is presented at the beginning of the 1st block (Back and Upper Extremity). The purpose of the exercise is to provide an overview of the osteology/radiology of these regions as a guide to further studies. Half the class at a time first attends an “Introduction to Radiology” lecture, and then does the exercise.A significant adjunct to the osteology/radiology learning experience is a 17,600 ft2 classroom designed for small group learning for our large class. This room is optimized for working in groups of 6–7 per table. Each table has a 42‐inch monitor, to which students can connect their laptops wirelessly.In a self‐paced exercise, the students familiarize themselves with the detailed osteology of the vertebral column and upper extremity by using high quality, plastic bone models. They are encouraged to view a digital version of the exercise on the tabletop monitors. Difficult structures can be demonstrated to the entire group via a mounted video camera, which projects to 90‐inch monitors on the sides of the room and/or to the tabletop monitors. In addition to studying the bone models, students are directed to palpate on themselves clinically relevant osseous landmarks. After studying the osteology of a subregion (e.g., hand, scapula), students compare the bone models with corresponding structures on high resolution radiographs and CT images displayed on their tabletop monitors. Throughout the exercise, articulated skeletons, other bones (including real), and anatomical atlases are readily available and heavily utilized. Faculty members from Anatomy and Radiology, course Teaching Assistants, and Radiology residents engage the students and answer questions.In conclusion, this hands‐on, self‐paced osteology/radiology exercise for the back and upper extremity provides students with a concise introduction to these areas. This topic is further developed in our 3‐week block over these areas, including further discussion of osteology and radiology in lectures and access to real skeletal material in the dissection laboratory. Students (and instructors facilitating) provide very positive feedback about the experience, and students do well on their assessments.This abstract is from the Experimental Biology 2018 Meeting. There is no full text article associated with this abstract published in The FASEB Journal.