Retention of Anatomic Knowledge in Speech‐Language Pathology Undergraduate Students

Abstract

IntroductionProfessors and institutions have striven to make the curriculum of undergraduate courses in the health sciences field more fitting to the health needs of the patients, to technological advances and to student characteristics in the current generation. In relation to the teaching of basic sciences in these courses, it has been observed more and more frequently that students present restrictions in learning anatomy, considering the monotonous topic, difficult and little relevant to clinical activities. In Brazil, the Speech‐Language Pathology (SLP) course lasts four years, anatomy being taught in the first year, and the main part of clinical practice, in the last year of the course. At our school, we have made great efforts to bring the clinical context into the discipline of anatomy, enhancing the meaning and importance of the basic contents which are dealt with.ObjectiveTo analyze the performance of students in an evaluation to identify anatomical structures of the nervous system and the musculoskeletal system.Materials and MethodsFifty students participated in the research, 17 from the first year and 23 from the last year in the SLP course. An evaluation with anatomical figures was offered to the students to identify nine structures of the nervous system and twelve structures of the musculoskeletal system. The evaluation was individual, each student had 10 minutes to complete and could not consult support material. The data obtained were qualitatively analyzed, comparisons were made with the T‐test. No difference was found among answers, as to age and gender of the participants.ResultsAmong the first‐year students, the mean scores of correct answers in the Nervous System evaluation were 5.17 (57.52%) and the median was 6. For the musculoskeletal system, the mean number of correct answers was 6.52 (54.51%) with a median of 6. The overall average score for the first year was 6 points (55.74%). For the group of the fourth year, we observed that the mean of correct answers in the nervous system was 5.31 (59.09%) and the median was 5.5. For the musculoskeletal system, the average number of hits was 7.50 (62.50%) with a median of 8. The overall average score for the fourth year was 6.75 points (61.04%) (Figure 1). The comparison between the performance of students of the first and fourth year did not present difference in both the nervous system and the musculoskeletal system tests.Discussion and ConclusionFirst‐year SPL students have a low hit rate when evaluated for Nervous System and Musculoskeletal System anatomy contents. Fourth‐year students presented a higher hit rate for Musculoskeletal System content than that related to the Nervous System. This feature may be directly related to the clinical practice of the profession, in which the knowledge of anatomy is most evidently accessed with patients of myofunctional therapy. It is interesting to note that there was no difference between the knowledge of anatomy between first and second‐year students, showing that there was knowledge retention during the years of graduation.This abstract is from the Experimental Biology 2018 Meeting. There is no full text article associated with this abstract published in The FASEB Journal.