Teaching Physician Assistant's Gross Anatomy During the COVID‐19 Pandemic

Abstract

Streaming of faculty anatomy dissections was utilized to teach clinically relevant gross anatomy to first‐year Physician Assistant students during the summer of 2020 to address Covid‐19 pandemic social distancing guidelines. The online anatomy dissections by faculty replaced the traditional practice of onsite dissection laboratory periods by the students.MATERIAL AND METHODSThe PA gross anatomy course was scheduled for six weeks, Monday through Thursday. The PA students were offsite and, therefore, viewed the dissections via zoom sessions. Each online session was scheduled for three hours. At the beginning of each session, ten quiz questions relative to prior sessions were asked to enhance students’ retention and recall. Following the daily online practical quizzes, students watched step by step dissections by the faculty. These dissections were integrated with relevant power‐point slides and/or cross‐sections. During last 35 minutes of each daily session, students were divided into small groups to discuss the dissected anatomy region for that day with one faculty member per group. The PA students from the Class of 2022 completed an anonymous electronic survey at the conclusion of the course.RESULTSThe online survey of the enrolled PA students (n=60) in their first‐year training identified that the online dissections and the teaching format were extremely beneficial to their learning. Ninety percent of the students strongly agreed or agreed that online gross anatomy course augmented their learning. Eighty percent of the students strongly agreed or agreed that the streaming of anatomy dissections was helpful in learning the assigned anatomy. Ninety percent of the students strongly agreed or agreed that integrated power point presentations were beneficial, and ninety percent of the students strongly agreed or agreed that daily integrated quizzes (self‐assessment modules) were beneficial for their retention and recall. Although setting up online dissections and integrating the streaming dissections with relevant power points were time‐intensive, the teaching faculty viewed the online teaching experiences as efficient means to further develop students’ knowledge base of anatomy while addressing university and CDC guidelines.