The unintentional effects on body donation programs of a competency‐based curriculum in post‐graduate medical education

Abstract

A competency‐based curriculum shifts the focus from acquiring knowledge to using knowledge, placing emphasis upon the practices used by professionals and encouraging students to utilize their medical knowledge for specific tasks performed within realistic settings. As medical programs place increasing importance on competency‐based training and surgical simulations for residents, anatomy laboratories and body donation programs find themselves in a position of adapting to changing needs and demands. These skill‐centered curricula exhibit a growing demand for simulation facilities as well as specimens with more realistic properties, and institutions must assess how current or new teaching and embalming techniques respond to the demands of the residency programs they serve. Similarly, institutions’ body donation programs must adapt to a competency‐based curriculum’s greater need for cadaveric specimens, which presents many challenges to a body donation program, ranging from the logistical to the ethical.