The Efficiency of Digital Anatomy Teaching Strategies
Abstract
Jeremy Sandberg, Rachel Calderon and James McKivigan
Background: In medical school, the teaching of anatomy is both time-consuming and complicated. As more schools allot less time to this subject, there is a growing need to restructure anatomy teaching methodologies. This paper examines digital dissection resources and identifies how and when they were implemented in the classroom.
Methods: An online survey tool was sent to osteopathic medical schools throughout the United States to determine the resources and methods being used and to assess how students were performing in corresponding anatomy courses. The anatomy director at each school was given a predetermined set of questions to enable an evaluation of the curriculum and performance of the students.
Results: After data were collected from the medical schools, the results were analyzed and indicated that the use of digital anatomy resources resulted in better overall performance and grades.
Conclusion: Although the small sample size precluded proper hypothesis testing, several strong trends emerged that should be investigated with a larger sample. Most notably, these trends included strong associations among the prevalence of digital anatomy training, teaching using cadavers, and student competence.