Dissection of lab specimens is a common procedure in science classrooms, yet there are many unasked and unexamined questions relating to this practice. In addition to ethical considerations, there are personal and environmental health impacts of using conventional dissection, which has historically included animals and animal organs embalmed in…

Individuals with intellectual disability (ID) or Down syndrome (DS) may be at greater risk of osteoporosis. The purpose of this study was to compare bone mineral density (BMD) of DS, ID, and non-intellectually disabled (NID) populations. In each group, 33 participants between the ages of 28 and 60 years were compared. BMD was measured with…

The authors describe and evaluate a method to motivate medical students to maximize the effectiveness of dissection opportunities by using In-Course-Assessments (ICAs) to encourage teamwork. A student's final mark was derived by combining the group dissection mark, group mark for questions, and their individual question mark. An analysis of…

Embryology is integrated into the Clinically Oriented Anatomy course at the Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center School of Medicine. Before 2008, the same instructor presented embryology in 13 face-to-face lectures distributed by organ systems throughout the course. For the 2008 and 2009 offerings of the course, a hybrid embryology…

Medical professionalism is a multifaceted paradigm and is an essential component of medical education. Gross anatomy is a laboratory to teach professionalism, and promoting critical reflection in medical students is a prerequisite to furthering professionalism. The aim of this study was to determine if professionalism case discussions during a…

The teaching of gross anatomy has, for centuries, relied on the dissection of human cadavers, and this formative experience is known to evoke strong emotional responses. The authors hypothesized that the phenomenon of cadaver naming is a coping mechanism used by medical students and that it correlates with other attitudes about dissection and body…

Videos can be used as didactic tools for self-learning under several circumstances, including those cases in which students are responsible for the development of this resource as an audiovisual notebook. We compared students' and teachers' perceptions regarding the main features that an audiovisual notebook should include. Four…

Facebook is the most popular social media site visited by university students on a daily basis. Consequently, Facebook is the logical place to start with for integrating social media technologies into education. This study explores how a faculty-administered Facebook Page can be used to supplement anatomy education beyond the traditional…

Hands-on educational experiences can stimulate student interest, increase knowledge retention, and enhance development of clinical skills. The Lachman test, used to assess the integrity of the anterior cruciate ligament (ACL), is commonly performed by health care professionals and is relatively easy to teach to first-year health profession…

Near-peer teaching involves more experienced students acting as tutors and has been widely used in anatomy education. This approach has many advantages for the learner due to the social and cognitive congruence they share with the teacher, however, the influence of distance between the teacher and learner on these congruences has yet to be…

In recent years, there has been a growing interest in white matter anatomy of the human brain. With advances in brain imaging techniques, the significance of white matter integrity for brain function has been demonstrated in various neurological and psychiatric disorders. As the demand for interpretation of clinical and imaging data on white…

Near-peer facilitators (senior students serving as facilitators to their more junior peers) bring a unique student-based perspective to teaching. With fewer years of teaching experience however, students who become involved in a facilitator role typically develop related skills quickly through a process of trial-and-error within the classroom. The…

Attending postmortems enables students to learn anatomy and pathology within a clinical context, provides insights into effects of treatment and introduces the reality that patients die. Rates of clinical autopsies have declined and medical schools have cut obligatory autopsy sessions from their curricula making it difficult to assess medical…

Anatomy education is undergoing significant transformation. It is unknown whether changes are in accordance with occupational therapy (OT) practice needs. The purpose of this pilot study was to survey OT clinicians to determine their perspectives on the value of anatomy in OT curricula, and anatomical knowledge required for practice. In addition…

The one-minute preceptor (OMP) is a time-efficient, learner-centered teaching method used in a busy ambulatory care setting. This project evaluated the effects of training experienced anatomy teachers in the use of the OMP in the gross anatomy laboratory on students' perceived learning. Second-year medical students from a five-year,…