Anat Cell Biol.  2013 Jun;46(2):157-162. 10.5115/acb.2013.46.2.157.

Students' perception of anatomy education at a Korean medical college with respect to time and contents

• Cho MJ
• Hwang YI

• KMID: 2263108
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.5115/acb.2013.46.2.157

Abstract

Among medical education institutions worldwide, the time allotted for anatomy instruction has decreased without any reasonable time optimization suggestions. In addition, the utility of cadaver dissection has long been debated. Herein, we surveyed students' perceptions of anatomy education with respect to time and hands-on cadaver dissection, at Seoul National University College of Medicine. With the help of a questionnaire, we surveyed third- and fourth-year students at our institute who had completed the anatomy module as freshmen as well as their clinical clerkship. At our institute, students complete 50 hours of anatomy lectures and 120 hours of dissection laboratory during their first year. According to the survey responses, they generally considered these durations to be adequate for achieving their anatomy education goals. Almost all the students regarded the dissection laboratory as an essential and most helpful modality. Thus, we suggest that these ranges of time along with cadaver dissection could be useful guidelines for optimized anatomy education. The survey data also indicated that a more clinically oriented anatomy education could improve students' results.

Keyword

Anatomy education; Cadaver dissection; Korean medical college

MeSH Terms

Cadaver
Clinical Clerkship
Education, Medical
Humans
Lectures
Surveys and Questionnaires

Figure

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  Fig. 1 Response rates to the questions on the adequacy of time for anatomy lectures (A), laboratory (B), and credit for anatomy (C). On the X-axis in (C), 1=strongly agree, 2=agree, 3=neutral, 4=disagree, and 5=strongly disagree.

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  Fig. 2 (A) Response rates to questions on the usefulness of the dissection laboratory for acquiring knowledge of anatomy. On the X-axis, 1=strongly agree, 2=agree, 3=neutral, 4=disagree, and 5=strongly disagree. Over 90% of the students found the hands-on dissection laboratory to be useful. (B) Response rates to questions asking students to determine the order of helpfulness for acquiring anatomical knowledge from anatomy lectures, anatomy laboratory, during organ-based integrated lectures, and lectures during clinical clerkship. On the X-axis, the numbers represent the order of preference.

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