Anatomy Teaching: A Student’s Perspective

ABSTRACT

Background: The advent of 21st century has brought about revolutionary changes in medical education. Medicaleducators are debating the effective application of traditional and newer teaching and learning (T/L)methodologies. The present study aimed to obtain the student’s perspective on the present T/L methodology inanatomy and also the content and duration of anatomy teaching so as to help the educators design a moreeffective anatomy T/L programme.Methodology: The 4th, 5th year MBBS students and interns were administered questionnaires to rate the T/L aidsand give suggestions to improve the teaching of anatomy through close and open ended questions.Results: Amongst the teaching aids, excellent / good rating was given by 80.3% students to classroom teaching onthe black-board, followed by 68.3% to dissection. Amongst the learning aids, excellent / good rating was given by72.3% students to dissection and 67% to lectures. Further, 55% students opined that anatomy should be taughtover 12 months (excluding examinations) whereas 37.6% suggested it to be taught in 18 months. The need tointroduce anatomy teaching sessions during the later part of the medical curriculum was felt by majority (95.2%)of the students.Conclusions: The traditional T/L methods like dissection, lectures and black-board teaching are preferred by thenewer generation learners also and should be integrated with newer teaching modalities and modern technology.The anatomy syllabus being taught in the present MBBS curriculum is adequate, however the time allotted foranatomy teaching needs to be increased by 2 to 6 months. The study further suggests that there is a need toreinforce anatomy teaching in the clinical years.