Anatomy education beyond the Covid-19 pandemic: A changing pedagogy.

The coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) pandemic has induced multifaceted changes in anatomical education. There has been a significant increase in the employment of digital technologies coupled with the upskilling of educators' capacity and altered attitudes toward the digitalization process. While challenges remain, learners have demonstrated capabilities to adapt to digital delivery, engagement and assessment. With alternative and innovative teaching and learning strategies having been trialed and implemented for almost two years, the key question now is what the pedagogy will be for anatomy education beyond the pandemic. Here we discuss some of the changes in anatomy education that have taken place as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic and importantly present some outlooks for evidence-based anatomy pedagogy as the world enters the post-pandemic phase and beyond. The authors conclude that the anatomy discipline is ready to further modernize and has the opportunity to use digital technologies to evolve and enhance anatomy education to ensure students are provided with the learning experience which will prepare them best for the future.

Flipped anatomy classroom integrating multimodal digital resources shows positive influence upon students' experience and learning performance.

Anatomy is shifting toward a greater focus on adopting digital delivery. To advance digital and authentic learning in anatomy, a flipped classroom model integrating multimodal digital resources and a multimedia group assignment was designed and implemented for first-year neuroanatomy and third-year regional anatomy curricula. A five-point Likert scale learning and teaching survey was conducted for a total of 145 undergraduate health science students to evaluate students' perception of the flipped classroom model and digital resources. This study revealed that over two-thirds of participants strongly agreed or agreed that the flipped classroom model helped their independent learning and understanding of difficult anatomy concepts. The response showed students consistently enjoyed their experience of using multimodal digital anatomy resources. Both first-year (75%) and third-year (88%) students strongly agreed or agreed that digital tools are very valuable and interactive for studying anatomy. Most students strongly agreed or agreed that digital anatomy tools increased their learning experience (~80%) and confidence (> 70%). The third-year students rated the value of digital anatomy tools significantly higher than the first-year students (p = 0.0038). A taxonomy-based assessment strategy revealed that the third-year students, but not the first-year, demonstrated improved performance in assessments relating to clinical application (p = 0.045). In summary, a flipped anatomy classroom integrating multimodal digital approaches exerted positive impact upon learning experience of both junior and senior students, the latter of whom demonstrated improved learning performance. This study extends the pedagogy innovation of flipped classroom teaching, which will advance future anatomy curriculum development, pertinent to post-pandemic education.

Tobacco smoking cessation in mental health services during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Tobacco smoking is more prevalent among people who experience mental illness. It is therefore a prominent issue for psychiatric inpatient units. The COVID-19 pandemic has meant that many psychiatric inpatient units are no longer granting leave and outdoor smoking breaks, prompting the question of whether to allow tobacco smoking or enforce smoking bans in mental health services. There is currently mixed evidence that tobacco smoking is associated with a higher risk of developing COVID-19 and poorer outcomes for COVID-19 cases, potentially due to current small sample sizes. Considering the benefits of smoking cessation in this vulnerable population, the current pandemic should be used as an opportunity to further enforce smoking cessation in mental health facilities and encourage nicotine replacement therapy alongside cessation counseling.