Structure and assessment of a short intense clinical anatomy course shortly before clinical studies

ABSTRACT

In many traditional medical courses topographical anatomy has been one of the first subjects studied and, even when the courses were well related to function and clinical problems, students had forgotten much of what they have learned when confronted by the need to recall the information during clinical studies. To overcome this, anatomy learning in Oxford has been divided into a first year course, in which the underlying principles of body structure are studied, and a newly designed intensive 3-week clinical anatomy course taken just before the start of clinical studies. The aim is to ensure both that students have enough anatomy to understand the other preclinical subjects, and that they start clinical training with a high level of knowledge of those features of topographical and functional anatomy that are particularly relevant to examination of patients, diagnosis of diseases with an anatomical component, and simple clinical procedures. The course is intensive, 8 hours per day for 3 weeks. Each day has an orientation lecture and two practical sessions, each interspersed with a short lecture by a practicing clinician illustrating the clinical use of the anatomy being studied. Assessment of student progress occurs on-line at the end of each week, with questions on normal anatomy or consequences of an anatomical lesion. One advantage of the online assessment has been the detailed analysis that is rapidly generated, which facilitated improvement of the question bank (AU)

RESUMEN

No disponible