Team Collaboration in Learning Anatomy with Ultrasound in a Clinical Presentation‐Driven Curriculum

At California University of Science and Medicine, School of Medicine, we have developed a clinical presentation‐driven curriculum. During the pre‐clerkship courses students will spend most of their time in activities related to self‐directed learning, most of these activities will occur in a team based environment that is a modified version of the traditional TBL approach. To follow along the same educational lines, the laboratory sessions were designed to utilize a self‐directed learning approach but in a team based environment. Methods Ultrasound laboratory sessions have been developed to support the learning of anatomy by interpretation of normal images. The topics are integrated with the weekly theme related to the clinical skills, clinical presentation, and clinical case sessions. During week 4 of the course entitled “The Structural Integrity of the Human Body” i.e., musculoskeletal and integumentary systems, the clinical presentation is joint pain and the clinical skills are related to the evaluation of joints. The anatomy lab session is ‘ultrasonography of joints'. Results The session learning outcomes (SLOs) of the two‐hour lab session are: 1) Describe the normal ultrasonographic anatomy of shoulder, elbow, wrist, hip, knee and ankle joints, in oblique and axial planes. 2) Identify and describe the ultrasonographic appearance of excessive fluid in the hip/knee/ankle joints. To achieve these outcomes, the lab activities were divided in three sessions: 1) Information and independent self‐directed learning: the students will review the information through self‐study from the resources provided as PowerPoints, lecture recordings, text book reference pages. 2) Identification of structures and confirmation by instructors: students will receive study guided questions about the imaging anatomy of joints mainly based on simple principles of: a) How to identify the structure? b) What is the relation of structure and its normal function? c) What will happen if it is dysfunctional? Students will work in groups and each group will have ultrasound equipment to identify the joints. 3) Interactivity and integration followed by presentation and discussion: the focus of this session is on problem solving exercises, critical‐thinking and presentation of exercises by the teams. The problems will focus on joints and related anatomical appearances on ultrasound. This will be followed by a discussion about team thinking and interpretation of concepts. The instructor will select the presenter from a team at random. The questions will be written in a way that there will be many discussions stimulating concepts focused on the topic of the lab. During the discussion they will be encouraged to justify their answer and extra bonus points will be given to show the abnormality in the joints on images. Evaluation forms will be used to get feedback and suggestions to improve. Conclusion Independent self‐directed learning with interactivity and integration in a collaborative team based environment makes anatomy learning clinically applicable and fun. Support or Funding Information self funded This abstract is from the Experimental Biology 2018 Meeting. There is no full text article associated with this abstract published in The FASEB Journal .