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Addressing the shortage of qualified staff in medical school anatomy laboratories and a proposed solution
Author(s) -
Homer Richard William,
Hawker Heather,
Mortensen Nathan T.,
Morton David A.
Publication year - 2007
Publication title -
the faseb journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.709
H-Index - 277
eISSN - 1530-6860
pISSN - 0892-6638
DOI - 10.1096/fasebj.21.5.a215-b
Subject(s) - economic shortage , dissection (medical) , preparedness , medical education , gross anatomy , medicine , session (web analytics) , medical school , anatomy , computer science , management , government (linguistics) , world wide web , linguistics , philosophy , economics
Medical schools across the United States are experiencing a shortage of qualified staff to administer lectures and supervise cadaver dissections. Due to a limited number of instructors, the University of Utah has found it difficult to supervise the 104 medical students during cadaver dissections. To address this problem, qualified graduate and undergraduate students were hired. While anatomy books and prosections are good learning tools, they do not adequately display a dissection process or variations encountered during dissection. As a result a “teaching assistant (TA) dissection course” was implemented, covering the dissections one week before the medical students would do the same dissections. In this way, our new TA's could have experience in not only reviewing the anatomy, but also the dissection sequence prior to teaching the students. A division of labor was created to keep each participant actively involved. This allowed some to dissect while others reviewed pertinent anatomy from atlases and textbooks. Throughout the session, identified cadaveric structures with accompanying anatomical and clinical applications were continually exchanged within the group. At the conclusion of the course we administered a questionnaire to our instructors regarding their preparedness and confidence with laboratory content as a result of this class. Each participant indicated a positive experience.