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Three opportunities in gross anatomy for meeting the diverse needs of fourth year medical students based on their chosen specialty areas
Author(s) -
Snow Mikel H,
Winfield Michelle A.
Publication year - 2012
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.26.1_supplement.531.9
Subject(s) - gross anatomy , specialty , dissection (medical) , medical education , medicine , curriculum , anatomy , psychology , family medicine , pedagogy
Recent trends in medical education have led to reduced hours in first‐year gross anatomy courses as well as reduced dissection experiences for students. To address this issue, the KSOM offers two advanced electives and one teaching experience in gross anatomy as options for fourth year medical students who wish to enhance the anatomy most relevant to their residency training. The Advanced Anatomy & Surgical Skills Elective is a three‐week experience for 8–12 students per year who are going into general or orthopedic surgery. This elective integrates student dissection with clinical correlations by surgery faculty, hospital experiences, and clinical procedures/techniques carried out in the Surgical Skills Lab. The Independent Study in Anatomy Elective is a flexible experience tailored to the student's post‐graduate needs in anatomy by combining cadaveric dissection, radiology, cross‐sectional anatomy, and embryology with advanced readings. This elective, which can be from two to six weeks in length, is offered throughout the year and has accommodated 70 to 100 students per year for the past five years. An additional 12 to 18 fourth year medical students are selected each year to serve as lab instructors in the first year anatomy course. Based on their chosen specialty field, selected fourth year students are matched with one of five body regions (thorax, abdomen, pelvis, head & neck, limbs) for teaching in the first year course. Over the past five years, these three opportunities have provided advanced experiences in human anatomy for over 50% of the graduating classes.