Anxiety levels among health sciences students during their first visit to the dissection room

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Abstract

Background

The teaching of human anatomy is often based on practices of cadaver dissection and prosected specimens. However, exposure to human cadavers might be stressful and anxiety-inducing for students. The aim of this study is to explore the degree of satisfaction and anxiety among first-year students in the Medicine, Occupational Therapy, Speech Therapy and Nursing programmes at the Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha (Spain) who are experiencing their first dissection/prosection practice to develop stress coping strategies.

Methods

A total of 204 health sciences students participated in this study. The State-Trait Anxiety Inventory was used to evaluate anxiety.

Results

‘State Anxiety’ (SA) decreased significantly throughout the course ( p < 0.05), from 20.7 ± 19.29 to 13.7 ± 11.65 points. Statistical differences (p < 0.05) in SA were found between the different health sciences, and pre-practice SA was significantly different from post-practice SA. The students with the highest pre-practice SA levels were nursing students (31.8 ± 33.7 points), but medical students had the highest post-practice SA levels (18.4 ± 12.82 points).

Conclusions

Although students were satisfied with dissection practices (96.8% of them recommended that the practices be retained for future courses), the experience can provoke stressful responses that must be addressed using advanced preparation and coping mechanisms, especially among medical and nursing students.

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Most cited references 53

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Cadaveric dissection as an educational tool for anatomical sciences in the 21st century.

Sanjib Kumar Ghosh (2017)

Anatomical education has been undergoing reforms in line with the demands of medical profession. The aim of the present study is to assess the impact of a traditional method like cadaveric dissection in teaching/learning anatomy at present times when medical schools are inclining towards student-centered, integrated, clinical application models. The article undertakes a review of literature and analyzes the observations made therein reflecting on the relevance of cadaveric dissection in anatomical education of 21st century. Despite the advent of modern technology and evolved teaching methods, dissection continues to remain a cornerstone of anatomy curriculum. Medical professionals of all levels believe that dissection enables learning anatomy with relevant clinical correlates. Moreover dissection helps to build discipline independent skills which are essential requirements of modern health care setup. It has been supplemented by other teaching/learning methods due to limited availability of cadavers in some countries. However, in the developing world due to good access to cadavers, dissection based teaching is central to anatomy education till date. Its utility is also reflected in the perception of students who are of the opinion that dissection provides them with a foundation critical to development of clinical skills. Researchers have even suggested that time has come to reinstate dissection as the core method of teaching gross anatomy to ensure safe medical practice. Nevertheless, as dissection alone cannot provide uniform learning experience hence needs to be complemented with other innovative learning methods in the future education model of anatomy. Anat Sci Educ 10: 286-299. © 2016 American Association of Anatomists.

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Teaching anatomy without cadavers.

John C McLachlan, John Bligh, Paul Bradley … (2004)

Anatomy learning is generally seen as essential to medicine, and exposure to cadavers is generally seen as essential to anatomy learning around the world. Few voices dissenting from these propositions can be identified. This paper aims to consider arguments relating to the use of cadavers in anatomy teaching, and to describe the rationale behind the decision of a new UK medical school not to use cadaveric material. First, the background to use of cadavers in anatomy learning is explored, and some general educational principles are explored. Next, arguments for the use of human cadaveric material are summarised. Then, possible arguments against use of cadavers, including educational principles as well as costs, hazards and practicality, are considered. These are much less well explored in the existing literature. Next, the rationale behind the decision of a new UK medical school not to use cadaveric material is indicated, and the programme of anatomy teaching to be employed in the absence of the use of human remains is described. Curriculum design and development, and evaluation procedures, are briefly described. Issues surrounding pathology training by autopsy, and postgraduate training in surgical anatomy, are not addressed in this paper. Evidence relating to the effect on medical learning by students not exposed to cadavers is scant, and plainly opportunities will now arise through our programme to gather such evidence. We anticipate that this discussion paper will contribute to an ongoing debate, in which virtually all previous papers on this topic have concluded that use of cadavers is essential to medical learning.

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Human cadaveric dissection: a historical account from ancient Greece to the modern era

Sanjib Kumar Ghosh (2015)

The review article attempts to focus on the practice of human cadaveric dissection during its inception in ancient Greece in 3rd century BC, revival in medieval Italy at the beginning of 14th century and subsequent evolution in Europe and the United States of America over the centuries. The article highlights on the gradual change in attitude of religious authorities towards human dissection, the shift in the practice of human dissection being performed by barber surgeons to the anatomist himself dissecting the human body and the enactment of prominent legislations which proved to be crucial milestones during the course of the history of human cadaveric dissection. It particularly emphasizes on the different means of procuring human bodies which changed over the centuries in accordance with the increasing demand due to the rise in popularity of human dissection as a tool for teaching anatomy. Finally, it documents the rise of body donation programs as the source of human cadavers for anatomical dissection from the second half of the 20th century. Presently innovative measures are being introduced within the body donation programs by medical schools across the world to sensitize medical students such that they maintain a respectful, compassionate and empathetic attitude towards the human cadaver while dissecting the same. Human dissection is indispensable for a sound knowledge in anatomy which can ensure safe as well as efficient clinical practice and the human dissection lab could possibly be the ideal place to cultivate humanistic qualities among future physicians in the 21st century.

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Author and article information

Contributors

Carmen Romo-Barrientos: mcromo@sescam.jccm.es

Juan José Criado-Álvarez: jjcriado@sescam.jccm.es

Jaime González-González: Jaime.Gonzalez@uclm.es

Isabel Ubeda-Bañon: Isabel.Ubeda@uclm.es

Alicia Flores-Cuadrado: Alicia.Flores@uclm.es

Daniel Saiz-Sánchez: Daniel.Saiz@uclm.es

Antonio Viñuela: Antonio.Vinuela@uclm.es

Jose Luis Martin-Conty: JoseLuis.MartinConty@uclm.es

Teresa Simón: Teresa.Simon@uclm.es

Alino Martinez-Marcos: Alino.Martinez@uclm.es

Alicia Mohedano-Moriano: vinuela1@gmail.com

Journal

Journal ID (nlm-ta): BMC Med Educ

Journal ID (iso-abbrev): BMC Med Educ

Title: BMC Medical Education

Publisher: BioMed Central (London )

ISSN (Electronic): 1472-6920

Publication date (Electronic): 9 April 2020

Publication date PMC-release: 9 April 2020

Publication date Collection: 2020

Volume: 20

Electronic Location Identifier: 109

Affiliations

[1 ]Integrated Care Management at Talavera de la Reina, Castilla-La Mancha Health Services, Talavera de la Reina, Toledo, Spain

[2 ]GRID grid.8048.4, ISNI 0000 0001 2194 2329, Department of Medical Sciences, School of Health Sciences, , University of Castilla-La Mancha, ; Avenida Real Fábrica de las Sedas, s/n 45600 Talavera de la Reina, Toledo, Spain

[3 ]GRID grid.8048.4, ISNI 0000 0001 2194 2329, Department of Medical Sciences, School of Medicine, Regional Centre for Biomedical Research, , University of Castilla-La Mancha, ; Ciudad Real, Spain

[4 ]GRID grid.8048.4, ISNI 0000 0001 2194 2329, Department of Nursing, Physiotherapy and Occupational Therapy, School of Health Sciences, , University of Castilla-La Mancha, ; Talavera de la Reina, Toledo, Spain

[5 ]GRID grid.8048.4, ISNI 0000 0001 2194 2329, Department of Psychology, School of Health Sciences, , University of Castilla-La Mancha, ; Talavera de la Reina, Toledo, Spain

Article

Publisher ID: 2027

DOI: 10.1186/s12909-020-02027-2

PMC ID: 7146885

PubMed ID: 32272926

SO-VID: 37db9baf-cc2e-422c-bf2c-7e65694bf7e4

License:

Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver ( http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.

History

Date received : 6 June 2019

Date accepted : 30 March 2020

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ScienceOpen disciplines: Education

Keywords: anatomy education,dissection,prosection,anxiety,health sciences

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ScienceOpen disciplines: Education

Keywords: anatomy education, dissection, prosection, anxiety, health sciences

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Anxiety levels among health sciences students during their first visit to the dissection room

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Abstract

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Journal of Health Sciences

Most cited references 53

Cadaveric dissection as an educational tool for anatomical sciences in the 21st century.

Teaching anatomy without cadavers.

Human cadaveric dissection: a historical account from ancient Greece to the modern era

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Cited by 9

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