Cadaver Prosection Significance in Medical Field: Analytical Survey of Anatomy Pedagogy

Abstract

Objective: To determine the effectiveness of dissection as a useful pedagogy in the field of anatomy  through assessment of views of respondents.

Methods: A cross-sectional study was carried out in the anatomy department of a private and a public sector college for a period of twelve weeks during the year 2018.A total of 135 participants were re-    cruited in this survey. The nature of participation (regular or irregular) in comparison was used as the predictor variable. The average scores for each item were calculated and compared between the par- ticipants at dissections using Mann-Whitney's U test.  Likert-style  survey  was  designed  for  evaluation. The IBM SPSS statistics version 21 was used for the analysis of data.

Results: A large number of participants overall strongly supported  the  version  that  a  dissection  pro- gram should be essentially inducted into the  curriculum;  viewed  non-participation  at  dissection  ses-  sions as to be disadvantageous in terms of their learning repertoire. Seventy eight percent  stated  it deepens understanding of anatomy as a subject. Around 80%  of  the  participants  preferred  dissection over other tools of learning, whereas 67% agreed that it develops 3-dimensional structural approach;       also agreed with the time allocated for dissection is sufficient for learning (57%). Besides this, a mi-      nority of respondents put up  a  negative  perception  in  terms  of  dissection  being  time  consuming  (36%), stress inducing (18%), boring (20%), and difficulty in finding out structures was also reported (43.3%).

Conclusion: The use of dissection in undergraduate medical education as part of anatomy pedagogy     may develop a useful  golden  opportunity  for  students  to  work  on  additional  learning  objectives  such as professionalism, manual dexterity, ethics, teamwork, self- and peer evaluation.