An explorative learning approach to teaching clinical anatomy using student generated content.

Area of Science:

• Medical Education
• Gross Anatomy
• Clinical Reasoning

Background:

• Traditional medical education uses patient cases to teach basic sciences.
• A gap exists in methodologies where students generate cases from diagnoses.
• This study explores a novel reverse teaching approach.

Purpose of the Study:

• To introduce an explorative learning approach in gross anatomy.
• To assess the effectiveness of students constructing patient cases from diagnoses.
• To enhance clinical skills and anatomy-to-diagnosis correlation.

Main Methods:

• Students used clinical reasoning to create patient cases based on given diagnoses.
• An online MediaWiki platform facilitated knowledge sharing and project completion.
• Teams worked for 4 weeks with weekly feedback from teaching assistants.

Main Results:

• The project enhanced students' ability to perform patient write-ups and oral presentations.
• Students demonstrated improved correlation between anatomy and clinical diagnoses.
• Key skills like communication, leadership, and teamwork were reinforced.

Conclusions:

• A reverse teaching methodology using explorative learning is effective for clinical anatomy education.
• This approach prepares students for clinical years and patient interactions.
• The project successfully integrated basic science with clinical application.