Problem-based learning in regional anatomy education at Peking University

Problem-based learning (PBL) has been introduced to medical schools around the world and has increasingly become a popular pedagogical technique in Asian countries since 1990. Gross anatomy is a fundamental basic science course in virtually all medical training programs, and the methods used to teach it are under frequent scrutiny and revision. Students often struggle with the vast collection of new terms and complex relationships between structures that they must learn. To help students with this process, our department teaches separate systemic and regional anatomy courses, the latter in a PBL format. After three years of using PBL in our regional anatomy course, we have worked out a set of effective instructions that we would like to share with other medical schools. We report here evidence that our clinical PBL approach stimulates students' interest in learning and enhances anatomy education in a way that can foster better practices in our future medical work force.