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The tarsal bone test: a basic test of health sciences students' knowledge of lower limb anatomy
José Manuel Castillo-López1, Juan Antonio Díaz-Mancha2, Alberto Marcos Heredia-Rizo2
1Department of Podiatry, University of Seville, Facultad de Enfermería, Fisioterapia y Podología, Calle Avicena S/N, 41009 Sevilla, Spain.
Objectives:
The aim of the present study was to design an easy-to-use tool, the tarsal bone test (TBT), to provide a snapshot of podiatry students' basic anatomical knowledge of the bones of the lower limb.
Methods:
The study included 254 podiatry students from three different universities, 145 of them were first-year students and 109 were in their fourth and final years. The TBT was administered without prior notice to the participants and was to be completed in 5 minutes.
Results:
The results show that 97.2% of the subjects (n = 247) correctly labelled all tarsal bones, while the other 2.8% (n = 7) incorrectly labelled at least one bone, that was either the cuboid (7 times) or the navicular (6 times). Although only one fourth-year student inaccurately identified one bone, no significant differences in the distribution of the correct and incorrect responses were found between first and fourth-year students.
Conclusions:
The TBT seems to be a straightforward and easy-to-apply instrument, and provides an objective view of the level of knowledge acquired at different stages of podiatry studies.
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