Anatomical prosection practices in the Occupational Therapy degree. Student anxiety levels and academic effectiveness

The practice of anatomical dissection and/or prosection on human cadavers is an essential component of human anatomy training programmes. However, this activity can be stressful for inexperienced students when exposed to cadavers for the first time, and it may generate high anxiety levels. The aims of this study are threefold: 1) to analyse the thoughts and feelings of first-year students of the Occupational Therapy degree about prosection practices; 2) to examine their anxiety levels in relation to these practices; and 3) to evaluate how useful and effective they are as an educational tool for anatomy training.

This is a before-and-after cross-sectional study of first-year students of the Occupational Therapy degree at the Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha, Spain. These students had not previously participated in prosection practices. An anonymous questionnaire was distributed among the students before and after the practice, in order to examine their feelings and perceptions during the practice. To examine their anxiety levels, we used a State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI) questionnaire. To assess their learning outcomes the students had to complete two practical tests of recognition of anatomical structures, one before attending the practice and one immediately afterwards.

Basal anxiety levels, measured as trait anxiety (TA), remained stable and did not show significant differences during the practice (p>0.05). Their emotional anxiety, measured as state anxiety (SA), dropped from 14.7 to 10 points (p<0.05) after the practice. Before the start of the practice 11 students (19%) showed signs of anxiety, and these remained so at the end of the practical session (p>0.05). As for their academic performance, we observed that the number of students able to pass the test after attending the prosection practice increased notably (by more than 60%). Additionally, 100% of the students recommended that the practice be retained for future courses, giving it an approval rate of 9.1 out of 10.

Although anatomy is usually an attractive subject for Occupational Therapy students and they value prosection practices positively, they remain a potentially complex and stressful experience. Some students find that their experiences in the dissecting room can upset their emotional balance, however, the implementation of coping mechanisms could be a very effective strategy to reduce their anxiety and also to improve their learning outcomes, helping to strengthen their practical knowledge of anatomy as we have observed in this study. The students not only value positively these practices, they also believe that they are an extremely useful tool for both teaching and learning anatomy, and they recommend their routine use as part of the training process.