No abstract

Basic and superior reasoning skills are woven into the clinical reasoning process just as they are used to solve any problem. As clinical reasoning is the central competence of medical education, development of these reasoning skills should occur throughout the undergraduate medical curriculum. The authors describe here a method of teaching reasoning skills in a clinical context during a human anatomy course.

Few studies have evaluated resilience in an academic environment as it relates to academic success or failure. This work sought to assess resilience in regular and remedial students of gross anatomy during the first and second semesters of medical school and to correlate this personal trait with academic performance. Two groups of students were compared: the first group included first-year medical students in the regular course, and the second group included first-year medical students who did not pass the regular anatomy course and so were enrolled in the remedial course. Both groups completed anonymous surveys designed to gather demographic data and establish scores on the Connor-Davidson resilience scale, which includes 25 statements rated zero to four on a Likert scale (maximum score 100). The average resilience score was the same for both groups, 80 +/- 9. The average anatomy grades differed significantly between regular students (67+/- 15.0) and remedial students (61 +/- 12.0). While there was no overall correlation between resilience score and anatomy grade, regular students with resilience scores of 75 or greater showed slightly better academic performance than their classmates. Similarly, remedial students with resilience scores of 87 or greater faired better academically. Resilience does not predict academic performance in gross anatomy, and further work is necessary to identify those intrinsic and extrinsic factors that influence students' achievements.

Determining the optimal conditions for learning anatomy will help medical students to do better in a gross anatomy course. We examined the two types of anatomy courses offered in our institution: slow-paced (SP) and fast-paced (FP) courses, in which the same content is taught in approximately the same number of hours (SP ‫؍‬ 91 hr; FP ‫؍‬ 90 hr), but the duration of each course differed (SP ‫؍‬ 91 1-hr sessions lasting 20 weeks; FP ‫؍‬ 45 2-hr sessions lasting 9 weeks). The objective of this study was to find out whether a relationship exists between anatomy course pace and achievement. Two groups of students were tested on their anatomy knowledge both before beginning and after completing either the SP or the FP course. The average difference in scores obtained on the pre-and postcourse tests for each group was obtained and a t-test was used (P < 0.05) to compare the mean score for each group. A significant difference was found between group SP and group FP, with the highest achievement obtained by group SP. The pace of the course is thus a factor that influences achievement. Anat Rec (Part B: New Anat) 289B:134 -138, 2006.

Resilience in medical students. Introduction. Few studies of resilience in an academic atmosphere exist and that associate it as a factor of success or failure in their academic performance. The objective of the present work is to determine resilience in regular and repeating students of medicine during the first and second semester and to correlate it with academic performance. Methods. For the study two different groups of students were included, the first group was integrated by first year regular students and the second group was formed by repeating (irregular) students. To both samples of the population a survey was applied to obtain the demographic characteristics and the Connor‐Davidson resilience scale which consists of 25 statements that can be graded from 0 to 4 on a Likert scale where zero corresponds to Never and 4 to Always. Results. The average of the score of the resilience scale for both groups was 80 ± 9, without a statistically significant difference. The average of the grades of human anatomy was 67 ± 15.0 for regular students; for the group of irregular students the average was 61 ± 12.0, there being a statistically significant difference between these groups. Conclusion. The resilience score is not predictive of academic success (passing a subject).