Teaching Professionalism to Medical Students Using Dissection-Based Anatomy Education: a Practical Guide

Abstract

Professionalism is a core competency for all healthcare professionals and is a subject of great interest within the academic community due to its vital importance in delivering the highest quality patient care. Despite this, professionalism remains difficult to define, teach and assess. The potential use of anatomy education in teaching professionalism has been increasingly highlighted within the literature, but still remains an underutilised tool in medical education. Therefore, this practical guide offers evidence-based practical points for successfully incorporating professionalism within a dissection-based anatomy course delivered to undergraduate medical students.

Clinical students’ reflections on the preclinical anatomy learning experience

“…Exposure to professionalism early in the medical curriculum years provides many opportunities to prepare students as they progress to the clinical years, because medical practitioners with positive professional attitudes are required in modern healthcare settings. 58 …”

The future of anatomy education: Learning from Covid‐19 disruption

“…In recent years, there has also been a fundamental recognition that anatomy education needs to be redesigned to play a greater role in preparing learners for practice by helping them to develop a new range of skills and attributes (Roxburgh & Evans, 2021). This includes the explicit incorporation of nontraditional discipline‐independent skills (NTDIS) (Evans et al, 2018; Evans & Pawlina, 2020; Lachman & Pawlina, 2020) and professional identity formation (PIF) (Pawlina, 2019; Abrams et al, 2021; Darici et al, 2022) into many anatomy courses with an emphasis on communication (Evans, 2013; Lochner et al, 2020; Yohannan et al, 2022), teamwork (Vasan et al, 2009, 2011; Huitt et al, 2015), critical reasoning (Elizondo‐Omaña et al, 2010; Kassirer, 2010; Rajprasath et al, 2020), interprofessional learning (Smith et al, 2015; Zheng et al, 2019; Lochner et al, 2020), and professionalism (Pawlina et al, 2006; Palmer et al, 2020; Khabaz Mafinejad et al, 2021). Overall, such changes and innovations has led to many educators shifting away from an approach that purely focuses on lectures, conventional laboratory practical sessions and time‐honored assessments to one that exposes the educator and more importantly the learner to a more varied and multifaceted format and one increasingly aligned to the UNESCO four pillars of education (Delors et al, 1996).…”

“Fun slipping into the doctor's role”—The relationship between sonoanatomy teaching and professional identity formation before and during the Covid‐19 pandemic

“…However, students experience unpleasant emotions during their medical career, such as frustration, anxiety and self‐doubt (Barone et al, 2019). Some of these might be part of the natural crisis experience, however the non‐integration of these conflicts may result in avoidance behavior and inadequate sense of belonging to the profession (Weurlander, 2020; Palmer et al, 2021). Therefore, it seems especially important to support students in forming their professional identities early in their careers.…”