The attitudes of medical students in Europe toward the clinical importance of histology

Abstract

Many studies have been undertaken to assess the attitudes of medical students to the clinical importance of gross anatomy. However, much less is known about their attitudes toward the clinical importance of histology. Using Thurstone and Chave methods to assess attitudes, over 2,000 early stage medical students across Europe provided responses to a survey that tested the hypothesis that the students have a high regard for histology's clinical relevance. Regardless of the university and country surveyed, and of the teaching methods employed for histology, our findings were not consistent with our hypotheses, students providing a more moderate assessment of histology's importance compared to gross anatomy but more positive than their attitudes toward embryology. Histology should play a significant role in medical education in terms of appreciating not just normal structure and function but also pathology. We conclude that teachers of histology should pay special attention to informing newly-recruited medical students of the significant role played by histology in attaining clinical competence and in underpinning their status as being learned members of a healthcare profession. This work was conducted under the auspices of the Trans-European Pedagogic Research Group (TEPARG). Clin. Anat. 30:635-643, 2017. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Medical Students’ Perceptions of Pathology and a Proposed Curricular Integration with Histology: A Future Vision of Curricular Change

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The more we know, the more we forget…

“…The motivation of Dentistry students. Dentistry students find it less important to study histology compared to anatomy, though more necessary than embryology, as confirmed by other authors [11]. Although, histology plays a significant role in dentistry education from the point of view of assessing both normal structure and pathological changes Skills building session for dentistry students.…”

Time Spent in Practicing Dissection Correlated with Improvement in Anatomical Knowledge of Students: Experimental Study in an Integrated Learning Program

“…Though dissection remains a mainstay in the process of anatomy teaching, several institutions have advocated its removal from modern teaching medical and allied health curricula for the following reasons: reduced allocated time for dissection, limited availability of resources, lack of possible donors, unpleasant smell of cadavers and shift towards the use of modern technologies in teaching [9,[15][16][17][18][19]. This led to a debate among anatomists regarding the optimal method for delivering anatomy to medical students and their desired degree of anatomical competence.…”