Modular Customized Anatomy for Allied Health Professional Students

There are separate poster presentation times for odd and even posters.
Odd poster #s – first hour
Even poster #s – second hour

Co-authors:

Hamoun Delaviz, MD - Assistant Professor, Medical Education, University Toledo College of Medicine and Life Sciences; Adel Maklad - Professor, Medical Education, University Toledo College of Medicine and Life Sciences

Abstract Body : Introduction: Anatomy is an essential foundational science for health professionals and is most effective when guided by application to the needs of clinical specialty. The curricular innovation described in this abstract provided a customizable anatomy course for students enrolled in the following programs: Physician Assistant (PA), Pathology Assistant (PathA), Master’s in Biomedical Sciences (MS-BMS), Transplantation and Donation Sciences Master’s program (TADS), and Medical Physics (MedPhysics).


Materials and Methods: Anatomy faculty at the University of Toledo College of Medicine and Life Sciences (UTCOMLS), created an anatomy course (ANAT 5000) that met the needs of five graduate allied health professional programs. Three faculty were available to teach the course. To provide the most relevant and appropriate education for all students according to program, a customizable anatomy curriculum was created. This course had two components. 1) It provided broad-based general anatomy instruction that was delivered synchronously to all graduate students enrolled in the curriculum. Modes of instruction for the synchronous portion included didactic lecture, gross anatomy laboratory (dissection and prosection), and interprofessional case-based active learning. 2) Asynchronous modules, customized to the clinical relevance of each allied health specialty, were created and assigned to students according to their graduate program. Customized modules were created using a variety of educational technologies. Modules consisted of text, narrations, customized assessments, interactive quizzes, and role-playing exercises appropriate to the specialty. Modules were assigned according to each program and posted to the course learning management system.

Results: Feedback has been generally positive. Students with programmatic curricular support agreed/ strongly agreed (90-100%) that the course increased their ability to apply foundational science to clinical scenarios, problem solve, and enhanced their knowledge of the content compared to programs with little curricular support (0-50%). Student feedback indicated that student learning experience was impacted by program administrative abilities.

Conclusion: Customizable modular anatomy curriculum allowed students enrolled in multiple allied health professional programs to meet their anatomy requirement in a single course. The varied requirements and expectations of students in the different allied health programs necessitated programmatic curricular support for student satisfaction.

Impact: This curriculum innovation allows students to get tailored meaningful instruction with limited faculty. This is particularly important at institutions that may be struggling with faculty shortages.