158 - Exploring the Use of Youtube in Anatomy Education: Insights from First-year M.B.B.S Students in South India

Poster Board Number: 158
There are separate poster presentation times for odd and even posters.
Odd poster #s – first hour
Even poster #s – second hour

Co-authors:

Shakthi Kumaran Ramasamy - Stanford University

Abstract Body :
IntroductionHuman anatomy is considered an important subject in medical education. This can be appreciated from Andreus Vesalius, the father of modern anatomy whose words can be translated to - ‘Students understand the importance of anatomy when he is standing alone in front of the operating table.’Traditionally and even now in India particularly, anatomy education has been primarily dependent on dissection. But with the emergence of interactive teaching methods in medical education, a change is ‘need of the hour’ for anatomy.The use of online teaching media in medical education can enhance anatomy dissemination and learning. One such media among many others is the video-sharing platform ’YouTube’. There are limited studies in literature conducted with a small number of medical students on the use of YouTube as a platform for anatomy education. The aim of this study is to assess first year M.B.B.S students’ perceptions and patterns of usage of this resource, as well as the effectiveness of YouTube videos in ‘Competency Based Medical Education’ (CBME) curriculum.METHODOLOGYThe present study is cross-sectional questionnaire based. First year medical students were invited to complete an anonymous online questionnaire circulated through the WhatsApp groups of students at the medical colleges of Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Tamil Nadu, and Karnataka in India. A total of about 650 students participated in the study that included forty medical students from the other phases of MBBS. Only the fully completed responses were considered for analysis. Students’ responses were numerically coded, for the results to be analysed and reported.RESULTSThe results showed that about 97.5% of the students used YouTube in general, 98% used it as a source of information, and 97.5% used YouTube as a learning tool for medical school. Furthermore, YouTube was used by about 97.1% of the students specifically for learning anatomy. The study also revealed that dissection videos were the most viewed anatomy-related content and was followed by anatomy lectures for exam preparation. In addition, about half of them recommended using YouTube as an anatomy-learning tool especially after the upturn of online teaching during the COVID pandemic. About 96.3% of the students in this study suggested that they would recommend other students to use YouTube as a learning tool for anatomy.STATISTICAL ANALYSISStatistical analysis was performed using IBM SPSS version 20 software. Chi square tests and Fisher’s exact tests were done to assess the differences in participants’ response to study items based on gender.CONCLUSIONFirst year medical students are increasingly adopting YouTube for learning anatomy. It is now time for the medical educators to embrace YouTube as an educational tool in their anatomy teaching toolset