Goals
The course aims to foster core competency-based course learning objectives: knowledge for practice, professionalism, patient care, interpersonal and communication skills, practice-based learning and improvement, interprofessional collaboration, and personal and professional development.
Description
The module encompasses topics related to gross anatomy, radiology, histology, embryology and acquired anatomic pathology. The course utilizes multiple instructional methods, including cadaver dissection in a recently renovated laboratory that encourages an investigative approach to dissection. As an alternative to dissection, students at our Northwest Arkansas campus have access to a comprehensive collection of plastinated prosected cadavers and a virtual reality learning system. Students work in laboratory teams and discussion groups to promote development of professional work traits, teamwork skills and self-directed problem-solving abilities important for fostering lifelong learning habits.
M1 students pose in the anatomy teaching complex (Photo taken prior to the COVID-19 pandemic).
Throughout the pre-clerkship phase of the curriculum, a longitudinal series of ultrasound laboratories are embedded in the foundational and organ-based modules of the curriculum. The anatomy teaching faculty join members of the Department of Emergency Medicine and the Department of Radiology in teaching these hands-on small group laboratory sessions, which are mostly taught in the UAMS Clinical Skills Center with its staff of standardized patients.
Radiologists and interventional radiologists meet with students weekly to discuss clinical cases. Dr. Kevin Wong in the Department of Radiology serves as the module’s Clinical Co-Director. Moreover, numerous pathology faculty and residents volunteer to help students identify grossly visible lesions in the dissection laboratory and assist with the collection of biopsy specimens and the microscopic analysis of these specimens. This interdisciplinary and multifaced approach to dissection is documented by student team generated abstracts and presentations at a research conference held on the final day of the course.
The Human Structure faculty embrace core institutional values: integrity, respect, diversity, teamwork, creativity, and excellence. Since 1999, students have annually organized a memorial service to honor the unique contributions that anatomical donors make to their education. Furthermore, the anatomy teaching complex includes a memorial gallery of artwork presented by the class.