How do we teach anatomy to medical students at Swansea University? This is what I was speaking to prospective applicants about on Friday:
Every Monday morning, most weeks of the first year, we teach anatomy in the Anatomy & Clinical Skills labs for about 3 hours. So the first subject you learn that week is anatomy, and the rest of the week’s topics often relate back to this.
We split the students up into small groups; about 5 groups of 14. The anatomy of the week (for example, the forearm and the hand) is divided up into smaller chunks taught by different specialists, mostly clinicians. There may be anatomists (scientists like me), surgeons, radiologists, pathologists, or even physiotherapists taking part. Each teaches from their own perspective.
Radiologists teach via medical imaging, such as x-rays, CT scans or MRI scans. In our example they’d teach the bones of the forearm and hand. Medical imaging and surface anatomy are the ways in which most doctors will view and work with anatomy in patients, so this is important to see from the start.
Surgeons teach from an invasive, repair perspective, usually with several eye-opening stories of relevant patients & cases. They’ll often teach important structures they commonly deal with (in the example of the arm, they would teach the paths & functions of nerves, major blood vessels, & muscles).
Pathologists deal with anatomy at a cellular scale for much of the time. Understanding this, the histology, gives a solid understanding of the differences between tissues & how their structure relates to their function. This is important in understanding both normal function and disease. The pathologists will teach both the normal histology & the pathology of various tissues, subjects crucial to medicine. We have a microscope and a digital camera connected to some display equipment for this purpose.
We all use our collection of very detailed, multi-piece plastic models to teach with, alongside medical imaging & videos, elearning material (e.g. www.anatomy.tv),prosections (dissected human material) & traditional presentations. We cover the whole human body in a number of different styles, as students’ brains work in quite different ways to understand & remember the 3D nature of the body & the inter-relations of the different organs & tissues. It really is a very stimulating, modern way of learning. Students interact weekly with a number of clinicians specialising in a range of areas.
The learning is very much up to the students. As teachers we introduce topics & explain concepts, but learning is a time-linked task. Students must put time into the study of anatomy to get the most from the teaching, and to give themselves an important knowledge base for their future careers in medicine. The resources in Swansea give you the best opportunity to do that, and we make these resources as open to you as possible. Our aim is to teach you the anatomy that you will remember throughout your career.