125 - What’s the Point? Student Perspectives on Importance of Anatomy Knowledge

Poster Board Number: 125
There are separate poster presentation times for odd and even posters.
Odd poster #s – first hour
Even poster #s – second hour

Abstract Body : Introduction
It is well documented that physicians, occupational therapists, and medical students perceive anatomy to be important for clinical practice. However, the literature lacks the voices of other health professional students on this topic. Adult learning theory states that adult learners must understand why they are learning content for their learning to be successful, which has implications for motivation in learning content and knowledge transfer in clinical settings. Thus, the purpose of this study was to determine why health professional students think a base level understanding of anatomy is important to their careers and to explore if their thoughts on anatomy importance differ when considering others’ roles.

Methods
Health professional students (physical therapy, occupational therapy, and physician assistant) enrolled in a doctoral-level anatomy course in 2018 through 2021 were asked to respond to three online discussion boards that prompted them to reflect on the importance of anatomy knowledge to their career and to the careers of others. Students were prohibited from viewing others’ responses before submitting their own. Data included responses from 325 participants which were thematically analyzed using an inductive approach.

Results
Several themes were found to describe why health professional students think anatomy is important to their careers: Communication with healthcare professionals and patients; Integration of Knowledge between disciplines, body systems, and sources of information; Comprehensive Patient Care; and Expectations from patients, colleagues, and management; among others. When comparing the importance of anatomy knowledge between their profession and other professions, only the Integration of Knowledge and Expectations themes were shared. Unique themes for others’ professions for anatomy importance include Self-Reliance, First Responder Role, and Assessment of Injury Severity to evaluate level of care.

Conclusions
This work demonstrates that health professional students perceive anatomy to be important to their careers to practice safely and effectively and to provide patients with the best possible care. It also shows that while health professional students think anatomy is important for self-reliance, assessing injury severity, and serving in a first responder role for other professions, they do not perceive it as important for their own careers, hinting that students do not need to solely rely on their anatomy knowledge for practice and that they do not see themselves as first responders for their patients.

Significance
Anatomy educators can reinforce or build on how their students perceive anatomy importance to their career by communicating these perceptions to their students. Doing so will help students satisfy the criterion of knowing why they are learning anatomy, which is foundational to intrinsic motivation and an essential part of adult learning theory. Next steps will be examining if these perceptions change in response to clinical experience and why in order to reflect the influence of such experience.