102 - Biomedical Engineering Students Benefit from a Gross Anatomy Lab Course

Poster Board Number: 102
There are separate poster presentation times for odd and even posters.
Odd poster #s – first hour
Even poster #s – second hour

Abstract Body : While graduate students in many biomedical engineering programs have strong backgrounds in engineering, physics, and computer science, they may have little to no background in the biological or anatomical sciences. Previous studies have shown that biomedical engineering graduate students that take cadaver based gross anatomy courses display increased content knowledge after the hands-on lab sessions and have reduced anxiety over time with regards to working with cadavers. However, it is unclear if biomedical engineering students prefer working with cadavers to learn anatomy and if there are additional benefits from participation. To address this, we administered post-course surveys to biomedical engineering students who participated in a graduate level gross anatomy course, which included viewing prosections. Student survey data indicates that over 90% of the students preferred working with the cadavers over anatomical models and images from atlases, 100% enjoyed examining dissected specimens including those with implanted devices, 100% agreed that this type of experience motivates them to learn in future graduate level courses, and 100% think that all biomedical engineers would benefit from seeing the cadaveric specimens to appreciate 3-dimensional perspectives, anatomical variation, and age related changes in the human body. However, only 70% of students could easily find dissected structures. Students worked in teams to collect data on aortic diameter, heart wall thickness, and foot segment length. While 100% of students found this beneficial, 60% of the students found it difficult to obtain these data. Overall, these data show that biomedical engineering students preferred working with cadavers and see advantages to working in this environment. However, they can find it difficult to recognize anatomical structures from cadavers and find it difficult to collect data from cadavers. This study suggests having biomedical engineering students take gross anatomy courses can result in added benefits beyond content knowledge gains. Future projects will examine the development of a multi-disciplinary approaches in the gross anatomy laboratory for biomedical engineering students that take these findings into account.