Doctors fail basic anatomy (1 Viewer)

hipsta_jess

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From news.com.au

TEACHING of basic anatomy in Australia's medical schools is so inadequate that students are increasingly unable to locate important body parts - and in some cases even confuse one vital organ with another.

Senior doctors claim teaching hours for anatomy have been slashed by 80 per cent in some medical schools to make way for "touchy-feely" subjects such as "cultural sensitivity", communication and ethics. The time devoted to other basic sciences - including biochemistry, physiology and pathology - has also been reduced.

Several senior consultants have told The Weekend Australian they have been "horrified" to encounter final-year medical students who do not know where the prostate gland is, or what a healthy liver feels like.

When asked by a cardiac surgeon during a live operation to identify a part of the heart that he was pointing to, one group of final-year students thought it was the patient's liver.

A coalition of senior doctors appealed this week to the federal Government to step in, claiming public safety was at stake and that national benchmarks for teaching the basic medical sciences were urgently needed.

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The Australian Doctors Fund lodged a 70-page submission with the federal Department of Education, Science and Training this week, listing arguments from more than two dozen professors, consultants and medical academics for a rethink on medical education.

The document warned of a "rising chorus of concern across the medical profession" that students were not getting "exposure to the necessary amount of training in anatomy" and other key sciences.

The heads of Australia's medical schools fiercely contest the criticisms, saying there has been an "explosion" of medical knowledge that doctors need to know, in fields such as genetics and new drugs, and that other areas have to be cut to accommodate the newer topics. They also strenuously deny that they are turning out inadequately trained doctors.

But many students are also unhappy about core science training. One group of students wrote anonymously to two noted academics last year, saying they were "sick of being asked, 'Didn't you study anatomy?"' by consultants amazed by the gaps in their knowledge.

"How can we learn if we are not taught the basics?" they wrote.

One of the two recipients of the letter, Barry Oakes, a former anatomy teacher at Monash University, said part of the problem was the "fads and trends" now current in medical education, and that students were "not taught where the body parts are - they are not even taught the organisation of the nervous system".

"We will be turning out Dr Deaths out of our own medical schools," he said. "They (doctors) won't be competent to manage patients ... it's just appalling.

"It's part of the new educational dictums - 'don't put any stress on them (students) ... it doesn't matter if they don't know anything'."

Associate Professor Oakes plans to provide voluntary anatomy lessons for Monash students.

Michael Gardner, 22, a fifth-year medical student at Monash, said that when he posted this fact on a student discussion board last year, 60 out of the 200 students in the year expressed interest in attending.

"I think probably the old curriculum had too much emphasis on anatomy, but the new course has probably swung a little bit too far in the other direction," he said.

"If you are assessing (a patient) who has had a stroke, if you do not have a good knowledge of the different parts of the brain, it can be difficult to assess which parts have been compromised and what treatment is warranted."

The criticisms of teaching methods are fiercely contested by the heads of Australia's 17 medical schools. Lindon Wing, chairman of the Committee of Deans of Australian Medical Schools, dismissed the examples of student ignorance as anecdotal and said the attacks stemmed from a "clash of cultures" within the profession.

"It's the difference between people who have been brought up (through medical school) in a certain way, and want it to stay that way, and the people who are leading a revolution," Professor Wing said. "I have never seen any evidence ... in any of our disciplines that would show we are deficient."

Ed Byrne, dean of medical, nursing and health sciences at Monash University, said his university's teaching was "superb" and said a redesigned medical course would graduate its first doctors this year.

Although the amount of anatomy teaching had been cut from "several hundred" hours a few years ago to about 100 hours now, this had been matched by many new and better methods for teaching the subject.

"We now teach anatomy in a more sophisticated way, using electronic models, images such as X-rays and MRIs (magnetic resonance imaging)," Professor Byrne said. "The fact that we have to reduce some of the things we taught in the past to make way for new areas of knowledge is a worldwide tendency."

Nick Lee, 22, is a fourth-year medical student at the University of NSW, and was part of the university's last intake before the course was remodelled.

"I prefer the old method because that prepares us before we enter the hospitals," he said.
I'm guessing theres already been debates on this...I know at Newcastle, med students don't have to undertake a straight anatomy course if they don't want to...which seems kinda crazy

Just wondering what everyone else thinks..
 

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In response to the name of the article; it was obviously said to attract readers and goes on to say that a small amount of medical students or doctors failed parts of anatomy.

And in response to the introductory paragraph; it is a biased view that is also said to make readers continue reading the article. I don't believe it is inadequate, just reduced to a lower, yet adequate amount to compensate for the newer, possibly more important developments in medicine.

I doubt many medical students would be "unable to locate important body parts" probably only a small amount of students. And the quote "and in some cases even confuse one vital organ with another" this would have probably have only occured very rarely, probably only a few people out of the hundreds of students in that particular university.

I think that there needs to be more emphasis on anatomy in medical schools, however I think that this particular article is sensationalizing the problem just as all the other media sources do when covering medical relating stories.
 
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anarchron

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All you have to do is just at the start, the UMAT. A lot of bright people are being excluded by a test that is supposedly meant to totally asses your personality and hence worthiness to Medicine.
 

dingding

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anarchron said:
All you have to do is just at the start, the UMAT. A lot of bright people are being excluded by a test that is supposedly meant to totally asses your personality and hence worthiness to Medicine.

:confused: you are very misguided.
 

anarchron

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dingding said:
:confused: you are very misguided.
Me being misguided? As far I can ascertain, it seems to be the Med students who are being misguided.

I know plenty of people who received astounding ENTER scores yet failed to qualify for medicine just because they were not emphathatic enough according to the UMAT. It's absurd how an objective multiple choice test is suppose to be the best measure of a matter as subjective as that. Furthermore, this is also a result of not setting Biology/Life Sciences as a prerequisite for Medicine.
 
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Soldier

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How does the UMAT have any relevance to this topic?

The UMAT is fine by me, its a good indicator of the applicant's knowledge of important social and personal aspects of medical practice. Furthermore, empathy is critical to patient interaction so therefore it is one of the most important attributes a doctor needs, therefore it is important to have a high level of empathy. And I dont think that if a person is intelligent enough to pass a test such as the UMAT that they should be able to study medicine, because studying medicine is difficult and stressful according to alot of medical students.
 
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Soldier

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Another note I wanted to make, which is a bit irrelevant to the UMAT, is that medical graduates were surveyed some years ago at the university of Queensland, and 30% of the medical graduates said that if they could choose, they would have chosen not to study medicine.
 

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anarchron said:
this is also a result of not setting Biology/Life Sciences as a prerequisite for Medicine.
I don't feel that I can say anything accurately or with certainty on whether medical students do get the basic anatomy training they need, but I have always thuoght that it was a bad idea to have medical students entering with no required basic knowledge of biology. One of my tutors last year was a third year medical student, and she was learning about the eyes and ears, which we have already done in Year 12 Biology! Perhaps they do learn a little more detail than what a Year 12 syllabus can teach us, but it would be handy to have medical students who have some idea of basic biology and anatomy, etc, before they start uni.
 

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Yeh, Biology should be a prerequisite, and it shows that the student has an interest in a subject relevant to medicine. Also, why don't many prospective medical students choose to study Pd/h/pe, it is related to medicine, so why aren't they interested in it if they're applying for medicine?
 

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UMAT is fine by me, its a good indicator of the applicant's knowledge of important social and personal aspects of medical
according to ur profile, ur in 2006 which means u havent even done the UMAT, so how can u make judgments about it then?..btw, i know a lot of ppl who've done the umat and got below 150, but then went to do several umat prep courses, and attained UMATs of above 190...so, personally, i dont think that the UMAT is the best way to decide on someone's interaction/personal skills. However, i can say that i got into med without umat prep :) .

And I dont think that if a person is intelligent enough to pass a test such as the UMAT that they should be able to study medicine, because studying medicine is difficult and stressful
What exactly do you mean? This part of the post seems to contradict the rest of ur post.

Also, why don't many prospective medical students choose to study Pd/h/pe. so why aren't they interested in it if they're applying for medicine?
lol..u seem to think that the should introduce a perfect criteria for ppl thinking to do med...ppl decide not ot do pdhpe..becuase it might not scale that well or mayb ppl just hav other interests? ..anyway, there are quite a lot of students (more than u think) doing med, who have studied pdhpe

One of my tutors last year was a third year medical student, and she was learning about the eyes and ears, which we have already done in Year 12 Biology! Perhaps they do learn a little more detail than what a Year 12 syllabus can teach us,
i think ur talking about the communications option? But yea, we do go into much more detail than the hsc. The reason why they choose not to place biology as a prerequisite is that it isnt as hard to learn, as chemistry, which is "recommended."
But nevertheless, i agree that if they choose to pursue med, then they should have shown some interest in science in yrs 11/12.

As for the anatomy issue...personally, i think they teach enough anatomy in med school...its not the theoretical aspect, but it's most probably the practical side of anatomy that doesnt get covered enough (eg. how a healthy liver feels, etc). As usual, newspapers sensationalise events which are rarities in med school. :)
 
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Bob.J

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omg

it's not like you have to be spoon fed to go study anatomy
those med students who don't know shit are just stupid and lazy

self directed learning kids, go study it yourself, no one is gonna go around telling you what to study
sheesh -_-
 

+Po1ntDeXt3r+

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anarchron said:
I know plenty of people who received astounding ENTER scores yet failed to qualify for medicine just because they were not emphathatic enough according to the UMAT. It's absurd how an objective multiple choice test is suppose to be the best measure of a matter as subjective as that. Furthermore, this is also a result of not setting Biology/Life Sciences as a prerequisite for Medicine.
ure post is flawed if u do have an astounding ENTER you goto MELB UNI... its a given... if u dun get above 99.8 ..its not really that astounding..

also if u are smart enough.. then you should be able to do the UMAT its suppose to be simple... and a non-rote component... medicine needs more independent learners

about Bio and PDHPE...
i did not do any of them.. and students in med schools have commented that it was in fact useless.. also if u were so smart.. why do u need to do so much bio?.... only for the rest of the cohort to catch up to u...

Medicine is not about learning sciences anymore... its about adapting to the changes as they come... lifelong learning and resource acquisition... ppl with high ENTERs/UAIs/TERs or high UMATs still drop out... both are scales are flawed...

ok... about the healthy liver... and anatomy
1) you see healthy livers in ALIVE ppl not cadavars.. and its smooth and u can feel it on urself and its about practise... not anatomy time.. its in books.. healthy livers are in most ppl... its f*cking lazy ass students...sif they cant practise on themselves!?!?!?

2)doing both live and cadavar dissection .... i think it makes no difference... to learning.. and as it was best said by the RACS education dean.. here
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0 said:
Professor John Collins, dean of education at the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons, says you'll get as many opinions on the issue of the teaching of anatomy as people you ask. "Older surgeons, who did two years in anatomy rooms, will all tell you that younger people have grossly inadequate anatomy," he says. "Myself, I wasted an enormous amount of time in anatomy rooms and having to learn it again as a surgeon."

He argues that graduates don't need to have handled organs, but do need a grasp of functional "living anatomy" – much of which can now be gained through imaging, telescopic techniques and computer-based "virtual dissection".
3) anatomy lectures are needed but ONLY to supplement self directed learning.. you still need to sit down and learn.

4) Sadly medicine grows exponentially..(~2x every 25 yrs... GP is a specialty and so detailed it takes about 9- 11 yrs of training.. when previously u avg 6-7) .. and anatomy is great as it stays the same
but
sumfing lik physiology where there are about 45 steps between saturated fats and cholesterol production... there is no major practical use for about 42 of those steps.. so do u need them? not if u end up in a non-pharmacology intensive specialty.. equally not all specialties are anatomy intensive... in fact GPs and most physicians would hardly use 40% of all their anatomy learnt..

medical training is long for a reason.. and cranking more stuff in is hard.. but i can see the need for it.. although it cant be the dominating factor.

also see wat bob.j said.. cos unless ure in the firing line.. its far different

to all those that still think we need more work?... we have self directed learning for 1 good reason...we cannot expect to be in university for the rest of our lives...

interestingly in adelaide.. when asked if any clinician/surgeon who raised concerns about anatomy would lecture it.. noone said yes... strange...=)

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funnybunny: you will be taught more practical stuff like that in clinical skills not anatomy's responsibility.. cos as i said in point 1.. u cant realli feel it in a dead guy... and usually its not like that

also... we would have more dissections if there were more ppl donating bodies to medical science....i know of a big Go8 uni.. cant even get enough parts for dissection teaching.. these are things that money cant really buy..
 
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Hurri

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anarchron said:
Me being misguided? As far I can ascertain, it seems to be the Med students who are being misguided.

I know plenty of people who received astounding ENTER scores yet failed to qualify for medicine just because they were not emphathatic enough according to the UMAT. It's absurd how an objective multiple choice test is suppose to be the best measure of a matter as subjective as that. Furthermore, this is also a result of not setting Biology/Life Sciences as a prerequisite for Medicine.
Theres no perfect selection process but most unis do their best by having ENTER, UMAT and interview.

You got a better idea?
 
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Soldier

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Hey, funnybunny, I'm stating my opinion about the UMAT because I've researched it extensively for months.

What I mean't by people who don't pass the UMAT shouldn't study medicine, is that there are more difficult tests than the UMAT in medical schools and if they can't pass a simple exam like the UMAT then they will have difficulty in medical school.

Furthermore, about pd/h/pe I'm not trying to criticise the criteria for entry, I am just curious as to why so many prospective medical students didn't choose to study pd/h/pe, even though it scales well and is relevant to their ostensibly main interest of medicine.
 

+Po1ntDeXt3r+

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pdhpe isnt taken cos we like variety... its bad enough that medicine is 6 yrs... we dun realli need more...

medical student should take other subjects to understand tat its a very big topic.. and stuff lik literature, physics and economic reflects medicine in a non-bio way...

and its nice.. its the idea behind gen eds.. and other non-med subjects we are required to do
 

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Hurri said:
Theres no perfect selection process but most unis do their best by having ENTER, UMAT and interview.

You got a better idea?
Yes...it's called MCAT. A lightweight version of GAMSAT for undergraduate entry in the US.
 

+Po1ntDeXt3r+

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r1dback said:
Yes...it's called MCAT. A lightweight version of GAMSAT for undergraduate entry in the US.
that assumes that u are a graduate.. we arent graduates ... nor are we on the same level after yr 12.
 

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MCAT is only for graduate medicine here, though it is undergraduate medicine in the US. Am I right that only international students can do it here, while all other prospective graduate medical applicants who are local must do GAMSAT?
 

+Po1ntDeXt3r+

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its called graduate entry here.... cos u still get a bachelor in medicine.. the lowest degree in the field... (its bach, post-grad dip, masters, PhD, MD (Aust) in medicine)
in the US its kinda weird.. cos its MCAT for an MD (US) so accurately its a graduate school..

but both degrees are equivalent.. i.e. MD (US) == MBBS (Aust)

yes i think ure right about the MCAT thing.. its on the GAMSAT website..
 

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