The effect of curricular reform on gross anatomy laboratory examination performance: An institutional analysis |
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| Authors: | Melissa A Taylor Danielle M Loder Michael J Herr Richard A Nichols |
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| Institution: | 1. Department of Anatomy and Neurobiology, University of Tennessee Health Science Center, Memphis, Tennessee, USA;2. Department of Medical Sciences, Indiana University School of Medicine, Bloomington, Indiana, USA |
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| Abstract: | Many medical schools have undergone curricular reform recently. With these reforms, time spent teaching anatomy has been reduced, and there has been a general shift to a pass/fail grading system. At Indiana University School of Medicine (IUSM), a new curriculum was implemented in fall 2016. The year-long human gross anatomy course taught in 2015 was condensed into an integrated, semester-long course starting in 2016. Additionally, the grading scale shifted to pass/fail. This study examined first-year medical student performance on anatomy practical laboratory examinations—specifically, among lower-order (pure identification) questions and higher-order (function, innervation) questions. Participants included medical students from a pre-curricular reform cohort (year 2015, 34 students) and two post-curricular reform cohorts (years 2016, 30 students and 2017, 33 students). A Kruskal–Wallis ANOVA test was used to determine differences of these questions among the three cohorts. Additionally, 40 of the same lower-order questions that were asked on gross anatomy laboratory examinations from medical student cohort year 2015 and year 2016 were further analyzed using an independent samples t-test. Results demonstrated that the pre-curricular reform cohort scored significantly higher on both lower-order (median = 81, p < 0.001) and higher-order questions (median = 82.5, p < 0.05) than both post-curricular reform cohorts. Additionally, when reviewing the selected 40 similar questions, it was found that the pre-curricular reform cohort averaged significantly higher (82.1 ± 16.1) than the post-curricular reform cohort from 2016 (69.3 ± 21.8, p = 0.004). This study provides evidence about the impact of curricular reform on medical student anatomical knowledge. |
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| Keywords: | curricular reform gross anatomy education medical education student performance laboratory examination |
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