The practice of anatomy allows the student to learn how to face up to and adapt his or her emotional reactions and attitudes; this gives human cadaver dissection great importance as an educational strategy and as a professional training tool in technical and emotional skills training.

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Purpose The purpose of this study is to explore the relationship between leadership styles, psychological capital and job engagement. Design/methodology/approach Data were collected among knowledge workers working no less than 1 year in three high-tech enterprises in Henan Province, China. The investigation was conducted with the cooperation from the human resource departments of the selected enterprises from August to October 2014. To minimize potential common method bias, the authors adopted a cross-lagged design with a time gap of four months. The statistical methods included descriptive statistics, structural equation modeling (SEM) and bootstrap analysis. Findings The results showed: leadership styles significantly influenced employees’ psychological capital and work engagement; specifically, transformational and transactional leadership positively predicted employees’ psychological capital and work engagement; compared with transactional leadership, transformational leadership had stronger predictive power to employees’ psychological capital and work engagement; employees’ psychological capital positively predicted their work engagement; and employees’ psychological capital acts as partial mediator between leadership styles and employees’ work engagement. Originality/value Although a body of studies have shown that leadership is an important factor influencing employees’ work attitude and outcomes, it is only in recent years that the effect mechanism of leadership becomes a hot subject in organizational behavior and management fields. As for leadership styles, in general, most research concerned transformational leadership, rather than transactional leadership and only a little of research compared the effects of transformational leadership and transactional leadership on employees’ work outcomes. In terms of outcomes of leadership, as noted earlier, the previous research mainly explored job performance, job satisfaction, innovation behavior, job burnout and so on. Regarding the effect of leadership styles on employees’ work engagement, in spite of more and more supportive evidence of the link between transformational leadership and work engagement, few studies examined the relationship between transactional leadership and work engagement. What’s more, to the best of our knowledge, till now, no empirical research has explored the internal mechanism of this effect from the perspective of psychological capital. Therefore, the present study is a breakthrough for the direct model of leadership styles and employees’ engagement, theoretically bridges the research gap and contributes to the existing literature by presenting a new picture of leadership behavior effect mechanism.

We present the results of a study conducted on participants of the 21st Congress of the Spanish Society of Anatomy, in which anatomists were asked their opinions about a range of issues related to anatomical dissection: its relative roles as the exclusive source of anatomy teaching, as a source for medical research, or to assist the future professional to acquire emotional control; the attitudes and behaviors they expect the student to have in the dissecting room; whether the student-cadaver relationship can convey knowledge and attitudes affecting the future doctor-patient relationship; and the anatomists' attitudes toward donation. Anatomists considered dissection to be mainly an instrument for professional training and to help develop professional skills. They gave little importance to the role it could play in helping students to control their emotions. However, this aspect was considered to be more important by anatomists who also valued a close doctor-patient relationship. On the other hand, a majority of anatomists felt that the student's attitude and behavior during dissection could be to some extent reflected in future relationships with patients. However, they did not feel that dissection-related attitudes would distinguish between future good or bad doctors.

This study presents the design, effect and utility of using audiovisual material containing real images of dissected human cadavers as an innovative educational strategy (IES) in the teaching of Human Anatomy. The goal is to familiarize students with the practice of dissection and to transmit the importance and necessity of this discipline, while modulating their anxiety. The study included 303 first-year Human Anatomy students, randomly assigned to two groups (Traditional and Educational Innovation). Their state of anxiety was measured using the State-Trait-Anxiety Inventory. Repeated measures ANOVA with between-subject factors was applied. The between-subject factor was Educational Innovation (EI). Two levels were established for this factor. The within-subject factor was Time, four levels being considered here. The results show that the effects of the Educational Innovation factor, Time factor and EI × Time interaction were statistically significant. These results provide an additional element of efficacy to the use of videos as an IES. That is, the use of video material as an introduction into an anxiety-provoking situation which resembles real-life viewing and interaction with human cadavers for the first time significantly diminishes the anticipatory reaction of dread against which novel students have not had the opportunity to develop any cognitive strategy of emotional control.