“Fun slipping into the doctor's role”—The relationship between sonoanatomy teaching and professional identity formation before and during the Covid‐19 pandemic

Abstract

The various psychological dimensions of professional identity formation (PIF) are an important aspect of the study course for undergraduate medical students. Anatomical learning environments have been repeatedly shown to play a critical role in forming such an identity; however, relevance of PIF during sonoanatomical training remains underexplored. At the end of their basic anatomy studies, third‐semester medical students took part in a four‐day block course on anatomy and imaging. Anatomical content was revised in small groups using peer teaching and imaging methods, including one hour of hands‐on sonoanatomy sessions each day. On‐site sonoanatomy was identified as an excellent format to support students' transition from the pre‐clinical to clinical phase as medical experts‐to‐be. Students enjoyed practical exercises and the clinical input, which increased their interest in the medical profession and their academic studies. This study further examined the effects of the transition into an online‐only format, necessitated by the current Covid‐19 pandemic. A comparison was made between the quantitative and qualitative evaluation data, and the written results of examinations of several on‐site (n = 1096, mean age = 22.4 years ± 2.18), and online‐only cohorts (n = 230, mean age = 22.6 years ± 2.21). The online‐only transition led to a reduction of all PIF‐related variables measured, losing identity‐related variables, increasing students' stress levels, and reducing their long‐term academic performance. Together, this study demonstrates presence of PIF in undergraduate sonoanatomy teaching, and cautions against the uncritical online‐only substitution of hands‐on learning environments.

Interprofessional socialization of first-year medical and midwifery students: effects of an ultra-brief anatomy training

“…For future sessions, we plan to set up ultrasound devices and assign specific examination tasks to interprofessional tandems [29]. We believe that such authentic exercises will lower the threshold for future interprofessional collaboration, as the high authenticity of the stations results in socioconstructivist and situated learning [30,31]. Situated learning theory emphasizes authentic learning environments as particularly useful to promote effective collaboration and (inter)professional identity formation ("feeling like an interprofessional team solving a real task") [2,3].…”

The future of anatomy education: Learning from Covid‐19 disruption

“…In recent years, there has also been a fundamental recognition that anatomy education needs to be redesigned to play a greater role in preparing learners for practice by helping them to develop a new range of skills and attributes (Roxburgh & Evans, 2021). This includes the explicit incorporation of nontraditional discipline‐independent skills (NTDIS) (Evans et al, 2018; Evans & Pawlina, 2020; Lachman & Pawlina, 2020) and professional identity formation (PIF) (Pawlina, 2019; Abrams et al, 2021; Darici et al, 2022) into many anatomy courses with an emphasis on communication (Evans, 2013; Lochner et al, 2020; Yohannan et al, 2022), teamwork (Vasan et al, 2009, 2011; Huitt et al, 2015), critical reasoning (Elizondo‐Omaña et al, 2010; Kassirer, 2010; Rajprasath et al, 2020), interprofessional learning (Smith et al, 2015; Zheng et al, 2019; Lochner et al, 2020), and professionalism (Pawlina et al, 2006; Palmer et al, 2020; Khabaz Mafinejad et al, 2021). Overall, such changes and innovations has led to many educators shifting away from an approach that purely focuses on lectures, conventional laboratory practical sessions and time‐honored assessments to one that exposes the educator and more importantly the learner to a more varied and multifaceted format and one increasingly aligned to the UNESCO four pillars of education (Delors et al, 1996).…”

Inclusion of cross‐sectional and radiological images for better understanding of musculoskeletal anatomy and decreasing the risk of adverse events during dry needling in undergraduate physiotherapy students

“…3 In this setting, recent studies quantified that up to the 65% of the students surveyed missed the cadaveric dissection, face to face lectures and interacting with their classmates and mentors 4 and demonstrated the negative impact on the psychological professional identity formation, the students' stress levels and their long-term academic performance. 5 Anatomy educators face a huge challenge since anatomy is an essential science for building a solid background, and several strategies for teaching anatomy including e-learning, online and education software innovations such as augmented reality (AR) anatomy applications or three-dimensional (3D) anatomy atlas have been developed trying to replace the limitations derived from the COVID-19 pandemic. 6,7 From the students' perspective, they also had to adapt their strategies to more continuous habits, demonstrating better performance and efficiency during the confinement 8 and a positive attitude toward online learning.…”