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Challenges and implementation of the German maternity protection act for female medical students in macroscopic anatomical education

Background: Recent decades have seen controversial discussions on the validity of dissection courses in medical education, with alternative programs tested for various reasons. On April 1, 2015 the classification of formaldehyde as a hazardous substance was upgraded by the EU, leding to some univers...

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Autores principales: Kulisch, Christoph, Langheinrich, Jana, Heuckendorf, Evelyn, Vida, Imre, Brunk, Irene
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: German Medical Science GMS Publishing House 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7171363/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32328519
http://dx.doi.org/10.3205/zma001310
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author Kulisch, Christoph
Langheinrich, Jana
Heuckendorf, Evelyn
Vida, Imre
Brunk, Irene
author_facet Kulisch, Christoph
Langheinrich, Jana
Heuckendorf, Evelyn
Vida, Imre
Brunk, Irene
author_sort Kulisch, Christoph
collection PubMed
description Background: Recent decades have seen controversial discussions on the validity of dissection courses in medical education, with alternative programs tested for various reasons. On April 1, 2015 the classification of formaldehyde as a hazardous substance was upgraded by the EU, leding to some universities precluding the participation of pregnant and breastfeeding students in dissection course. However, the revision to the Maternity Protection Act, implemented in Germany on January 1, 2018, now protects student mothers from being disadvantaged in their studies as a consequence of their pregnancy or breastfeeding. Therefore, universities must offer alternatives to dissection courses using formaldehyde to these female students. Project description: As an alternative to regular dissection courses, which use the abovementioned chemical, the Centre for Anatomy at Charité has opted for developing dedicated courses for student mothers. These new courses use plastinated prosection material instead of formalin-treated cadavers of body donors. As the core of the anatomical education takes place during the third and fourth semester in the current curriculum of human medicine at Charité the alternative courses are limited to those two semesters. Additionally, alternative exams at the end of both semesters had to be developed. The alternative courses were designed to offer pregnant and breastfeeding students a study program as close as possible to the one in which their peers learn human anatomy. Results: For the new courses, plastinates had to be produced and further specimens are still needed. Additionally required sets of bones, models and radiological images were readily available at the Centre for Anatomy. The planning and conceptualization of the courses took half a year of intense preparation. The courses for the third and fourth semester were first running during summer semester 2017. There is a clear demand for courses among pregnant and breastfeeding students. At least 5 student participants per course were registered, corresponding to every fortieth female student in their semester cohorts. The highest number of student participants was 13 in one course so far. The performances of the participants in the anatomical examinations were matching that of students attending the regular courses. Discussion: The alternative macroscopic anatomy courses enable the implementation of the revised Maternity Protection Act. The targeted student group is highly satisfied with the offered alternative courses. Considering the number of participants and their examination performance so far, the Centre for Anatomy regards the efforts involved in planning and implementing the courses as justified. The courses allow pregnant and breastfeeding students to address the same anatomical themes at the same time as their fellow students. However, due to restricted flexibility of plastinates and because students cannot prepare specific anatomical structures independently the scope of topographic learning is limited. That being said, well-produced plastinates can display anatomical structures which often cannot be dissected in regular courses. The alternative macroscopic anatomy courses using plastinates constitute suitable alternatives to the regular dissection courses with formalin-treated cadavers for pregnant and breastfeeding students.
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spelling pubmed-71713632020-04-23 Challenges and implementation of the German maternity protection act for female medical students in macroscopic anatomical education Kulisch, Christoph Langheinrich, Jana Heuckendorf, Evelyn Vida, Imre Brunk, Irene GMS J Med Educ Article Background: Recent decades have seen controversial discussions on the validity of dissection courses in medical education, with alternative programs tested for various reasons. On April 1, 2015 the classification of formaldehyde as a hazardous substance was upgraded by the EU, leding to some universities precluding the participation of pregnant and breastfeeding students in dissection course. However, the revision to the Maternity Protection Act, implemented in Germany on January 1, 2018, now protects student mothers from being disadvantaged in their studies as a consequence of their pregnancy or breastfeeding. Therefore, universities must offer alternatives to dissection courses using formaldehyde to these female students. Project description: As an alternative to regular dissection courses, which use the abovementioned chemical, the Centre for Anatomy at Charité has opted for developing dedicated courses for student mothers. These new courses use plastinated prosection material instead of formalin-treated cadavers of body donors. As the core of the anatomical education takes place during the third and fourth semester in the current curriculum of human medicine at Charité the alternative courses are limited to those two semesters. Additionally, alternative exams at the end of both semesters had to be developed. The alternative courses were designed to offer pregnant and breastfeeding students a study program as close as possible to the one in which their peers learn human anatomy. Results: For the new courses, plastinates had to be produced and further specimens are still needed. Additionally required sets of bones, models and radiological images were readily available at the Centre for Anatomy. The planning and conceptualization of the courses took half a year of intense preparation. The courses for the third and fourth semester were first running during summer semester 2017. There is a clear demand for courses among pregnant and breastfeeding students. At least 5 student participants per course were registered, corresponding to every fortieth female student in their semester cohorts. The highest number of student participants was 13 in one course so far. The performances of the participants in the anatomical examinations were matching that of students attending the regular courses. Discussion: The alternative macroscopic anatomy courses enable the implementation of the revised Maternity Protection Act. The targeted student group is highly satisfied with the offered alternative courses. Considering the number of participants and their examination performance so far, the Centre for Anatomy regards the efforts involved in planning and implementing the courses as justified. The courses allow pregnant and breastfeeding students to address the same anatomical themes at the same time as their fellow students. However, due to restricted flexibility of plastinates and because students cannot prepare specific anatomical structures independently the scope of topographic learning is limited. That being said, well-produced plastinates can display anatomical structures which often cannot be dissected in regular courses. The alternative macroscopic anatomy courses using plastinates constitute suitable alternatives to the regular dissection courses with formalin-treated cadavers for pregnant and breastfeeding students. German Medical Science GMS Publishing House 2020-03-16 /pmc/articles/PMC7171363/ /pubmed/32328519 http://dx.doi.org/10.3205/zma001310 Text en Copyright © 2020 Kulisch et al. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License. See license information at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
spellingShingle Article
Kulisch, Christoph
Langheinrich, Jana
Heuckendorf, Evelyn
Vida, Imre
Brunk, Irene
Challenges and implementation of the German maternity protection act for female medical students in macroscopic anatomical education
title Challenges and implementation of the German maternity protection act for female medical students in macroscopic anatomical education
title_full Challenges and implementation of the German maternity protection act for female medical students in macroscopic anatomical education
title_fullStr Challenges and implementation of the German maternity protection act for female medical students in macroscopic anatomical education
title_full_unstemmed Challenges and implementation of the German maternity protection act for female medical students in macroscopic anatomical education
title_short Challenges and implementation of the German maternity protection act for female medical students in macroscopic anatomical education
title_sort challenges and implementation of the german maternity protection act for female medical students in macroscopic anatomical education
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7171363/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32328519
http://dx.doi.org/10.3205/zma001310
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