A survey study on distance anatomy education: challenges unique to anatomy

PURPOSE: Traditional anatomy education (TAE) is based on teaching by seeing and touching cadavers/plastic materials that enable three-dimensional thinking, but there was no opportunity like this in distance anatomy education (DAE). Due to the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, many trainings planned face-to-face were carried out remotely. In this study, our aim is to evaluate students’ views on the efficiency of DAE, and to increase the efficiency of DAE in the future. METHODS: The questionnaire used in the study was applied to the first grade students in the Faculty of Medicine, at the Eskisehir Osmangazi University, in 2019–2020. 239 students completed the survey. The questionnaire consisted of the demographic information, that was obtained with voluntary consent, and sections containing suggestions on DAE, and its comparison with distance education of other basic medical science courses. The survey was prepared as a Likert scale (with 1 = totally disagree to 5 = totally agree), on Google forms and sent to the students online. RESULTS: 82.4% of the students marked “totally disagree” or “disagree” for the statement of “DAE is more efficient than TAE”. The total percentage of students who marked “totally disagree” or “disagree” for the statement of “I was satisfied with the theoretical education in DAE” was 58.6%, but when it came to practical education the percentage raised to 79.9%. CONCLUSIONS: According to the results the efficiency of DAE, especially in terms of practice lessons, was found to be lower than TAE. To make DAE a powerful alternative to TAE, future studies should aim to develop a new syllabus for DAE.