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Undergraduate medical student perspectives on the role of autopsy in medical education - ScienceDirect
Source: sciencedirect.com
Article summary:
1. This study aimed to assess undergraduate medical student (UMS) perspectives on the role of autopsy in medical education.
2. UMS reported that witnessing an autopsy can improve anatomic knowledge, observational skills, and clinicopathologic correlation, but were neutral in their perceived importance of viewing an autopsy in their pathology education.
3. Senior students responding to the essay prompt reported that autopsy is essential in medical education and increases clinical and anatomical understanding.
Article analysis:
The article “Undergraduate Medical Student Perspectives on the Role of Autopsy in Medical Education” is a well-written piece that provides insight into the opinions of undergraduate medical students regarding the role of autopsy in medical education. The authors conducted a survey and essay response from preclinical and clinical students at Sidney Kimmel Medical College to assess student opinion on this topic. The survey results showed that most students did not express interest in a career in pathology, but agreed that witnessing an autopsy can improve anatomic knowledge, observational skills, and clinicopathologic correlation. The essay responses indicated that most senior students viewed autopsy as an important and valuable tool for UME, with many citing its historical utility and its ability to uncover hospital misdiagnoses and errors as reasons for its continued relevance.
The article is generally reliable; however, there are some potential biases worth noting. First, the survey was distributed electronically to all UMS at Sidney Kimmel Medical College (n = 1082), but only 103 completed it (a 9.5% completion rate). This low response rate could indicate selection bias among survey respondents; additionally, twice as many persons identifying as female responded to the survey versus identifying as male, which could also be indicative of selection bias. Second, while the authors note that senior students had all had at least 10 months of clinical training prior to completing their essays, they do not provide any information about how much exposure these students had to pathology or autopsy prior to writing their essays; this could have influenced their responses regarding the importance of autopsy in medical education. Finally, it should be noted that student populations were gathered from a single institution; thus it is possible that level of exposure to autopsy may vary from other institutions or schools.
In conclusion, this article provides useful insight into undergraduate medical student perspectives on the role of autopsy in medical education; however there are some potential biases worth noting when considering its trustworthiness and reliability.