Impact of Plastinated Tracheobronchial Tree Cast on Students’ Learning in a South Indian Medical School- A Quasi-experimental Study

Abstract

Introduction: Plastination is a technique used in anatomy to preserve body parts or whole body by indefinitely replacing water and lipids contained in it with a curable plastic. This process renders human tissue dry, non toxic and odourless. The students consider these specimens as user friendly in enhancing their learning. Aim: To evaluate and compare the knowledge gained and its long term retention, between two groups of students, by the use of plastinated specimens and that of routine lecture class of same topic, respectively. Materials and Methods: This quasi-experimentall study was conducted in the Anatomy Department of Sapthagiri Institute of Medical Sciences and Research Centre, Bangalore, Karnataka, India, between November 2018 to January 2019. Total 150 Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery (MBBS) students from first year were divided into two groups- G1 and G2 of 75 students each. G1 was taught bronchopulmonary segments with tracheobronchial tree cast and a regular theory class was conducted on the same topic for G2. Both the groups were evaluated with a written questionnaire on the same day (T1) after the session and after 10 weeks (T2). The test scores of both the groups were compared using independent sample t-test and paired sample t-test was used to compare T1 and T2 scores of same groups. Results: The number of students taken for analysis among G1 was 48 (28 girls and 20 boys) out of 75 and G2 was 47 (30 girls and 17 boys) out of 75 and their mean age was 19±1 years. The mean score of G1 for T1 was 6.30 and for T2 it was 8.60, whereas the mean score of G2 for T1 was 11.05 and T2 was 8.58. Statistically significant difference was observed within both the groups G1 (p-value=0.023) and G2 (p-value=0.002) for T1 and T2. There was a statistically significant difference on inter group comparison for T1 (p-value <0.01), whereas, on comparing the test scores for T2 of G1 and G2 there was no significant difference. Conclusion: The results bring about the importance of visual and tactile learning of bronchopulmonary segments which has an impact on the memory for a longer period rather than didactic lecture classes. The use of plastinated specimens as an adjuvant to dissection in anatomy teaching will help in better understanding of the subject and retention for a longer period of time.

Keywords

• anatomy models
• knowledge gain
• plastic embedding
• tactile learning