Document Type

Article

Publication Date

4-29-2022

Abstract

Objectives: To evaluate student impressions of learning anatomy with mixed-reality and compare long-term information retention of female breast anatomy between students who learned with a mixed-reality supplement and their classmates who dissected cadavers. Methods: In Part 1, 38 first-year medical student volunteers, randomly divided into two groups, completed a mixed-reality module and cadaveric dissection on the female breast in a counterbalanced design. Participants also completed post-quizzes and surveys. Part 2 was a non-randomized controlled trial, 8-months after completing Part 1 and 6-months after a final exam on this content. The performance of twenty-two Part 1 participants and 129 of their classmates, who only dissected, was compared on a delayed post-quiz. Wilcoxon signed-rank test, Mann-Whitney U test, and 95% confidence intervals were used to analyze the data. Results: In Part 1, the Wilcoxon signed-rank test determined that participants expressed significantly more positive responses to mixed-reality and found mixed-reality easier for learning and teamwork. In Part 2, the Mann-Whitney U test found mixed-reality participants scored significantly higher on a delayed-post quiz than their classmates who only dissected (U = 928, p < .009). Conclusions: This study suggests that medical students may prefer mixed-reality and that it may be an effective modality for learning breast anatomy while facilitating teamwork. Results also suggest that supplementing cadaveric dissection with mixed-reality may improve long-term retention for at least one anatomical topic. It is recommended that similar studies evaluate a larger sample and additional anatomical regions to determine the generalizability of these findings.

Keywords

anatomy education, knowledge retention, medical education, mixed-reality

Language

114

Publication Title

International journal of medical education

Rights

© 2022 Guy Baratz et al. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use of work provided the original work is properly cited. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0

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