clinical and laboratory investigation
Anatomy
At BSMS, Anatomy within the undergraduate curriculum is taught, not so much as a discipline, but as a subject fully integrated into teaching of the other biomedical sciences and with clinical medicine.
Anatomy appears within five of the six modules taught in the first two years of the undergraduate curriculum but students also return to the dissecting room in years 3 and 4 to study the anatomy of the regions of the body they are undertaking in clinical practice. For example the anatomy of the pharynx and larynx is studied in the dissecting room at the time when the students are attached to the ENT specialist rotation.
In relation to the other biomedical sciences, physiology, biochemistry and anatomy are taught in an integrated fashion, this also being reflected in the content of the module examinations which the students undertake at the end of each module and at the phase examinations at the end of each phase. As the anatomy team also introduce the students to embryology, there are very strong links with the clinicians responsible for the development and teaching the Child Health module in year 3 of the curriculum and with psychologists, sociologists and ethicists to integrate the psychosocial and ethical issues related to contraception, abortion, miscarriage and child development.
Imaging
The basic sciences of anatomy, physiology and biochemistry have underpinned the teaching of medicine for decades. The explosion in information technology has increased this learning potential even further through the development of digital radiography and advanced imaging techniques such as ultrasound (US), computed tomography (CT) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).
Our imaging department's MRI scanner and the first Siemens 64-slice PET-CT scanner in the UK are in use for research and scanning NHS patients on campus. Click here for details.
The use of medical imaging to support the learning of anatomy is an example of how new technology can be used to great effect in medical teaching.
For instance, image-based learning is delivered by access to a computerised medical imaging database through software developed from Picture Archiving and Communication Systems (PACS).
Suitable images can be displayed as individual frames, 3-dimensional data sets or time-series. 3-dimensional data sets, for example from computed tomography, can allow virtual dissection in which a body region can be re-sliced in multiple planes.
Time-series can display organ motion, for instance the beating heart, or be used to demonstrate how the internal body distributions of radioactive tracers or contrast agents change over time. In this way, anatomical structure can be directly correlated with physiological function.
The emergence of molecular imaging techniques also enables imaging to illustrate molecular biology, for example using Positron Emission Tomography images to demonstrate that tumours exhibit increased glucose metabolism.