Development of a novel anatomy education tool for teaching dermatomes, cutaneous nerve maps and surface anatomy concepts: The Dry‐Erase Anatomy Mannequin (DrEAM)

Dermatomes are areas of skin whose sensory innervation can be traced back to a single spinal nerve. Knowledge of dermatome patterns is fundamental to the study of human surface anatomy and is diagnostically useful for a range of neurologic pathologies and injuries. Dermatomes and other surface anatomy concepts are often visually depicted in lectures and textbooks through illustrations. Such visual depictions are two‐dimensional and typically only show the anterior and posterior surface maps of the body side‐by‐side. However, dermatomes and other surface projections, such as cutaneous nerve maps, are 3D shapes that often pass continuously from anterior to posterior. Thus, learning these concepts from such limited visual depictions can provide perceptual challenges to anatomy students who must eventually apply 2D mental schema onto their 3D patients. Additionally, there is a relative lack of emphasis placed on teaching surface anatomy, both within textbooks and as part of formal anatomy curricula. Various instructional methods and low‐fidelity models have been developed by others attempting to convey surface anatomy concepts including body painting exercises and drawing on cloth‐covered anatomy models, to name a few. Here, we report the development of a new educational tool: The Dry‐Erase Anatomy Mannequin (DrEAM). Our novel low‐fidelity learning tool consists of common retail clothing mannequins coated in a commercially available dry‐erase finish and allows students to mark, erase and remark 3D surface anatomy shapes and contours, such as dermatomes, using dry‐erase markers. We also document our recent deployment of the tool as part of our “Dermatome Day” ‐ an informal, interactive extracurricular anatomy teaching session for undergraduate medical students. Other potential use‐cases for the DrEAM in teaching surface anatomy concepts within a range of health professions curricula are further proposed. Lastly, we discuss the formal evaluation of the DrEAM to determine its efficacy in improving student learning outcomes related to surface anatomy concepts as compared to other traditionally used methods. We hypothesize that its use will promote increased understanding of surface anatomy concepts amongst medical students and lead to their improved performance on related test questions when compared to more traditional teaching methods. This abstract is from the Experimental Biology 2018 Meeting. There is no full text article associated with this abstract published in The FASEB Journal .

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