From Anatomical Knowledge to Clinical Comprehension: a Peer-Oriented Learning Session to Help Medical Students Make the Leap

A number of active learning approaches are being used in medical schools and are shown to be effective for improving knowledge comprehension and retention. Here, we report the creation and successful implementation of an interactive activity that was created to help students to understand the concepts of anatomy. Our goal was to encourage them to think about human structure and function by demonstrating how anatomy is changed due to disease or trauma. This session consolidated clinically relevant concepts from different anatomy didactic sessions into one exercise. It also allowed application of basic anatomy principles to clinical scenarios by comparing normal thoracic anatomy with the trauma specimens such as those from chylothorax, traumatic aortic injury, superior vena cava (SVC) syndrome, and tracheobronchial injury with pneumomedistinum. The session was received very well by the students and resulted in their improved understanding and application of various principles of anatomy.