Anatomy education presents a challenge to other health care education programs because student contact time is limited and clinical relevance is a necessity. Since the early 2000’s, several countries have turned to anatomic body painting (ABP) as a teaching tool at their medical schools. Studies from these programs have found ABP to be an effective teaching tool that is well-accepted by students and proves to be both fun and educational (1, 2, 3). We have used ABP at our institution since 2013 as an adjunct to our human donor dissection experience.(5) We have found ABP to be inexpensive, easy to facilitate, and effective in teaching anatomic structures and correlations (6). ABP has the advantage of adding movement to structures that are static in the dissection lab, which helps many students in their comprehension of musculoskeletal physiology. Visualization of structures in a moving form also improves understanding of clinical tests and physical examination findings.
With the increasing presence of ultrasound in the clinical setting, Elon’s PA Anatomy program is now integrating ultrasound with ABP to teach anatomy. Ultrasound has the advantage of providing visual confirmation of the location of structures important to the region that is being painted and presented. It can reveal whether students have correctly located bony landmarks, accurately detected soft-tissue structures, and correctly determined the direction of muscle fibers. It also may provide reassurance to those with artistic or clinical skills discomfort while they perform ABP. Hands-on experience with ultrasound prior to the clinical setting also may serve to ‘de-mystify’ the modality, helping students better understand its uses, limitations, and advantages. Incorporating the familiar skill of palpation and the visual cues of painting may help students understand more about what they are seeing in ultrasound images, making their future learning curve for clinical ultrasound less steep.
In this presentation, participants will learn how to conduct an Anatomic Body Painting session with incorporation of ultrasound. Participants will:
- Learn about the use of Anatomic Body Painting as a teaching tool, and hear about how our institution uses ABP in PA Education.
- Discuss guidelines for conducting an effective, educational body painting session at their own institutions, and learn how these guidelines may differ from those at institutions outside the United States (4,5).
- Learn the ways to incorporate ultrasound into the process to create an even more dynamic, engaged and clinically relevant learning process.
- Find out how to obtain all the materials needed for holding an ABP session.
