Some Canadian medical and dental schools are facing a shortage of an important tool for anatomical education: cadavers.
With donations falling since the start of the pandemic, Olusegun Oyedele, a teaching professor at the University of British Columbia’s medical school, believes the shortage of cadavers will directly affect the quality of medical education for countless students.
“Students will suddenly lack knowledge of the human body,” he told CTV’s Your Morning Thursday. “I know there are alternatives all over the world. I know that other medical schools use technologies. But our students who have graduated from programs that use cadavers will tell you that there is no substitute. There is no alternative to [the real thing].”
Oyedele noted that the shortage may particularly affect students entering surgical disciplines, causing a rampant deficiency in “knowledge of the human body.”
“The fact that they could see what is fundamentally similar to a human that they will work with throughout their lives [is crucial],” he said. “All the organs, nerves and muscles are in exactly the same place. The normal spatial relationships that exist in a human body also exist in a cadaver.”
Every year, UBC says that more than 1,000 students in different medical programs train in anatomy using cadavers. Before the pandemic, the university received between 82 and 100 human cadaver donations a year, but the programs now receive 50 percent of that.
Although advanced computer simulations featuring virtual reality and emulated scalpel feedback are being used Around the world, Oyedele said technological alternatives cannot effectively replace the educational experience of training with a real body.
“Medical research has shown that our students learn best when they can use all sensory modalities: touch, feel, true depth perception. Those things that you can actually experience on a real corpse are not reproducible using all these other models or virtual reality. [programs],” he said.
A to study, published in Computer Methods and Programs in Biomedicine, evaluated the efficacy of a virtual reality temporal bone simulator for anatomical and surgical training. The results found that students gained greater anatomical knowledge when training on a cadaver than with programs that simulate the use of one, but that the virtual reality temporal bone in the skull provided satisfactory general training for medical residents and students.
The findings suggest that future advances in virtual reality may pave the way for more accurate modality simulations in medical education.
Until then, though, human bodies are the best training option available, Oyedele said.
Other universities in North America and beyond are also experiencing a shortage of cadaver donations. The University of New Mexico, which normally received up to 75 body donations a year, only agreed to 18 this year, according to a Press release.
Across the pond, the number of donations in British medical programs has fallen so low that the british medical journal has declared it a “crisis” in surgical training, as reported by The Economist.
“We recognize that it is a gift and we don’t take it for granted,” Oyedele said. “We keep the promise to treat our dead bodies with dignity and respect. And it’s something we value a lot.”
“So please go ahead and donate your body.”