A Program of Medical Students as Teaching Assistants in an Anatomy Course: Effectiveness and Improvement

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Modern medical education emphasizes non-technical competency. Programs in early medical education that enhance interprofessional communication and teamwork introduce students to their future team members in the current landscape of healthcare. While skills-based interprofessional programs have been encouraged, few have implemented similar measures for interprofessional teaching. Recommendations exist for development of such interprofessional programs in the pre-clinical setting and acquisition of shared competencies to facilitate patient care. Research has indicated a positive impact of early teaching experiences on the development of core teaching competencies, but data on medical student teaching in an interprofessional setting are limited. Only one other institution has reported using medical students to teach physician assistant students in a first year anatomy course. These studies, however, do not address areas in which teaching assistants can improve across a variety of modalities, such as coordination of shared dissection time, baseline knowledge of anatomy with admission of the lack there of, and attentiveness to the specific needs of the student teams. Although reviews have described positive benefits to student teachers in areas of academic learning and professionalism the student learners’ perspective is often left unaddressed. In determining areas wanting for improvement, it follows that student feedback and student perception of teaching assistants may be the most constructive input.

The medical student Teaching Assistant (TA) program was established in 2014 at Sidney Kimmel Medical College and has been shown to contribute to core competency development in medical students. Here, we aim to continue analysis of this program with further insight on the impact teaching assistants have on Physician Assistant (PA) students. Attempts to unmask previously undiscovered and unaddressed areas for improvement with specific questionnaire items may allow for a more targeted approach to improving the experiences of both parties.