Participation of Memorial Ceremony Affects Student Attitude on Gross Anatomy Practice

Abstract

: Because anatomy is the foundation of clinical medicine, dissection practice is one of the must be practices for medical students. Most medical schools hold a memorial service for the dead after all dissecting practices are over, allowing students to pay tribute to the deceased. Therefore, the dissection practice and the memorial service for the dead are likely to be closely related. However, there is no study on how attending a memorial service before conducting the dissection practice will affect students’ anatomy. This study identifies the physical and emotional experiences students experience during the hands-on practice after attending a memorial ceremony and how it affects students by attending a memorial ceremony. We received a report from 69 students in the second grade of pre-school education for the 2018 academic year and checked it by three reviewers to determine whether they have physical symptoms such as eye pain, pain in the nose, headaches, lack of appetite, anxiety (sweeping), disgust and negative emotions such as fear, sadness, or regret. Also checking on the positive emotions such as a sense of gratitude, a responsibility, a desire to learn, a sense of cooperation. As a result, among 69 participants, 32/69 people (46.4%) were desire to learn, 30/69 people (43.5%) were sense of gratitude, 9/69 people (13.0%) were responsibility, and 8/69 people (11.6%) were cooperative. Among the 56 students who were positively affected during the dissection, 34 (60.7%) attended the memorial ceremony and 22 (39.3%) not attended the memorial ceremony. Students who attended the memorial ceremony was more positively affected and statistically significant (p = 0.014). Based on the results of these studies, it is believed that it is necessary to attend a memorial ceremony to induce positive effects and awareness of human dignity and bioethics, and that it would be better to encourage people to attend the memorial service before performing the dissection. Accordingly, this study can provide necessary basic data to seek the direction of effective anatomical practice education by attending a joint memorial service for the dead before medical students participated in the anatomical practice and identifying the various effects that may occur after their participation in the exercise.