Medical students will be helped to understand what it is like to go under the knife thanks to a world-first project that brings together art and science.
A unique surgical gown, which goes on international display at the Museum of Science in Boston today, should significantly improve understanding of where operation incisions are made, and what they mean to the patient, say its developers at Durham and Ulster Universities in the United Kingdom.
It is hoped the gown, which would be worn by medical students in the classroom, will supplement the traditional plastic models of the human body that are currently in global use as teaching aids. It will also help in explaining procedures to patients, according to the scientists.
The gown has nine zips showing where surgeons make cuts in the body for various operations such as removal of the appendix and open heart surgery and its silk material is more like human tissue than the plastic of the traditional models. Medical students will wear the gown in the classroom whilst fellow students learn about surgical incisions using the zips. It will lead to a greater understanding of what it means to be the patient, say the developers.
Researchers say it will contribute to an improvement in teaching aids currently available. They say that, although the traditional plastic models can be used to show areas of the body and where incisions will roughly be made, they are not able to give medical students a sense of the feeling if they were the patient or show them the type of texture they will find once they have made an incision.
Leading medical developer Professor John McLachlan, Associate Dean in Durham University's School for Health, explains: “Current anatomical teaching aids describe but they don't evoke. They take no account of emotional involvement or the feel of the body. The way medical students distance themselves emotionally from the patient's body has long been seen as a desirable outcome of current modes of medical training.
“But this ‘desensitation' also brings with it the risk of objectifying the body. The patient becomes ‘the liver in bed four' rather than Mrs Smith. We think we can use art to bring meaning back into medical teaching and we want to help students understand the significance of the body as well as its structure.”