Title: The Use of Creative Projects in a Gross Anatomy Class Journal Issue: Journal for Learning through the Arts, 2(1) Author: Shapiro, Johanna, Department of Family Medicine, University of California, Irvine, School of Medicine Nguyen, Vincent, University of California, Irvine Mourra, Sarah, University of California,Iirvine, School of Medicine Ross, Marianne, University of California Irvine, Office of Medical Education Thai, Trung, Department of Psychiatry and Human Behavior, University of California, Irvine, School of Medicine Leonard, Robert, Department of Anatomy and Neurobiology, University of California, Irvine, School of Medicine Publication Date: 2006 Permalink: http://escholarship.org/uc/item/3mj728bn Acknowledgements: Keywords: medical humanities, anatomy, medical students, stress Local Identifier: class_lta_2529 Abstract: Introduction. Medical students often describe the gross anatomy course as both stressful and a rite of passage. Research differs as to whether the stress it engenders is significant or transitory. This qualitative study of first year anatomy student reports on the use of optional creative projects to promote reflection and reduce stress. Methods. Over a three year period, 115 students, or 38.72% of all eligible students, opted to complete 1-2 arts or written creative projects during the anatomy course. Of these, 34 students gave us permission to analyze their projects, while 12 project completers and 12 project non- completers were interviewed to determine their views about the projects. Researchers developed coding schema and interview schedules that were used to assess and interpret the data. Findings. On average, over a three year period, a little less than 40% of students selected the creative project option, with approximately equal numbers of male and female students eScholarship provides open access, scholarly publishing services to the University of California and delivers a dynamic research platform to scholars worldwide. represented. Comparing types of projects, art works were more celebratory and less reflective than written works. Comparing phases of projects, initial projects appeared more conflicted, while later projects showed more desensitization, appreciation, and satisfaction. Students expressed anxiety and ambivalence about anatomy and employed various defense mechanisms to resolve their feelings. Students completing projects reported that they both reduced stress and caused them to develop a richer appreciation for both anatomy and medicine as a whole, while non- completers acknowledged that viewing the projects helped them to better understand their own experience of anatomy. Conclusions. For some students, creative projects may offer a more reflective and introspective way of wrestling with the ambivalent emotions anatomy raises than simple desensitization strategies of exposure. Copyright Information: All rights reserved unless otherwise indicated. Contact the author or original publisher for any necessary permissions. eScholarship is not the copyright owner for deposited works. Learn more at http://www.escholarship.org/help_copyright.html#reuse eScholarship provides open access, scholarly publishing services to the University of California and delivers a dynamic research platform to scholars worldwide. SShhaappiirroo eett aall..:: TThhee UUssee ooff CCrreeaattiivvee PPrroojjeeccttss iinn aa GGrroossss AAnnaattoommyy CCllaassss Medical students often identify gross anatomy as one of the most difficult first year courses; even more consider it a rite of passage,1 distinguishing them from graduate students in the basic sciences and testing their mettle as future physicians. Anatomy is a complex experience. In addition to requiring endless hours of study and memorization, it is sometimes considered the student’s first clinical experience, with the cadaver viewed as the student’s first patient2 and best teacher. As Rizzolo observes, anatomy “makes them [medical students] wonder about how the donor lived with the illnesses revealed by dissection; and wonder about their ability to become an effective physician.”3 Because of the subject matter, anatomy also can raise students’ death anxiety and cause them to reflect on issues of human dignity and grief.4 Even students who are not moved to ponder questions of life and meaning in response to anatomy are often disgusted by the smells and sights of the dissection lab. Other issues that may arise during anatomy courses include questions about how thorough was the informed consent of the donors and how the sanctity of human remains and the sacredness of the human body can be protected.2 Students are often afraid to expose to their peers what they perceive to be weakness or discomfort as a reaction to dissection and may hide behind false bravado or crude humor. The research is equivocal about the extent to which students are distressed by anatomy. One study found that a fourth5 of students enrolled in an anatomy class report fear and anxiety about death, while a study by McGarvey6 concluded that the anatomy experience provoked thoughts about death in general in 55.8% of the class, thoughts about the death of a friend in 33.7%, and thoughts about their own mortality in 41.8% of students. Approximately one-third of students in an earlier study reported psychological 11 JournJaol ufornr aLle faorrn Linega rtnhirnogu gthhr othueg hA rthtse, 2A(r1ts),, A2(r1ti)c l(e2 02006 ()2006) symptoms of depression and anxiety.4 Other older studies7,8 reported serious psychological distress with symptoms similar to post-traumatic stress disorder. However, other studies indicate that anatomy is only moderately, or not very, stressful, and in fact generates considerable enthusiasm and excitement among the large majority of students.6 In one study,9 72% of respondents reported feeling eager and excited, with only 4% reporting fear or anxiety at the start of anatomy. To some extent, anatomy appears to be a self-correcting experience from a stress perspective. Several studies suggest that by the end of the course, and often much earlier, many students experienced less anxiety and fear than on their first day in lab.5,10 High levels of interest were maintained, although excitement and curiosity decreased.11 A well theorized and executed study12 investigated both state and trait anxiety in anatomy students. These researchers concluded that, initially, the situation of being in a dissection lab to dismantle cadavers made the greatest contribution to student anxiety, while, after initial exposure, students with greater personality tendencies toward anxiety were more likely to have higher levels of anxiety. To manage the stresses of anatomy, students employ a variety of defense mechanisms such as intellectualization,11 rationalization,13 denial,13,14 dissociation,4 and depersonalization.11,14 Interestingly, in one study, students denied the use of humor as a way of resolving dissection-related anxieties,4 while in other studies, between almost one-half6,13 and two-thirds11 of students endorsed this coping strategy. In American studies, turning to philosophy or religion was mentioned only rarely.11 (For a difference, see Abu-Hijelh).13 22 SShhaappiirroo eett aall..:: TThhee UUssee ooff CCrreeaattiivvee PPrroojjeeccttss iinn aa GGrroossss AAnnaattoommyy CCllaassss A couple of studies specifically addressed the issue of emotional detachment. Dickinson et al.5 discovered that up to 53% of their subjects agreed with the need for detached concern, with approximately a quarter of the students showing greater support, and an equal number indicating less support for this concept by the course’s end. One old, but thought-provoking, study15 analyzed stories medical students tell about anatomy. The author concluded that students used “gallows humor” to portray themselves as a tight, macho, fun-loving, but emotionally detached group of insiders who were in control of pranks and jokes using body parts or the cadavers. Cadaver stories characterized emotions of anxiety, fear, and revulsion as inappropriate and weak. Demonstrating an absence of empathy and sympathy, they tended to treat the cadaver as a learning tool and an object for manipulation rather than as a formerly living human being. Anatomy lab can be the beginning of a physician’s training in how to isolate and restrict affect, or how to deal with affective responses3,16 such as disgust balanced by joy and awe. Tschering17emphasized the importance of encouraging students enrolled in anatomy to express their emotions and not suppress them. Programs have used self- reflection, art, journaling, creative writing, and group discussion14,16,18 to encourage students to explore their emotional responses to dissection.3 One curriculum at the University of Massachusetts School of Medicine incorporated art, film, and a balletic interpretation of Rembrandt’s The Anatomy Lesson to help students develop reflective self-awareness.14 Stewart and Charon16 report on a drawing class integrated into anatomy lab as a way to complement learning from dissection by recreating the human body from an empathic perspective. 33 JournJaol ufornr aLle faorrn Linega rtnhirnogu gthhr othueg hA rthtse, 2A(r1ts),, A2(r1ti)c l(e2 02006 ()2006) Virtually all of the previous research we identified makes the assumption that anxiety about dissection and contact with cadavers is deleterious and negative and should be eliminated as quickly as possible. Some articles pathologize the level of anxiety by comparing it to post-traumatic stress syndrome. Other authors minimize the anxiety that students experience, implying that only a handful of vulnerable students are not tough enough to adapt to anatomy. Several investigators conclude that most students make a psychological accommodation to the gross anatomy lab through “clinical detachment.”9 Most authors seem to take heart that anxiety is dramatically reduced for students very quickly,19 often after one exposure. But what does this rather astonishing finding mean? What happened to all that anxiety? Does it simply evaporate, or is it repressed? Although this apparently rapid disappearance of psychological conflict may engender relief in some researchers, it triggers concern for us and forms the starting point for the research reported below. While we agree that students who are so disturbed by anatomy that they lose weight, have nightmares, or suffer from diagnosable depression or anxiety (all reactions reported in the literature) need therapeutic support, we do not assume that some level of anxiety is necessarily problematic. Rather than “eliminating” anxiety either through suppression (“‘real’ medical students shouldn’t feel this way”) or detachment (“the cadaver is just a hunk of preserved flesh”), we believe that some anxiety is both natural and healthy, especially if it leads to reflection and self-analysis. Students report anxiety reduction both after exposure to actual cadavers and to video presentations of dissection.12 But what is the mechanism by which this anxiety is reduced? And is its reduction beneficial or repressive? We believe there is more to be learned about students’ 44 SShhaappiirroo eett aall..:: TThhee UUssee ooff CCrreeaattiivvee PPrroojjeeccttss iinn aa GGrroossss AAnnaattoommyy CCllaassss perceptions of the anatomy experience as well as about how to help students cope with the stress of anatomy. To further explore these issues, we undertook the project described below. Our primary goals were the following: 1) To learn more about how students experience anatomy through an analysis of their creative projects; 2) To learn whether creative projects have a beneficial effect on students who choose to complete them in terms of reducing self-perceived stress. METHODS Subjects. We recruited first year students enrolled in the gross anatomy course at our home institution from three consecutive years (2004, 2005, 2006) to participate in this project. As part of their educational experience, students were given the opportunity to complete two creative projects, one toward the beginning and one at the end of the class, for a total of 3 extra credit points (out of a possible total of 100). Over the three year period, a total of 115 students, or 38.72% of the total number of eligible students, took advantage of the creative project option. A breakdown by year, gender, and project completers is provided in Table 1. Students were recruited by an email approved by our university’s human subjects institutional review board (IRB), which explained the study in detail, and presented students various options for participation, including use of their creative projects and willingness to participate in a brief interview. Response to the email and choosing any of the options offered was considered as indication of consent to participate. A total of 34 students agreed to the use of their creative projects in the study. Twenty-four students also agreed to be interviewed regarding why they either did or did not complete the creative projects. 55 JournJaol ufornr aLle faorrn Linega rtnhirnogu gthhr othueg hA rthtse, 2A(r1ts),, A2(r1ti)c l(e2 02006 ()2006) The research team developed separate coding instruments for the written and art works in order to conduct a content analysis. The specific coding categories are presented in Table 2. The research team coded a total of five written projects to test the preliminary coding instrument for written works and then refined this instrument based on our subsequent discussion of discrepancies. Three art projects were used to test and refine the art-coding instrument. Two trained raters (a pre-medical undergraduate [VN] and a second year medical student [SM]) coded all projects and achieved an acceptable level of agreement on both instruments. Because we were primarily measuring subjective responses to creative works (e.g., what emotion did the creative project convey?), our goal was not primarily to achieve inter-rater reliability; in other words, we wanted raters to have free rein to record their personal reactions to the works analyzed. In addition, faculty investigators (JS, TT, MR) reviewed and interpreted all projects, and their comments were incorporated into the data analysis. An interview schedule was developed by JS and VN. It was designed to assess 1) why students chose either to complete or not complete at least one creative project; 2) what non-completers thought about the projects of their peers; 3) whether completing projects reduced stress or taught students something of value about the profession of medicine. Researchers stopped the interview process when theoretical saturation of the data was achieved. Face-to-face (22) and email interviews (2) were conducted. Twelve completers (students completing at least one creative project) and twelve non-completers (students who chose not to do a creative project) participated in these interviews, which were conducted either by VN or VN and SM. With two exceptions, all completers had completed both the initial and the follow-up projects. Interviews took between 15 and 30 66 SShhaappiirroo eett aall..:: TThhee UUssee ooff CCrreeaattiivvee PPrroojjeeccttss iinn aa GGrroossss AAnnaattoommyy CCllaassss minutes to complete. All in-person interviews were tape-recorded and subsequently transcribed. Data analysis. Two trained raters coded all projects using the coding instruments developed by the research team. The instruments’ items had face validity that allowed us to provide a descriptive summary of the coded projects (See Table 2.). In addition, three faculty raters, two psychologists and one psychiatrist, provided independent narrative interpretations of the projects, which considered the psychological implications of this work. The first author summarized all narrative interpretations (including those of the student coders), which were then reviewed and modified by all five members of the research team. In considering both the project analyses and the interview data, the team used a grounded theory approach20,21 to identify first recurring words and categories that were then organized into themes. The various themes were subsequently reviewed and discussed until researchers identified an overarching theme that they felt represented the large majority of projects reviewed. This research was reviewed and approved by our university’s IRB. FINDINGS Creative Projects. In the first year, approximately half of the class participated in the creative project option by completing at least one project; in subsequent years, approximately a third of the class participated. Of participating students, with the exception of slightly higher participation by female students in year 1, male and female students were more or less equally likely to complete projects. (See Table 1.) A total of 34 students gave permission to analyze their projects. (We were unable to locate the project of one of these students.) The total number of projects analyzed was 44. (See 77 JournJaol ufornr aLle faorrn Linega rtnhirnogu gthhr othueg hA rthtse, 2A(r1ts),, A2(r1ti)c l(e2 02006 ()2006) Table 2.) In either/or categories (e.g., medium of an artwork; voice in a literary work), raters achieved 100% agreement. For artwork ratings, overall agreement was 75%; and for written work, 66.2%. All of the art projects were representational, i.e., not abstract, showing recognizable forms or objects. Most of the projects focused on some aspect of the human body, often showing something related either directly or indirectly to dissection. Some of the projects contrasted the familiar outside of the body with the newly discovered inside of the body. The most common emotions conveyed were detachment and joy. The themes most often explored were similarly the awesomeness of the human body and desensitization or loss of humanity. (See Figure 1.) The large majority of the written projects discussed in some way the students’ experiences of refining or evolving a different perspective about anatomy. Another common focus dealt with becoming a doctor and self-reflection. Projects often referred to the cadaver as a tool for learning, but almost the same number focused on the cadaver as a person. Almost half explored the student-cadaver relationship. A handful reflected on death and mortality, as well as on spirituality and religious beliefs. The essays conveyed a variety of emotions, most commonly, gratitude toward the donor and awe in regard to the human body, and, less commonly, guilt/shame, fear/anxiety. The most common coping strategies in the written works were rationalization and sublimation/compassion/ connection.* * 1 Sublimation refers to the act of diverting the expression of an emotion or response from an unacceptable form to one that is considered more socially acceptable. In this definition, anxiety (a less socially acceptable emotion in the context of medical education) may be “sublimated” into socially desirable emotions such as compassion toward and sense of connection with cadavers. 88