Researching the Effect of the Practical Applications Performed with Cadaver Dissection and Anatomical Models on Anatomy Education

OBJECTIVE: The most important element in providing good quality of healthcare is well training of healthcare staff, particularly doctors. The way of being a good and successful healthcare staff is to learn the human anatomy accurately and permanently. Practical applications as well as theoretical courses are also highly important in learning human anatomy. In classical anatomy education, using cadaver is accepted to be indispensable. However, along with the new medical faculties, there has been an increase in the shortage of cadaver, and anatomy practices have mainly begun to be carried out on models or mock-ups. Therefore, we aimed to study with anatomic models in practical applications and to research the effect of cadaver dissection on learning anatomy. MATERIALS AND METHOD: In this study including 120-second grade students that their achievement levels are close together and participating in the theoretical courses of anatomy in medical faculty during  2015 – 2016 academic year. To realize this, students were divided into four groups (1 st group were include students only listening to theoretical course, 2 nd group theoretical course and performing application with anatomic models, 3 rd group theoretical course and performing application with cadaver dissection, and 4 th group theoretical course and performing application with anatomic models and cadaver dissection)  of 30 people. Degree of students’ understanding the subject was detected with written and practical exams consists of 10 questions  after the theoretical and practical courses on each committee. The resulting data are loaded to SPSS 22.0 software and statistical evaluation One-way ANOVA, Mann-Whitney, chi-square test was used. RESULTS: The average of students who practice on both models and cadavers were statistically significant (p 0.05). CONCLUSION:  The results obtained from our study indicate that anatomy practical training is carried out with the dissection of cadavers that made it easier to understand of the anatomy and increasing success rate. The results obtained from the study give information about the effectiveness of existing applications in anatomy practice and be a guide for educators in planning class hours and including or excluding new topics and subjects from curriculum. Key words: Cadaver, Anatomy Education, Anatomical Models.