Convergence and translation: attitudes to inter-professional learning and teaching of creative problem-solving among medical and engineering students and staff

Background: Healthcare worldwide needs translation of basic ideas from engineering into the clinic. Consequently, there is increasing demand for graduates equipped with the knowledge and skills to apply interdisciplinary medicine/engineering approaches to the development of novel solutions for healthcare. The literature provides little guidance regarding barriers to, and facilitators of, effective interdisciplinary learning for engineering and medical students in a team-based project context. Methods: A quantitative survey was distributed to engineering and medical students and staff in two universities, one in Ireland and one in Belgium, to chart knowledge and practice in interdisciplinary learning and teaching, and of the teaching of innovation. Results: We report important differences for staff and students between the disciplines regarding attitudes towards, and perceptions of, the relevance of interdisciplinary learning opportunities, and the role of creativity and innovation. There was agreement across groups concerning preferred learning, instructional styles, and module content. Medical students showed greater resistance to the use of structured creativity tools and interdisciplinary teams. Conclusions: The results of this international survey will help to define the optimal learning conditions under which undergraduate engineering and medicine students can learn to consider the diverse factors which determine the success or failure of a healthcare engineering solution.

Functional educational characterisation of the utility of embalming fluids for anatomical education and research

Human cadavers have long been used to teach human anatomy and are increasingly used in other disciplines. Different embalming techniques have been reported in the literature; however there is no clear consensus on the opinion of anatomists on the utility of embalmed cadavers for the teaching of anatomy. To this end, we aimed to survey British and Irish anatomy teachers to report their opinions on different preservation methods for the teaching of anatomy. In this project eight human cadavers were embalmed using formalin, Genelyn, Thiel and Imperial College London- Soft Preserving (ICL-SP) techniques to compare different characteristics of these four techniques. The results of this thesis show that anatomy teachers consider hard-fixed cadavers not to be the most accurate teaching model in comparison to the human body, although it still serves as a useful teaching method (Chapter 2). In addition, our findings confirm that joints of cadavers embalmed using ICL-SP solution faithfully mimics joints of an unembalmed cadaver compared to the other techniques (Chapter 3). Embalming a human body prevents the deterioration in the quality of images and our findings highlight that the influence of the embalming solutions varied with the radiological modality used (Chapter 4). The method developed as part of this thesis enables anatomists and forensic scientists to quantify the decomposition rate of an embalmed human cadaver (Chapter 5). Formalin embalming solution showed the strongest antimicrobial abilities followed by Thiel, Genelyn and finally by ICL-SP (Chapter 6). The overarching viewpoint of this set of studies show that it is inaccurate to state that one embalming technique is ultimately the best. The value of each technique differs based on the requirement of the particular education or research area. Hence we highlight how different embalming techniques may be better suited to certain fields of study.