Teaching the microscopic anatomy of the respiratory system to medical students
Michael Benjamin · The FASEB Journal · 2009
The talk will cover the approach of the author to (a) delivering a 1 hour lecture on the lower respiratory tract to a large (300+) class of UK medical students in the early part of their course (b) providing suitable support material that can be accessed by the students on a University intranet for self‐directed learning (c) designing a practical class that reinforces points made in the lecture and encourages student‐centred learning. The student lecture is illustrated throughout with points of functional and clinical significance and several examples will be given in the talk. Extensive use is made of simple line drawings of tracheal and lung histology, made by the author using a vector drawing package and a drawing tablet. Although some histological images are shown in the lecture as well, these are largely a feature of the practical class. Students can access all the line drawings used in the lecture on the intranet afterwards (with no copyright issues for the University). With ever increasing student numbers that place a strain on departmental microscope and slide resources (and staff time), our current preference is for developing a database of digital histology images for use in practicals. Students are required to make simple interpretative drawings of histology images, answer questions and screen‐capture and label images.