Anatomy Learning Outcomes in Occupational Therapy: Impact of Prior Coursework.

One institution and one cohort, with 78% of the class taking part. The students who volunteered may be those already interested in anatomy and musculoskeletal practice, so the group may not represent a typical intake. Students were asked to take the first attempt of each online quiz without aids, but some may have looked things up. The authors say this means some quiz scores may be inflated, and report that mean total quiz scores ranged only between 59% and 71%. No adjustment was made for the number of comparisons made. With seven quizzes, four quiz-by-group comparisons and several within-student comparisons, some of the differences found could be chance, and the paper did not set out to measure the size of any difference. Age, gender and socioeconomic status were not recorded, to protect students' anonymity in a programme with few male students, so their influence on anatomy learning could not be examined. Students who already had an anatomy or kinesiology degree, or were studying anatomy or kinesiology at the same time, were left out, so the 'no previous anatomy' group is not the same as everyone who arrives without anatomy. The end-of-term quizzes and practical exam showed no group difference, but a study of this size can miss a real difference rather than prove there is none.

The authors declare no competing interests and state that they received no financial support for the research, authorship or publication of the article. The work was presented as an oral scientific presentation at the Canadian Association of Occupational Therapists annual meeting in May 2024.

Do not take this as evidence that a student's anatomy background makes no difference. The group without prior coursework scored significantly lower on the first three quizzes of the term, which is why the authors describe a catch-up period, and the online quizzes may have been completed with resources at hand, so the later scores could be inflated. This is also a study of student learning, not of patient care.