Research
Why are we doing this research?
When the general population have to attend a GP appointment, Accident & Emergency, or any other healthcare visit they often describe pain or discomfort in a specific area, for instance stomach pain may be listed anywhere in the abdomen. The healthcare professional who diagnoses and treats you has studied anatomy and will know the structure(s) that are affected.
However, some members of the public know a large amount of anatomy. An example would be someone who spends time in a gym, might have familiarity with, for examples some muscles. This research intends to highlight exactly how much the general public know about their own body and thus utilise it, via publication as a research article(s), to illustrate the need for sound anatomical knowledge from medical professionals and to help everyone understand where many of the common organs and structures are in the body.
We also aim to highlight how anatomical knowledge is different across different groups of people, i.e is there a difference between males and females? If you have been to a visit a healthcare professional recently do you perform better, because you are more aware of structures? Does the knowledge of people change as they age?
We have undertaken preliminary research on this topic, which can be found [here]: (http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ase.1746/abstract)
What our research goals?
We are aiming to undertake the largest project to date to understand the anatomical knowledge of the general public, we have a number of specific questions that we are looking to answer:
- What is the extent of anatomical knowledge of the global population?
- Are there any observable differences between the ages and gender of the respondents?
- Will individuals that work in a health care facility/profession perform well?
- Will individuals that recently (within a week) went for a consultation with a healthcare professional perform well?
- Is there geographic/regional differences in performances?
Overall, we hope that our research will demonstrate that there is a varied level of knowledge within the public and that there are certain areas of anatomy that we can do more to educate everyone about in the hope that we will improve how people interact with healthcare services, to improve the outcome for all involved.
We have performed a preliminary study assessing the knowledge of the general public, more details of which can be found [here]: (http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ase.1746/abstract)