ISSN: 2578-5079
Authors: Blaich R*, Pather N, Prvan T, Engel R, Marhoff-Beard S and Štrkalj G
Since the inception of osteopathy as a health profession in the late 19th century, anatomy has played a fundamental role in practitioners’ education. The aim of this study was to explore attitudes towards anatomy of Australian osteopathic practitioners (osteopaths) by way of a questionnaire-based survey. This survey was distributed to osteopathic practitioners at a national osteopathic conference and an osteopathic workshop in 2015. From 175 attendees, 168 surveys were returned (96.0% response rate), which represents 8.73% (168/1925) of Australian registered osteopaths in 2015. Among the respondents, 48.2% were male and 51.8% female, with an age distribution similar to that of the registered practitioners. Respondents had a mean of 11.1 years in clinical practice and 87.5% of them had studied osteopathy in Australia. Respondents considered that the anatomy curriculum in their pre-professional osteopathic programmes contained enough detail for safe clinical practice. A large majority (88.6%) of respondents agreed that the anatomy content should be integrated with clinical subjects and spread throughout the osteopathic programme. Respondents were provided with access to a wide range of anatomy learning resources in their anatomy training and 84.9% preferred the learning of anatomy content from cadavers. A clear majority of respondents favourably consider the anatomy curriculum within their pre-professional osteopathic programmes and the relevance of anatomy for safe clinical practice. They highlighted the importance of clinically integrated delivery and use of cadavers in anatomy teaching. These results will inform future osteopathic educators to ensure anatomy curriculum in preprofessional osteopathic programmes is relevant and adequate.
Keywords: Osteopathy education; Anatomy education; Anatomy; Curriculum
