"There's a horses-for-courses element because we need to match Australia at the breakdown, where the contest will be fierce".
Their goal, of course: element 119.
However, assessing this training to make it an accredited course element is a major challenge, especially on large courses.
However, assessing this training to make it an accredited course element is difficult, especially in large courses.
Even though the course element was voluntary, the large number of participants was surprising, and all respondents considered a special preparation for the dissection course as necessary.
This new course element successfully assisted medical students during the dissection room experience and gave opportunity to reflection and discussion on death and dying.
The formal course evaluation showed that the course element successfully stimulated the students to reflect about the subject of death and dying and that they felt better prepared for the handling of body donors.
We demonstrated that there is need for preparing medical students entering the "dissecting room experience", and that our newly conceptualized course element provided an appropriate, effective and necessary preparation for the dissection course.
We introduced a new course element into the dissection course in order to enhance reflection on "death and dying", being the first contribution to a longitudinal palliative care curriculum.
This article describes the structure and the concept of this new interdisciplinary course element and presents the results of the formal course evaluation as well as the explorative part of the accompanying research.
Against this background we implemented a new course element in preparation for the dissection course, offering opportunity to reflect own experiences with death and dying and providing support in finding a balance between authentic empathy and pragmatic action towards deceased persons.
