Evaluation of the Clinical Anatomy Program in the Medical School of Porto by two cohorts of students.

The discipline of Clinical Anatomy, as introduced in the Medical School of Porto in academic year 1995/96, involved major changes in the way we teach anatomy to medical students, by adopting a clinically oriented approach. A questionnaire was designed to evaluate the opinion of second-year medical students enrolled in the program concerning main aspects of the discipline in two consecutive years; 84% of the students returned the questionnaire in 1996/97, and 70% in 1997/98. Students were asked about the level of their approval of the organization of the discipline, the role of the teaching staff, lectures, practical sessions, educational media, and continuous and summative assessments. For items replicated in both academic years, the means of the sum of scores in each year were compared (Student's t-distribution). Whenever a significant difference was found, changes in individual items were tested (chi-square distribution). The evaluation of the discipline in each of the two years was highly favorable for most of the parameters analyzed. Copyright 2002 Wiley-Liss, Inc.