Table 3 Factors Influencing the Dissection Experience

 Imaging Aids in Dissection Planning

1. “It’s nice to have an idea of what’s going to be happening, or what you are going to be seeing.” –DSDI-DG Student

2. “On our imaging... [the donor’s] right kidney looked a little infarcted, so when we went there we weren’t expecting a big thing and low and behold it was a tiny thing.” –DSDI-DG Student

 Ability to View Pathologies and Correlate with Dissection

3. “Yeah. For us, it just like affirmed what we were seeing in the anatomy. So with the lung, it was very emphysemic, so when we were taking it out, it was attached to the pleura. It sort of made sense. And then when we were doing the laminectomy, there was also a lot going on there. So I think it was nice to know that we do have pathology and seeing the radiographic images beforehand just confirmed that. So yeah.” –DSDI-DG Student

4. “We only got the generic ones, so it’s not exactly the same. But I think if we had seen them from the beginning, like we said, we would have expected the adrenal, and we would have expected some mass in the lung. We would have expected some things, and then it would be nice to correlate this as we were finding these things” –PSDI-DG Student

 Integration of Imaging Aids in Radiological Reading Skills

5. “I’d say [the images] really helped my radiological readings quite a bit. There were lots of things where I would look at the images and I had an idea of maybe what this finding is, and in fact, when you go dissect it, you realize oh, actually, no...” –DSDI-DG Student

 Integration of Imaging Simulates Surgical Experience

6. “… it’s a bit like an actual operating clinical kind of scenario … when you don’t have the imaging, it’s kind of just like you’re going in blind, and everything surprises you. So, if you have [the imaging at the beginning], it kind of helps put things in perspective …” –PSDI-DG Student

7. “I think it’s just having the whole thing like it creates a story, it helps create the view.” –DSDI-DG Student

 Positives and Challenges Linking Pathology Specific Diagnostic Images with Dissection

8. “There was also learning around [the] image [for example it] tells us that it’s, you know, like a parenchymal versus, like, an air space lesion. And then these are the kinds of things you should look for. What do you see in the mediastinum? What does that tell you? ... So that was super informative for me. –PSDI-DG Student

9. “I had a tough time making the relation between the images and what we were doing...” –PSDI-DG Student

10. “Something that if we had donor-specific imaging, then all these findings that we know we’re not sure whether they’re pathologic or not, or just sort of a variation, I think then it would have been nice to have that imaging to actually just say oh, let’s just look. What is that we found on the imaging? Is it something that looks so different to us?” –PSDI-DG Student

 Comparable to First Year Medicine Experience

11. “Whereas going to this felt like Med 1. It felt like a Med 1 experience, which is just going at the cadavers you don’t know the history and we just dissect.” –PSDI-DG Student

 Format Integration is Optimal for Senior Medical Students

12. “I think it’s nice to do it after we’ve gone through our surgical clerkships because you’ve seen things, and then now you understand it. Before, I feel like even in my, like, junior clerkship and my core, I didn’t really grasp the concept of planes and things like that. I felt like that was more consolidated, so when you come now, you have those concepts.” –DSDI-DG Student

 Earlier Integration is Possible/Beneficial

13. “I mean, if …even in Med 1 or Med 2, I would have liked … having pictures related to my own body and ... just having a resident sit with five people or four people who are dissecting the body, like what we did right now would help a lot, just to remember one or two things from that specific body.” –DSDI-DG Student

 Appreciation for Small Group Format to Assess Diagnostic Imaging

14. “No one ever takes the time to sit down with you. They just like…in the hospital, they scroll through it all ... and you’re like, what am I looking at? So [the radiologist interaction] was super useful.” –DSDI-DG Student

15. “I thought [the question and answer session] was actually kind of interesting and sort of informative to actually how [sic] read more scans than actually our own scan that we had, which was kind of cool because we don’t really get…like, the teaching that we get isn’t kind of that focused, and it gave us a lot of really cool tricks and techniques.” –PSDI-DG Student