Table 4 Influence of Diagnostic Imaging on Professional Mindset

 Imaging Integration Provides Patient Storyline

1. “I think just to add to that, I think in addition to the imaging, like having the background, the history, as I mentioned earlier adding more and more detail of past medical history brings this person to life. Like, having seen the patient, you see what they go through, what they come to, and that you see this patient in front of you, knowing what they had gone through and what brought them here.” –DSDI-DG Student

 Addressing the Body Donor as “Patient”

2. “I actually noticed that I now … call our donor a patient, and I think in Med 1 and Med 2, I didn’t do that … I say ‘our patient’ now, and I think that might be because of imaging.” –DSDI-DG Student

3. “For me, I felt when I was approaching the patient, I found that I was trying to be very safe about structures, just like you would be in an OR, where you’re trying to identify, you want to make sure you don’t cut it … versus if it was just a cadaver, I’m looking for a nerve and I couldn’t care less.” –DSDI-DG Student

4. “I think all those things contribute to the fact that you now view the patient as more…or the donor as more of a patient. I would have also liked to seen more past medical history of the patient because that’s something that you can provide to the students without needing any imaging. It will also help us to, like, approach a patient in a different way. If we had known that the patient had a total knee replacement, just based on past medical history, then we would be more cognizant of the scar tissue around his knee, for example.” –DSDI-DG Student

 Lack of Clinical Information

5. “Another thing, at table seven, not only were there generic images, but it felt like generic issues too because we didn’t see any of that on the cadaver. We couldn’t correlate any of that.” –PSDI-DG Student

 Process of “Exploratory Dissection”

6. “I feel that just the process of the dissection has completely changed the entire architecture of the body to the point that, like, the weight is completely different. Like, she weighs less, we have a hard time to turn her, you know. Everything is destabilized, and so definitely, it feels very different at this point…” –PSDI-DG Student

 Simulating the OR Experience

7. “It was touched on earlier. When we were given clinical vignettes or given imaging, it’s very much like going into the OR. We understand the patient’s story. We get to flip through the imaging before the OR, and that’s what it feels like.” –PSDI-DG Student

8. “Yeah. I think the vignette definitely helps because it’s what you do in the hospital. If you’re in emergency or whatever, and you get kind of the story, the patient age or what their medical problems are and what the presenting issue is, and already you start to formulate your impression of what this person looks like, what they’re coming in with, what’s going on. So I think it for sure helps to humanize it.” –DSDI-DG Student

 Envisioning Oneself as a Surgeon/Physician

9. “… makes us all want to be in more the role as an anatomical pathologist, where first of all that’s the physician role. Second, you’re going through with your whole team trying to figure out what every pathology could possibly be linked to in terms of the cause of death and having all of the imaging also sort of puts you more into that way of thinking.” –DSDI-DG Student