Objective: Cadavers (silent mentors) have been playing a key role in anatomy and medical education. However, anatomical education is also capable of equipping students with other equally valuable skills in the form of biomedical ethics and professionalism. So, the aim of our study is to obtain and compare the effects of silent mentors, before and after exposure, on ethical values in allied health students in Singapore.
Methods: We did a cross-sectional study comparing students pre- and post-exposure to cadavers for the anatomy module via survey with 407 allied health science undergraduate students at the Singapore Institute of Technology.
Results: We found a statistically significant change in ethical and professional values (p 0.001) after exposure to silent mentors advocating for their future patients. non-maleficence and justice in allied health students. In the pre-exposure, 82% of the students agreed that there might be some sort of impact brought by learning with silent mentors, 8% disagreed, and 10% remained neutral. However, in the post-exposure survey, only 61% of students agreed with that statement, 12% disagreed, and 17% remained neutral. Almost 85% of the students found that cadavers helped them to learn ethical values in the early years of their studies.
Conclusion: Exposure to silent mentors unveiled three themes: increased confidence to better serve patients, increased respect, and greater responsibility, accountability, and ownership. Our study seems to suggest that exposure to silent mentors has the intended effect of inculcating autonomy, beneficence, non-maleficence, and justice in allied health students in Singapore.
Keywords: allied health students; anatomy; ethical values; silent mentors
Ethical statement: This study was conducted after obtaining institutional ethical committee approval and no funding involved.