Reflection
As International Women’s Day is celebrated this month, we thought it was the perfect time to reflect on the impact that the release of the female model has had so far, and if one year later we are on the right track to hit our goals that we had set before the release.
When designing the female model, our long-term vision was to drive better patient outcomes through a more equal representation of female anatomy within health education. By spreading the word about why this underrepresentation is a problem, we hoped to change societal habits at large, and see what products like Complete Anatomy need to do in order create a more equitable future.
The results
One year after the launch of our female model, we’re happy to report that users are really embracing it! On average two-thirds of Complete Anatomy users are using the female model as their go-to for their teaching and learning. This is a wonderfully positive shift given how the male model has historically been overwhelmingly dominant within medical texts.
The support
What really makes the effort worth it, is seeing the impact is has had on real-world teaching and learning.
“For the first time this model has provided us with a full resource of the female form, rather than just a male skeleton with a female pelvis. The benefits of this range beyond just the overt; such as the in-depth exploration into the anatomy of the breast; it has also given us resources to explore many more subtle elements of the female anatomy such as the difference in long bones. The model has also contributed to the hidden curriculum as it demonstrates equality in our teaching and creates awareness of the historic bias in medicine.”
Professor Claire Smith, University of Sussex, Brighton and Sussex Medical School [source]
And medical student Alondra Diaz of the University of Illinois explains how the female model has impacted her anatomy learning:
