The Power of Touch in Medical Education
A single touch, whether the reassuring squeeze of a patient’s hand, the gentle pressure of a stethoscope, or the precise contact of a surgeon's fingers, can communicate and sometimes heal in ways that words cannot. Clinical touch is a cornerstone of the doctor-patient relationship as it is used regularly in direct patient care. Touch can be diagnostic, such as palpation of lymph nodes or masses, or therapeutic, such as reducing a dislocated bone. For a trainee, determining the right level and type of touch requires trial and error, in part due to limited feedback on performance in clinical settings. We cannot devalue the importance of physical touch. When absent or overlooked, patient diagnosis and treatment outcomes can be negatively affected.
Learning Through Touch
Haptics, the science of touch, can provide a framework to understand and communicate the actions and observations of clinical touch. This field can be subdivided into haptic science, which serves as a foundation for precise assessment of touch and hands-on clinical skills, and haptic devices, which are tools for precise measurement and replication of sensation. The most basic device is one's fingertips. Our own cutaneous touch can help us distinguish a benign cyst from a more concerning mass.
Haptic feedback in medical education can include learning via two mechanisms. First, by allowing students to make errors and correcting them, and second, by guiding the hands of students to correctly complete the task. Learning is a core foundation for teaching STEM subjects and relies in part on hands-on engagement. To a novice learner without clinical experience, haptics provides the advantage of converting passive observation into active experience, allowing for higher engagement and greater comprehension.
The Anatomy Lab: A Medical Student’s First Haptic Experience
A medical student’s first experience with haptics is through their first patient, the whole-body donor. Many programs have replaced dissection with prosections or computer-based learning models; however, these concepts may prevent the student from a patient-centered learning experience. Dissection provides a unique opportunity to understand anatomical variability, spatial relationships, and touch-mediated perception of the human body. Students are able to gain valuable insight into the complexity of anatomical relationships by physically examining and dissecting whole body donors. Anatomical dissection lays the foundation for clinical knowledge, practice, and respect for donors for every future doctor. As technology continues to evolve, integration of artificial intelligence with anatomical dissection could provide opportunities to enhance education and comprehension. Nonetheless, anatomical dissection lays the foundation for clinical knowledge and practice for future doctors that cannot fully be replicated.
Incorporating Haptics Into Medical Education
Recent research on haptics design showcases multiple strategies to aid in curriculum infrastructure and content. Educators should be aware of the group for whom they are curating the learning experience, which can include a single student, classroom, or clinical team. Customizing a learning experience for the appropriate team demands effective search, filtering and targeted access of haptic content. It can be beneficial to find a means to transfer and evaluate haptic experiences without access to identical devices or hardware. Using a combination of visual, auditory, and haptic modalities can be an efficient means of communication.
Haptic design is often created in isolation for narrow focused cases, for example, surgical training simulators, minimally invasive robotic surgery, or mannequins for basic life support training. To accelerate its integration into medical education, educators should consider fostering collaboration by incorporating online information, workshops, classes, and discussion forums for appropriate interaction between learners. Novice medical students may struggle due to insufficient interactive elements in their curricula. Both novices and experts should consider co-creating haptic designs together in order to support its use in a wide range of contexts.
Haptics is used throughout medical education and to enhance engagement and retention of information and provides a useful framework through which to understand clinical touch. Clinical touch is the cornerstone of the doctor-patient relationship, and patient outcomes worsen in its absence. A student’s first experience with touch is through anatomical whole-body donors, who serve as their first patient and their first introduction to clinical touch. When designing a haptic learning experience for trainees, a combination of active learning, appropriate technology, and collaborative design can ensure effective teaching.
Lourdes Hindi is a medical student (Class of 2027) at Saint Louis University School
of Medicine. Lourdes’s area of professional interests includes anesthesia, general
surgery, and academic medicine. Lourdes can be found on Linkedin or contacted via email.