The innovation and practice of the "Hand as Foot" teaching method in the teaching of Parkinson's disease

晶晶 杨 ¹ dandan yang ² jiahui liu ^1*

• ¹ Baotou Central Hospital, Baotou, China
• ² Inner Mongolia Medical College, Hohhot, Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, China

Background: Based on years of clinical teaching experience, the orthopedic team pioneered the "hand as foot" teaching method, initially applied in orthopedic teaching. The advantage of "hand as foot" teaching lies in the high similarity of anatomical structures between upper and lower limbs, joints, nerves, blood vessels, etc. This method allows using feet to explain knowledge instead of hands. It has since expanded to internal medicine, surgery, obstetrics, and gynecology, significantly impacting clinical teaching and medical education across departments. Utilizing simple gestures or body language to grasp clinical knowledge intuitively and repeatedly has proven effective. Over years of theoretical teaching, understanding brain anatomy, particularly the anatomy and communication of Parkinson's disease (PD) , has posed challenges. Methods: A self-designed questionnaire was used to validate the effectiveness of the “Hand and Foot” teaching method for teaching key points to undergraduate clinical medical students in Inner Mongolia Medical University.Results: There were a total of 81 participants of which 41 were in class 1 (students using "hand as foot" teaching method) and 40 were in class 2 (students using "hand as foot" teaching method), 75.61% of the students in class 1 found the "hand as foot" method useful and only 19.51% found the "hand as foot" method average. Of the students who were taught "hand as foot", 80.49% correctly answered the option“Main pathological changes in PD. 70.73% correctly answered the option “Main components of the basal ganglia”. 82.93% correctly answered the option “Typical symptoms of PD”. 51.22% correctly answered the question related to the swallow tail sign. The percentage of correct answers was much higher than that of the students in the class 2. From the questionnaire survey of medical students' knowledge of PD, we can draw several important conclusions. 75.61% of the students in class 1 who had used the "hand as foot" method teaching in PD found the method helpful. The results with statistical difference (P<0.05) showed that the "hand as foot" teaching method directly affected the students' knowledge about PD.