Medical morphology and digital learning technologies

On November 19, 2020, within the framework of the XI National Congress with international participation «Ecology and human health in the North», the All-Russian workshop «Medical morphology and digital learning technologies» was held at the videoconference. The meeting was attended by teachers-morphologists of medical universities and faculties of cities located in territories with especial ecological and geographical conditions of residence and education of students (Yakutsk, Saint-Petersburg, Perm, Omsk, Krasnoyarsk). The current situation in the world, caused by the Covid-19 virus infection pandemic, posed an unprecedented challenge to many social institutions of modern society, including the system of higher medical education and training of medical personnel. She accelerated the controversial, largely uncertain and not painless transition to digitalization of education as part of the implementation of the national digital economy program. Medical higher education, starting from the first courses, is extremely practical in its essence. The existing electronic platforms and digital instruments, despite all their effectiveness, still cannot be an adequate replacement for those technologies that have traditionally served as the educational and methodological base of preclinical disciplines for many decades, while anatomy is the basic practical discipline for all clinical specialties. This situation is not specific only for individual countries, it is the same for the entire medical higher school around the world. The result of the exchange of experience of the anatomical departments of medical universities at the meeting was the conclusion that the weakest link of distance technologies - digital proctoring of practical anatomical knowledge should be organizationally supported in the form of appropriate scientific and pedagogical seminars and conferences, widely published and recommended, are determined its limits, possibilities and use. It is necessary to analyze and revise the existing work programs of disciplines in order to determine the structural sections of the programs of disciplines and the volume of their transfer to digital platforms, partially or completely, or technologically unchanged at all. It is also mandatory to develop new training, retraining and advanced training programs for morphologists who carry out educational activities using an intermediary language and digital technologies. It is recommended that teachers of morphological departments of medical universities and faculties practically master and bring the relevant professional competencies in the field of mastering the tools of the electronic information educational environment to the level of documented professional excellence. At the same time, when creating educational literature, digital tutorials and gadgets on human anatomy, one should strictly adhere to the international anatomical terminology TA-2 (London, 2019) to eliminate the confusion and variety of terms used to denote the same anatomical structures.