18 | JADE
ROSALYN A JURJUS ET AL.
how societies thought about, evaluated, and understood the moral
legitimacy of dissection and of scientific and medical procedures,
from performing abortions to engaging in stem cell research and
genetic engineering (Morag et al., 2005; Santoro et al., 2009).
The US medical education system, over the years, has responded
robustly to such concerns. According to Koening et al., (2010), in
the early 1990’s only three U.S. medical schools taught courses on
religious and spiritual issues. By 2006 it had increased to over
70% of schools and by 2010 90% of U.S. medical schools either had
courses or content on spirituality and health (Koening et al., 2010).
However, some medical schools remained skeptical about the
relevance of this subject matter despite the fact that reliable studies
suggested that 80% of Americans believed in the healing power of
God or prayer to improve the course of an illness (Pachalski, et al.,
2014). As reported by Barnard et al 1995, introducing spirituality
and religious themes into the curriculum could foster the respect
of medical students for the individuality of the patient in his or
her cultural context and increase awareness of values and faith as
resources for dealing with illness, suffering, and death including the
dissected cadaver (Barnard et al., 1995). Social forces of culture
and religion can bring people together for cooperative success or
can divide people for persecution and suffering. Culture defines
the social forces within a community, influencing the conventions of
behavior. On the other hand, religion defines how the community
members interpret their role in the universe. With this teaching
based on local culture, different religions rise out of different
cultures. Similarly, when members of one religion convert members
of a foreign culture, often the resulting religion in that area is affected
by the lost culture. This interrelationship affects our behavior and
attitudes to a great extent.
Along these lines, inductive ethnographic research was conducted
in the gross anatomy laboratory to explore reactions of students
to human dissection focusing on anxiety, tension, discomfort and
coping. Such studies stressed the importance of communication
between faculty and students and among students during dissection
and the ability of enhancing reconciliation between illness, dying,
and death in a medical school anatomy laboratory (William, 1992;
Kotzé and Mole, 2013). Many researchers sought to elucidate the
differences in student perception of cadaveric dissection in the
hope of identifying students who may experience it differently
due to emotional impact, mental stress and cultural views (Sukol,
1995; Slotnick, 2001; Boeckers et al., 2010), or determining features
that might be predictive of future doctor-patient relationships
(Shalev and Nathan, 1985). In a study conducted in Spain, only a
small percentage of medical students showed persistent negative
reactions, mainly anxiety, in viewing (or using) cadaveric material,