An experiential learning lab activity on skeletal muscle physiology in undergraduate MD pre-clerkship curriculum

Experiential learning is an important part of the medical education curriculum. Due to clinical relevance of skeletal muscle strength in evaluating patients’ complaints of muscle weakness or imbalance, skeletal muscle physiology is an important concept with extensive potential for experiential learning opportunities. Our goal was to establish an experiential learning skeletal muscle physiology lab activity that would improve undergraduate MD pre-clerkship students’ skill to collect muscle force measurements using a hand-held dynamometer (HHD) and expand knowledge of core physiological concepts. We developed a muscle lab activity where students performed two experiments using an HHD: (1) The Elbow Flexion Experiment and (2) The Fatigue Experiment. Post-activity survey data demonstrated that students had the ability to utilize HHD to collect muscle force measurement and understood the muscle length-tension relationship (98.5% agree/strongly agree rate).