The tarsal bone test: a basic test of health sciences students' knowledge of lower limb anatomy.

Objectives: The aim of the present study was to design an easy-to-use tool, the tarsal bone test (TBT), to provide a snapshot of podiatry students' basic anatomical knowledge of the bones of the lower limb.

Methods: The study included 254 podiatry students from three different universities, 145 of them were first-year students and 109 were in their fourth and final years. The TBT was administered without prior notice to the participants and was to be completed in 5 minutes.

Results: The results show that 97.2% of the subjects (n = 247) correctly labelled all tarsal bones, while the other 2.8% (n = 7) incorrectly labelled at least one bone, that was either the cuboid (7 times) or the navicular (6 times). Although only one fourth-year student inaccurately identified one bone, no significant differences in the distribution of the correct and incorrect responses were found between first and fourth-year students.

Conclusions: The TBT seems to be a straightforward and easy-to-apply instrument, and provides an objective view of the level of knowledge acquired at different stages of podiatry studies.