Efficacy of Hand Gestures and the Hand as Foot Teaching Method Compared to Traditional Methods in Medical and Dental Education: A Scoping Review

OBJECTIVE: The "Hand-as-Foot" teaching method is an innovative, hands-on approach that uses gesture-based movements to represent anatomical structures and functions. It has been used successfully in medical education to help simplify and communicate complex ideas. However, its use in dental education remains relatively unexplored. This scoping review set out to examine how hand gestures, including the Hand-as-Foot technique, are being used in medical and dental classrooms, and whether they offer benefits over traditional teaching methods. We also aim to identify gaps in the current research to guide future studies. METHODS: We followed the PRISMA-ScR guidelines to conduct a comprehensive literature search in MEDLINE (PubMed) and SCOPUS, with additional manual searches in Google Scholar and key academic journals. Studies were included if they evaluated the effectiveness of hand gestures in teaching clinical or non-clinical subjects in medical or dental education. Eligible study designs included clinical trials, interventional studies, observational studies, and cohort or case-control studies. Only English-language publications were included, while reviews, editorials, and opinion pieces were excluded. A descriptive analysis was used to summarize the findings. RESULTS: Out of 57 records identified, 29 were duplicates, 15 were removed, and 14 were resolved manually leaving 42 articles for screening. After title and abstract review, 10 articles were excluded. Full-text screening of 32 articles led to the removal of 26 that were out of scope. In total, six studies were included in the review. Of these, four were comparative studies that directly evaluated gesture-based teaching against traditional lecture-style instruction in medical and dental education. CONCLUSION: Although early findings are promising, research on gesture-based teaching especially the "Hand-as-Foot method" is still limited, particularly in dental education. Most available studies suggest improved engagement and understanding, but high-quality, comparative research is needed to support broader adoption of these techniques in health education.