Darryl J. McAndrew

Anatomy instruction at Australian and New Zealand medical schools has been the subject of considerable debate recently. Many commentators have lamented the gradual devaluation of anatomy as core knowledge in medical courses. To date, much of this debate has been speculative or anecdotal and lacking reliable supporting data. To provide a basis for better understanding and more informed discussion, this study analyses how anatomy is currently taught and assessed in Australian and New Zealand medical schools.A mailed questionnaire survey was sent to each of the 19 Australian and 2 New Zealand medical schools, examining the time allocation, content, delivery and assessment of anatomy for the 2008 academic year.Nineteen of the 21 (90.5%) universities invited to participate completed the survey. There was considerable variability in the time allocation, content, delivery and assessment of anatomy in Australasian medical schools. The average total hours of anatomy teaching for all courses was 171 h (SD ± 116.7, range 56/560).Historical data indicate a major decline in anatomy teaching hours within medical courses in Australia and New Zealand. Our results reveal that as there is no national curriculum for anatomy instruction, the curriculum content, instruction methodology and assessment is highly variable between individual institutions. Such variability in anatomy teaching and assessment raises an important question: is there also variable depth of understanding of anatomy between graduates of different medical courses?

Changes in medical education have affected both curriculum design and delivery. Many medical schools now use integrated curricula and a systemic approach, with reduced hours of anatomy teaching. While learning anatomy via dissection is invaluable in educational, professional, and personal development, it is time intensive and supports a regional approach to learning anatomy; the use of prosections has replaced dissection as the main teaching method in many medical schools. In our graduate-entry medical degree, we use an integrated curriculum, with prosections to teach anatomy systemically. However, to not exclude dissection completely, and to expose students to its additional and unique benefits, we implemented a short “Dissection Experience” at the beginning of Year 2. Students attended three two-hour anatomy sessions and participated in dissection of the clinically relevant areas of the cubital fossa, femoral triangle, and infraclavicular region. This activity was voluntary and we retrospectively surveyed all students to ascertain factors influencing their decision of whether to participate in this activity, and to obtain feedback from those students who did participate. The main reasons students did not participate were previous dissection experience and time constraints. The reasons most strongly affecting students' decisions to participate related to experience (lack of previous or new) and new skill. Students' responses as to the most beneficial component of the dissection experience were based around practical skills, anatomical education, the learning process, and the body donors. We report here on the benefits and practicalities of including a short dissection experience in a systemic, prosection-based anatomy course.