BMJ  2007;334:110 (20 January), doi:10.1136/bmj.39094.394606.1F

Letters

Anatomy crisis

Make surgeons more active in teaching anatomy at all levels

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

That anatomy teaching is in crisis has been felt by clinicians for many years.1 Surgeons should be more involved in the teaching of anatomy and be integrated with anatomists and other clinical specialists such as anaesthetists, gynaecologists, and radiologists to provide a multispecialty approach. The practicalities of maintaining large numbers of cadavers has to be balanced with cost, utilisation, and usefulness of the teaching methods adopted. New technology (such as web based learning, 3-D anatomical packages and virtual prosections) should be embraced as an adjunct to traditional methods.

If more time and money is not spent on anatomy for students then their knowledge will always be weak. A shift in the medical school curriculums needs to happen, and anatomical knowledge should be retested at clinical levels, perhaps through end of specialty examinations and a surgical anatomy component of finals. Until there is one standardised examination for all medical students in . . . [Full text of this article]

Sanjay Purkayastha, specialist registrar, general surgery1, Paraskeva Paraskevas, senior lecturer in surgery2, Ara Darzi, professor of surgery2

1 Academic Surgical Unit, St Mary's Hospital, London W2 1NY s.purkayastha@imperial.ac.uk , 2 Department of Biosurgery and Surgical Technology, Imperial College, 10th Floor QEQM Building, London W2 1NY


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