Why anatomy should still be taught

I hated anatomy when I studied medicine, and yet, bizarrely, I now find myself going back to my old medical college to give lectures in practical applications of anatomy to students in their first year.

The problem, and my reason for writing this, is that I give the talk only to a self selected group of 50 students. Each year has 250 students; most get virtually no exposure to anatomy. Absolutely none of them will get any teaching in neuroanatomy. Does this mean that the first computed tomography scan on the brain they see will just be a poor quality black and white photo of a walnut?

But why should anyone want to study anatomy? Lets ignore the embryonic surgeons—theyre easy to spot; often male and doodling Ferrari 550s or BMW Z8 sketches on the corner of their otherwise blank notes. Why should the rest of us, wholl spend the rest of our careers tending only to patients with their skin intact, want to cram our heads with this stuff?

It has been known since Michelangelos time that knowledge of anatomy is needed for the study of medicine, and some basic anatomy is still vital to the practice of good medicine in virtually every field. Although I dont think this is in doubt, I do believe that hoping a session of half an hour as part of the study module on locomotion will be enough is, frankly, naive.

I would be the first to argue that long pure anatomy lectures out of context are capable of inducing sleep—you have to know why youre learning something if youre going to retain the maximum amount of information. This is why the new style curriculums are so much better than the old school model of ‘two years of lecture based basic sciences before …