Similarities Between Veterinary and Human Medical Anatomy Curricula and Educators
Authors: McNulty Margaret A , Mussell Jason , Lufler Rebecca 
Published: June 2021

Introduction

Despite human (HUM) and veterinary (VET) medical schools sharing the goal of educating the next generation of clinicians, there is little communication between these institutions in terms of curricular and pedagogical practices. Crossover between educators in those institutions, especially in the anatomical sciences, is equally rare. Further, even with a recent focus on training the next generation of anatomy educators, there has been little research investigating the current population of anatomy educators.

The aim of the current study was to gather data about anatomy curricula, pedagogical methodologies, and training of anatomy educators at both HUM and VET institutions. We hypothesize that these two types of institutions do not differ significantly in their curricula and general backgrounds of educators.

Methods

With IRB approval, a survey examining anatomy curricula, pedagogies, educators' backgrounds, and free response opportunities was sent to anatomists around the world. The survey was not limited to HUM or VET; however, responses were separated into those categories (n=156). Descriptive statistics were used to determine frequency of responses and Mann‐Whitney U tests were used to compare curricular characteristics.

Results

The educational background of anatomy educators at HUM or VET was identical with one exception: 54.1% of those who teach VET had a clinical degree compared to 9.2% of those who teach HUM. A majority of educators have a PhD (64.9% VET; 79.8% HUM), and almost all of those PhD degrees were obtained in a scientific field (95% VET, 70.6% HUM) as opposed to other fields such as education. The same percent (29%) of VET and HUM educators did not have formal training in education. Gross anatomy curricula at 95% of VET programs use a combination including dissections and prosections compared to 50% of HUM programs; an additional 30.3% of HUM institutions use dissection only. Assessment methods were similar, with the majority of both types of institutions using written exams (93.9% HUM, 95.8% VET) and practical exams that require students to identify tagged structures (83.1% HUM, 100% VET). Average class sizes between VET and HUM institutions was significantly different (p=0.002); median HUM class size (150) was larger than VET (103). Similarly, ratio of students/cadaver was significantly higher (p<0.001) in HUM (6/cadaver) compared to VET (4/cadaver). Median faculty:student ratios were not different in VET or HUM anatomy courses (1:23 for each; p=0.81).

Conclusions

These data show that there are few differences between anatomy curricula, pedagogies, and educators' backgrounds at HUM and VET institutions. Further analyses including a comparison of entire curricula and more detailed examination of faculty backgrounds between both types of programs are forthcoming. We have identified 35 institutions worldwide that have both HUM and VET schools; courses offered, admissions criteria, and student demographics will be analyzed to elucidate any differences. Thus far, the similarities between the education of HUM and VET medical students indicate that more collaboration can occur to better educate both student populations.

This abstract is from the Experimental Biology 2019 Meeting. There is no full text article associated with this abstract published in The FASEB Journal.