A core syllabus for the teaching of gross anatomy of the thorax to medical students

Abstract

Discussion is ongoing concerning the need to ensure the clinical relevance of the biomedical sciences. However, clinical relevance within health care courses presupposes that there is internationally agreed core material to be taught and learned. For anatomy, by the initial use of Delphi Panels that comprise anatomists, scientists, and clinicians, the International Federation of Associations of Anatomists (IFAAs) is developing internationally accepted core syllabuses for all anatomical sciences disciplines in the health care professions. In this article, the deliberations of a Delphi Panel for the teaching of thoracic anatomy in the medical curriculum are presented, prior to their publication on the IFAA's website. To develop the syllabus further, it is required that anatomical societies, as well as individual anatomists and clinicians, comment upon, elaborate, and amend this draft recommended syllabus. The aim is to set internationally recognized standards and thus to provide guidelines concerning the knowledge of the human thorax expected of graduating medical professionals. Such information should be borne in mind by those involved in the development of medical courses. Clin. Anat. 33:300-315, 2020.

Quantifying research on anatomical structures, a potential new metric for assessing clinical relevance

“…Another advantage of automation is the ability to research a large dataset, which has enabled us to research all anatomical structures listed in Grant's Dissector . In comparison, Delphi studies have involved smaller subsets of anatomical terms (e.g., Kumar et al, 2018; Moxham et al, 2020; Webb et al, 2019). Furthermore, the PubMed data we collected is precise and can easily distinguish anatomical structures for the purpose of ranking.…”

A core syllabus for histology within the medical curriculum—The cell and basic tissues

“…In previous papers on the core IFAA syllabuses (Tubbs et al, 2014, Tubbs & Paulk, 2015; Moxham et al, 2015, 2018, 2020; Fakoya et al, 2017), the question was raised: what is the purpose of a core syllabus? We acknowledge that, while universal agreement on the details is hard to obtain, a core syllabus provides the minimum level of knowledge expected of a recently‐qualified medical graduate in order to ensure that students are not overloaded with facts and can carry out many clinical procedures safely and effectively.…”

“…The International Federation of Associations of Anatomists (IFAA) is publishing more specialized core syllabuses that provide lists of topics that are to be considered core, recommended or not required. To date, the IFAA have published syllabuses for head and neck anatomy for medicine (Tubbs et al, 2014; Tubbs & Paulk, 2015), neuroanatomy for medicine (Moxham, McHanwell, Plaisant, & Pais, 2015), embryology and teratology for medicine (Fakoya, Emmanouil‐Nikoloussi, Sharma, & Moxham, 2017), specialized oral anatomy for dentistry (Moxham, McHanwell, & Berkovitz, 2018), musculoskeletal anatomy for medicine (Webb, Green, & Woodley, 2019), and thoracic anatomy for medicine (Moxham, Stephens, Sharma, & Loukas, 2020). Both the AS and the IFAA are employing Delphi Panels to devise the syllabuses (see Moxham, Plaisant, Smith, Pawlina, & McHanwell, 2014).…”

Anatomy teaching in Saudi medical colleges- is there necessity of the national core syllabus of anatomy

“…There are other efforts to standardize the core syllabus at undergraduate program level for medicine [17,[20][21][22] dentistry [23,24], Nursing [25] and Pharmacy [26]. Also, some core syllabi are prepared at regional level such as musculoskeletal anatomy [27], Thorax [28] head and neck [29,30] and neuroanatomy [31].…”