That rite of passage of medical education, the gross anatomy class, is facing a dearth of instructors. More than 80% of anatomy departments at U.S. medical schools anticipate "great" or "moderate" difficulty finding qualified gross anatomy teachers in the next 5 years, according to a national survey presented this month in Panama at the annual meeting of the Association of Anatomy, Cell Biology, and Neurobiology Chairpersons. To head off the problem, departments are giving on-the-job training to junior faculty members, paying graduate students to take the lengthy course, and pulling professors out of retirement.
The first-year class, which includes about 170 hours of human dissection, has lost its appeal for those headed for a research career--the traditional source of instructors --in part because anatomy has become increasingly molecular, focusing on cells rather than organs. And even properly trained researchers often don't want to teach the class, because it demands roughly twice as much time as other courses, according to the survey conducted by the American Association of Anatomists. But most agree that for medical students, those long hours are essential. Substitutes, such as virtual anatomical imaging, can never fully replace the real thing, says Robert McCuskey of the University of Arizona, Tucson: "I certainly wouldn't want a surgeon working on me who'd never actually touched a gallbladder."
