title: Designing anatomy program in modern medical curriculum: matter of balance.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  To evaluate the structure of the anatomy program in the first year medical curriculum of University of Split School of Medicine by comparing it with the recommendations by the Educational Affairs Committee of the American Association of Clinical Anatomists (AACA) and the Terminologia Anatomica (TA); we also quantitatively evaluated the organization of teaching material in contemporary topographical anatomy textbooks and matched them with the AACA recommendations, TA, and the curriculum of the anatomy course taught at Medical School in Split, Croatia.
  
  
  METHODS
  TA, official recommendations of the AACA, 6 contemporary anatomy textbooks, and the structure of the anatomy course were analyzed for the proportion of the terms or text devoted to standard topographical regions of the body. The findings were correlated using Spearman rho test.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The curriculum outline correlated both with the AACA recommendations (Spearman rho=0.83, P=0.015) and TA (Spearman rho=0.73, P=0.046). Textbooks contained 8 distinct sections, 7 allocated to topographic anatomy regions and 1 to general anatomy concepts and principles. The structure of all textbooks correlated significantly with the course curriculum. However, 4 out of 6 textbooks did not correlate with TA and only a single textbook showed significant correlation with the AACA recommendations.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Anatomy textbooks vary in the amount of text dedicated to different parts of topographical anatomy and are not quite concordant with curriculum recommendations and standard anatomical terminology. Planning the structure of an anatomy course should not be based on a single book or recommendation but on evidence.
authors.affiliation: Department of Anatomy, Histology and Embryology, University of Split School of Medicine, Soltanska 2, 21000 Split, Croatia. igrkovic@mefst.hr
authors.forename: Ivica
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Grković
authors.forename: Maja
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Marinović Guić
authors.forename: Vana
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Kosta
authors.forename: Ana
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Poljicanin
authors.forename: Ana
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Carić
authors.forename: Katarina
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Vilović
mesh_terms: D000715:Anatomy / Q000193:education*; D003479:Curriculum / Q000592:standards*; D006801:Humans; D012577:Schools, Medical