Confessions of a converted anatomist: teaching without anatomical donors

In the field of anatomy education, the debate over the superiority of learning with or without human donors is decades long and ongoing. Arguments for or against the use of human donors in anatomy education vary, depending on the healthcare discipline. Physical therapy programs have been particularly resistant to the trend away from the use of human donors. In this personal view, I present my history of anatomy education and how my perspectives on teaching and learning anatomy have changed dramatically throughout my teaching experiences. The purpose of this article is to support instructors who are creating anatomy courses for all healthcare trainees without donors, inspire those teaching with donors to incorporate other methods of instruction and evaluation, challenge educators to examine their own biases surrounding anatomy education, and provide recommendations for developing an anatomy course without human donors. Included in this article is the perspective of a practicing physical therapist who learned through human dissection and has assisted me in the development and management of the human anatomy course in our physical therapy curriculum.NEW & NOTEWORTHY This article provides an overview of how to design an anatomy course without anatomical donors for doctor of physical therapy students and includes recommendations for instructors who need to reduce or eliminate anatomical donors from their anatomy curriculum.