From Donors to Diagnostic Imaging: clinical and integrative applications of gross anatomy across healthcare

Anatomy is often one of the first immersive, content-heavy courses students encounter in health sciences education. Its detail, rigour, and vocabulary can be overwhelming — and in traditional models, it can become disconnected from the broader context of human health. 

This is where clinical integration makes a difference. When students see anatomy not just as isolated structures, but as part of dynamic systems that affect diagnosis, surgical planning, rehabilitation, and pathology, they begin to understand the why behind the content. 

When I was hired by the University of Toronto’s Division of Anatomy in 2017, one of my first teaching assignments was to design a new gross anatomy course for our Radiation Science program. The instructions from the program’s leadership were very clear – make the course content directly applicable to the students’ careers after they graduate.  

I remember thinking, “of course, anatomy is inherently applicable to healthcare. Why did that have to said?” When I started getting into the course design details, I started to realize what exactly they were asking me to do. The course had previously been taught with rote memorization as the main focus – perhaps, with the assumption that its applicability would be obvious. But this left the students feeling overwhelmed with the volume of facts and names, without a clear link between those facts and their future vocational success.  

Now, I had the opportunity to clearly demonstrate to my new students that each and every nugget of anatomical wisdom they learn will be directly applicable to their day-to-day lives as healthcare professionals.  

So, I did just that, incorporating clinical cases into both lectures and labs, and in doing so, I forever changed how I teach gross anatomy. 

🩻 I displayed a chest radiograph on the computer screens directly beside a donor so that students could dissect away at the anterior chest plate and three-dimensionally see the respiratory structures in situ.  

💉 I used contrast cerebral angiograms in class when explaining cranial vasculature, expanding to include cranial haemorrhagic stroke, cerebral aneurysms, and the diagnostic imaging required to confirm these pathologies.  

🏋🏼‍♂️ I invited my students to physically move their bodies as I taught joint movements and presented the corresponding ultrasound and MRI images that would appropriately distinguish tendinous injuries from other MSK injuries.

I was delighted that course evaluation data provided evidence that my students noticed and appreciated the now obvious applicability: “I feel like anatomy labs were really helpful for me because I get to figure out how everything comes together and look at it from a bigger perspective then slowly delve in and look at the specifics” – Fall '18 MRS student; and “The clinical cases were quite beneficial in the sense I was able to see collectively how various concepts [we] learned integrated well to create a bigger picture” – Fall '19 MRS student.  

Beyond that though, the act of integrating vocational relevance directly into course design forever changed the way that I designed my courses, the way that I thoughtfully integrate group work, and the way that I assess knowledge. Vocational relevance of course content now holds high priority – after all, if my students aren’t going to ever use what they are taught, then why am I teaching it to them?  

Over my next few years as an early career educator, this philosophy naturally wove itself throughout my teaching:

1️⃣ I initiated opportunities to shadow recent program graduates in their jobs, so that I could directly speak to the applicability of my course content. For example, when I was teaching gross anatomy in our Pathologists’ Assistant (PA) graduate program, I arranged site visits to both the Pathology Department at Mount Sinai Hospital as well as the Ontario Forensics Pathology Services to watch PAs in action. This allowed me to learn about their workflow, their site-specific subspecialties, and the explicit vocational expectations in these distinct settings. I was then able to include relevant elements, such of surgical organ grossing or abdominal evisceration, into the dissection manual I created for the PA students.  

2️⃣ I expanded my program of research to include a line of inquiry dedicated to identifying and exploring the vocational relevance of course content. For example, the ATLAS Research Lab recently completed a national survey of essential embryology requirements for pathologists' assistants, a research project that directly informed the design and delivery a condensed embryology curriculum I was commissioned to create.  

3️⃣ I used competency frameworks outlining expectations of healthcare professionals to inform assignment design. For example, I incorporated facets of science communication into a new graduate course in advanced teratology for clinical embryology students to ensure professional competence beyond requisite knowledge.  

In short, every learning objective had a specific purpose. I spent my formative years as an early career professor refining the ways I taught the applicability of gross anatomy across healthcare professions.  

Then, in 2023, I was approached to re-design the way gross anatomy is taught across the first year of the Temerty Faculty of Medicine’s MD program. The new anatomy curriculum would be leaving behind discovery-based dissection and moving towards clinical integration of gross anatomy with topics of medical imaging, surgery, and pathology. I couldn’t imagine a better way of teaching medical students the importance of foundational anatomy knowledge – and what an honour it was to have been approached to design it! 

In addition to primary content delivery through short lectures, which I created to include both didactic and active in-class teaching, and small-group dissections with specific and focused task outcomes, I along with a dedicated team of clinicians created nine full-day integrated sessions. During these sessions, students are guided through relevant content in basic topics before being introduced to a progressive clinical case that follows the natural flow of patient care through various providers. The students experience both the integration of knowledge across subspecialties and the resulting impact on patient outcomes. The nine full-day integrated sessions are not passive, one-off case studies. They are active, evolving challenges that mirror real healthcare environments and grow in complexity as students gain confidence and foundational knowledge.  

In the anatomy lab portion of these nine sessions, my students apply foundational anatomy knowledge, often performing mock surgeries, manipulating recent surgical specimens, and/or aligning diagnostic images from their case notes to their donors. Students witness laminectomies, perform cricothyroidotomies with in situ lung inflation, complete axillary lymph node dissections with suture closure, and run the bowels following abdominal organ eviscerations. They learn, from the very beginning, that gross anatomy is a cornerstone to their future success.  

One of the most valuable outcomes of this approach is that students can see the relevance of gross anatomy through different professional perspectives. In a single case, they might ask: 

💭 What anatomical landmarks would a radiologist be able to identify on this scan? 

💭 What would a pathologist be expecting from a tissue sample of this organ, and what deviations would indicate pathology? 

💭 What anatomical structures would a surgeon need to consider during this procedure? 

💭 What would a rehabilitation therapist need to understand to support patient recovery?

This interprofessional awareness gives students a more holistic understanding of the body — and of the care systems that engage with it. More importantly, it helps them picture themselves in those systems, sparking interest in fields they may not have previously considered. 

As anatomy educators, we have the opportunity to teach more than just the names and locations of structures. We have the capacity to leverage the clinical applicability of gross anatomy to teach integrated systems, medical ethics, and even interprofessional teamwork. In turn, this would be giving students an opportunity to understand the human body and a way to locate themselves within the healthcare landscape. 

There’s a quote from Plato, the ancient Greek philosopher, that I have framed in my office. It reads, “Do not train [students] to learn by force and harshness, but direct them to it by what amuses their minds, so that you may be better able to discover with accuracy the peculiar bent of the genius of each.”  

For me, there is no better way to spark that joy—and reveal the true genius within each learner—than through the clinical and integrative study of gross anatomy.