It is generally accepted that assessment is a single powerful tool that drives students’ learning.
However, assessment of anatomy subject in medical curriculum is disputable as it focusses more on
testing the low order thinking skills. In medical education context, it is of paramount importance to
align the assessment with the curriculum (i.e., learning outcomes) and teaching methods as to enhance
learning through a meaningful learning experience. Hence, the use of learning taxonomy should be
emphasised in designing a proper and suitable assessment for anatomy subject. Among the most
commonly used taxonomies in higher education, are the Bloom’s taxonomy, Miller’s pyramid, SOLO
taxonomy, Krathwohl’s taxonomy of affective domain, and Simpson’s psychomotor domain. However,
being a core basic medical subject with high cognitive input, it is often difficult to achieve contextual
learning in anatomy through application of these taxonomies. Therefore, with raising concern of lack
in the evaluation of higher order thinking skills, affective and psychomotor domains, the anatomy
assessment in modern medical curriculum have been improvised to address the aforementioned
issues. The modern form of assessment in anatomy facilitates the contextual learning with beneficial
attributes gained by students including better understanding of anatomy knowledge, synthesis of
anatomical concept, appreciation of the clinical importance of anatomy, increases communication
skills, and increase in the confidence level.
Phy-Antastic is the pioneering horizontally-integrated pedagogy that adopts physiology-oriented
anatomy teaching. A decline in time allocation for basic medical sciences (BMS) modules triggers
the conflict of interests among educators. “Physiology-then-Anatomy” temporal synchronisation
(and therefore Phy-Antastic) facilitates deep learning. The five highlighted features of Phy-Antastic
are: (i) explicit declaration of learning outcomes and prerequisite knowledge as groundwork for
the forthcoming topics; (ii) explanation of subject-related glossary to improve comprehension;
(iii) elucidation of the related physiological mechanism to calibrate the learners into appreciating
the cardinal anatomical features; (iv) the creative utilisation of multimodal teaching aids to simulate
consolidated learning experience; (v) lesson was concluded by revisiting learning objectives, reflection
on principal inquiry questions and recapitulating fundamental elements. The strength of Phy-Antastic
depends on homeostatic teaching with rigorous educational outcome set-point and interdisciplinary
feedback mechanisms. Small group discussion, problem-based learning and technology-assisted
teaching can easily incorporate Phy-Antastic. Inertia among BMS educators in embracing
interdisciplinary collaborative teaching remains the institutional barrier to the implementation of
Phy-Antastic. This article proposes a prospective advancement in anatomical education for the
contemplation of educators.
Anatomy is an important knowledge for medical practice. Insufficient anatomy knowledge leading to errors in identification of anatomical structures during medical practices has been reported in many countries. Many medical students seem to have difficulties in learning anatomy and retaining the knowledge for future practice, thus this might reflect the possible flaws in anatomy education. In order to achieve optimum anatomy education environment and to close the gaps in education, measuring the students' perception on anatomy teaching and learning is a pre-emptive measure needed by educationists. At present, there is no valid and reliable inventory available to specifically evaluate the anatomy education environment. Therefore, this article highlights the importance of having such inventory.