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Feature:
The ANATOMISTS!
Our human anatomy
instructors study animals across the globe and through time.
Why?
By Anita Martin
Most medical students never suspect what vast and varied
research lives their anatomy professors lead. These
classroom authorities in human musculature or neuropathology
double as experts on Costa Rican howler monkeys, Antarctic
dragonfish and long-extinct African mammals, to name a few.
The
OU-COM anatomy instruction corps includes seven full-time,
widely-published comparative animal biologists and
paleontologists—which is not at all uncommon, says
Lawrence Witmer, Ph.D., professor of anatomy and
director of anatomical resources. “Human anatomy is already
very well understood. If you want professors conducting
novel anatomical research, you’re going to find people
studying animals.”
And, according to Audrone Biknevicius, Ph.D.,
associate professor of anatomy and chair of the Department
of Biomedical Sciences, this diversity enhances human
anatomy instruction.
“In
my research, I want to know: What does this anatomy tell us
about how that system works? Ultimately, that’s the same
question our students have,” Biknevicius says. “We dissect
to put it together—to understand the greater context of how
integrated systems interact.”
You
hear phrases like “greater context” and “integrated systems”
a lot among the OU-COM anatomy faculty. They’re a group
interested not just in form, but also function. “Our job is
to say, ‘here is the body as a whole system, here is how it
works and here is what happens when it breaks,’” says
Patrick O’Connor, Ph.D., associate professor of anatomy.
Asked what does distinguish gross anatomy instruction
at OU-COM, the faculty overwhelmingly point to its emphasis
on clinical relevance.
“I
was very surprised by how clinically focused this anatomy
instruction is so early on,” says Susan Williams, Ph.D.,
assistant professor of anatomy. “Each anatomy lab is
basically structured like a case study, to resolve clinical
questions.”
Unlike other medical schools, OU-COM’s instruction is not
arranged by basic science subjects like “anatomy,”
“physiology” or “cell biology.” Instead, the curricula are
divided by body system, weaving the basic sciences together
with pathology, clinical case studies—and, of course,
anatomy labs—related to each system.
So,
as osteopathic medical students connect their anatomy
studies to clinical practice, their anatomy instructors are
making research connections in an even greater context—the
entire animal kingdom.
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Lawrence
Witmer, Ph.D
