Continuing Medical Anatomy Education: A Critical Narrative Review of Anatomy in Clinical and Surgical Practice
Rotimi S. Ajani
*
Division of Gastrointestinal, Morphological and Surgical Anatomy, Department of Anatomy, College of Medicine, University of Ibadan, Ibadan, Nigeria.
*Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Abstract
Anatomical knowledge underpins physical examination, image interpretation, procedural intervention and operative decision-making, yet it is acquired predominantly during the earliest phase of professional training and is seldom revisited in any structured manner thereafter. This critical narrative review examines the evidence connecting anatomical education to clinical and surgical practice, with particular attention to the period after undergraduate instruction ends. Literature was identified through searches of open scholarly databases and indexes, supplemented by forward and backward citation searching and bibliographic verification, covering January 2014 to 15 June 2026. Evidence was appraised for design adequacy, outcome validity, transferability and consistency, and was synthesised thematically rather than study by study. Four findings dominate. Consensus-derived core syllabi have brought welcome specificity to curricular content, but they rest on expert judgement rather than on outcome data, and their influence on what learners retain remains largely unmeasured. The proposition that anatomical knowledge determines operative safety is supported by mechanistic reasoning, studies of anatomical variation and medico-legal analysis, yet direct evidence linking measured anatomical competence to patient outcomes is almost entirely absent. Modality comparisons dominate the empirical literature and yield small to moderate, heterogeneous effects on short-term knowledge scores; immersive virtual environments outperform passive comparators more reliably than augmented reality does, and case-specific printed models have not been shown to transfer to cadaveric performance. Continuing anatomical education for qualified practitioners is delivered through cadaveric courses, intraoperative instruction, structured video review and computational anatomical recognition, but almost all supporting evidence comprises single-centre pre-test and post-test designs with self-reported confidence as an outcome. The principal weakness of the field is not scarcity of studies but misalignment between what is measured and what matters, since recognition tests taken days after instruction cannot substantiate claims about intraoperative judgement. Priorities include outcome-anchored definitions of competence, longitudinal retention studies extending into independent practice, standardised operative-interpretation assessments, and pragmatic multicentre trials of continuing anatomical education embedded within surgical training.
Keywords: Clinical anatomy, surgical education, continuing professional development, cadaveric dissection, anatomical variation, extended reality, patient safety