Anatomy & Physiology

An A&P Lab Manual That Thinks Like a Student

2026-10-19T14:00:00.000-05:00

What’s new—and what has always been different—about the Anatomy & Physiology Laboratory Manual and E-Labs

A&P laboratory manuals can look pretty similar when you flip through them. Here are the bones. Label them. Here's a microscope slide. Identify the tissue. Here's a preserved specimen. Find the structure. Here's an experiment. Follow the directions.

All necessary stuff.

But when I first started teaching A&P, I kept noticing something missing from the lab manuals my students were using.

The student.

Not literally, of course. What I mean is that the directions often seemed to assume that students already knew how to be in an A&P lab. They knew how to find their place in a long procedure. They knew what a stained tissue ought to look like. They knew what to do when the thing they were looking for was nearly invisible. They knew how to handle a specimen without destroying the very structure they were trying to find.

My students didn't know all that. Why would they?

That's one reason I eventually created my own lab manual. And it remains one of the guiding ideas behind the new 12th edition of Anatomy & Physiology Laboratory Manual and E-Labs.

Start before you begin

Every lab exercise begins with a Before You Begin section. That sounds almost ridiculously obvious. Before you begin...you begin with Before You Begin.

But there’s a point to it.

Students get a quick look at the learning goals, materials, equipment, safety concerns, and any hints or preparation that will make the exercise go more smoothly. Instead of walking into an activity cold and trying to figure out the plan while they're already doing it, they get a chance to orient themselves first.

That's how professionals approach laboratory work. Know what you're trying to accomplish, know what you'll need, anticipate the hazards, then begin. It's also how anxious beginners become less anxious beginners.

Where was I?

Another simple feature came directly from watching students work. Each activity is broken into a sequence of steps or sections marked with checkboxes, and students check off each item as they complete it.

Why?

Because A&P labs are distracting. In a good way.

A student becomes fascinated by a specimen, gets involved in a discussion with lab partners, spends several minutes figuring out a model, then glances back at the manual and thinks:

Where was I?

I have that problem, too.

A checkbox gives the eye an immediate landmark. The student doesn't have to reread several paragraphs to reconstruct where they left off, interrupting the cognitive flow of whatever they were learning. It's a small bit of instructional design, but sometimes small things remove surprisingly annoying barriers.

And here's a secret, hidden function of these checkboxes. You are roaming the lab, checking in with each lab group. Look at their open lab manuals. Instead of asking, "what are you working on now?" you can simply see where their checkmarks stop. "Oh, I see you are investigating the ventricles of the sheep heart. If there are no checkmarks, or they're all still midway through the Before You Begin section, and it's halfway through the scheduled lab time, you'll know they've either gotten distracted or found a stumbling block. Or maybe they simply forgot to check the boxes. In any case, it's a handy diagnostic tool for helping students get on track and make progress in the lab.

And please don't make hamburger

The same student perspective shows up in our Hint boxes and throughout the directions.

When students first learn dissection, for example, they need more than the names of structures and a command to expose them. They need the little bits of advice an experienced instructor gives while circulating around the room. Where should I cut? What should I move? What might I accidentally destroy? What exactly am I looking for?

And, as I've told more than one student over the years, we're looking for structures, not trying to make hamburger.

The same principle applies to microscopy. We remind students what colors they're likely to see, what structures may be hard to distinguish, and even what may be invisible but can be inferred from the stained structures surrounding it. Those little hints aren't extra trivia. They're part of learning how to work in a laboratory.

Something new: Venn diagrams

One of my favorite additions to the 12th edition comes from my coauthor Terry Thompson.

Terry has used Venn-diagram activities successfully in her own laboratory courses for years, and we've now incorporated eight of them into selected exercises in the new manual. The publisher even calls them out as the major new feature of this edition.

Each activity starts with three overlapping circles already labeled with important A&P concepts. Students are given related subtopics or characteristics and must decide where each belongs. Does this characteristic belong only here? Does it apply to two categories? All three? None?

That little decision matters.

The student isn't merely recalling a definition. They have to compare, discriminate, and identify relationships. They're actively organizing the pieces into a conceptual framework. And once they're finished, the completed Venn diagram leaves behind a visual map of those relationships.

That's a very different task from memorizing a list.

Yes, we still color

We've also expanded the coloring activities. The tissue exercises now have additional coloring pages so the tissues discussed have corresponding images and locations. We added coloring material for the endocrine glands, too.

I'm a longtime believer in anatomy coloring—not because coloring is magical, but because a well-designed coloring activity makes students slow down and look.

Our approach deliberately connects the terminology to the structure. A student chooses a color, traces the letters of the structure's name with that color, then uses the same color on the structure itself. Name, structure, and location become part of the same little activity.

That repeated coordination encourages attention to exactly what is being identified rather than simply filling areas with pretty colors. And yes, coloring can be pleasant and calming, too. That's hardly a bad characteristic for something associated with an A&P lab.

There's now a little research to support that part of the idea, although I don't want to oversell the evidence. A small randomized pilot study of first-year medical students found no significant advantage in anatomical knowledge retention for coloring compared with studying an annotated diagram. But the students doing the coloring reported significantly less anxiety afterward, and most felt that the activity helped them consolidate their knowledge.

A newer histology study also found that learners valued coloring as an engaging, multimodal strategy, along with labeled diagrams, repetition, and guided prompts. That study was based largely on learner perceptions rather than an experimental demonstration of better test performance, so again—no magic crayons here.

That's really what we've always intended coloring to be. Not busywork. Not an adult coloring book slipped into A&P.

Another way to spend intentional time with the anatomy.

Dissection is changing, too

Of course, what happens in an A&P laboratory has changed since I first began writing lab exercises. Some courses still do extensive animal dissection. Some do less. Some have moved partly or entirely to virtual anatomy resources.

So we've been trying to make the manual work across those environments.

For the 12th edition, we revised parts of the cat and fetal pig dissection directions so they can still guide students who may be exploring the anatomy with a virtual 3D product rather than performing the physical dissection. We didn't remove the real dissection experience. The manual still provides step-by-step guidance for fresh or preserved specimens, anatomical models, and other hands-on work. The current edition contains 55 laboratory exercises and about 250 illustrations, including specimen photographs, histology images, bones, and procedural images.

But the instructions shouldn't become useless simply because an instructor teaches the material another way.

We also updated the rat dissection directions and added an image intended to help students see the serous membranes firsthand. That's an example of something laboratory work can do especially well: turn an abstraction from the textbook into something suddenly visible in three dimensions.

And then there are the eLabs

The digital side of the manual includes eight eLabs that simulate laboratory experiences in an interactive environment. They cover topics including microscopy, histology, skeletal muscle contraction, cardiovascular physiology, pulmonary volumes and capacities, digestion, blood typing, and urinalysis.

For the 12th edition, we wanted those resources to be harder to overlook. So in ten laboratory exercises where an eLab applies, we've added a clearly defined eLab box with a new logo and the specific activity students should look for.

That's partly because students don't always use a resource simply because it exists online somewhere.

Imagine that.

Sometimes we have to tell them:

Hey. There's something useful over here. Try it.

We've also developed instructor guidance for integrating the eLabs into different teaching approaches. They can supplement physical lab work, help prepare students before class, reinforce the experience afterward, or provide an alternative when circumstances make an in-person activity impractical.

They aren't intended to dictate one model of laboratory teaching. They're another tool.

We didn't forget the instructor

A manual designed around the student's experience can also make an instructor's life easier. That's especially important in A&P labs, where an instructor may be teaching the course for the first time—or teaching a laboratory activity they haven't personally done in years.

Even veterans sometimes have to stop and think: Now what concentration of that stain do I need?

The Instructor's Guide provides exercise-specific advice, setup information, materials lists, and other practical help. Those materials lists are useful for the immediate setup of a lab session, but they're also handy months earlier when someone is planning supply orders, budgets, equipment, or scheduling.

Good laboratory teaching involves a surprising amount of logistics. Anything that prevents the instructor from reinventing the wheel at 7:30 on Monday morning is fine with me.

Even the paper matters

Here's something I probably wouldn't have thought to mention if one of my coauthors hadn't pointed it out.

She likes the paper.

Really.

The print edition has a nonglossy feel that works well with colored pencils and fine-tip pens. She actually pulled out her colored pencils and tried it. No bothersome smearing. No ink bleeding through in her test.

The page size gives students enough room to work, and the spiral binding keeps the manual open on the laboratory bench—the sort of mundane detail that becomes considerably less mundane when both of your hands are occupied.

I like that observation because it gets back to the main point. A laboratory manual is a working tool. Students are supposed to write in it, color it, check boxes, draw things, carry it around the lab, lay it next to a microscope, and refer to it while they're doing something else.

The physical design ought to understand that.

It doesn't have to marry our textbook

Naturally, the manual works especially well alongside Anatomy & Physiology, 12th Edition. But it isn't dependent on it.

The laboratory manual can be adopted separately in print or digital form, packaged with Anatomy & Physiology, or used alongside a completely different A&P textbook.

That's intentional. A&P laboratory courses vary enormously, and the lab manual has to be flexible enough to live in that world.

Try looking through it like a student

If you're considering a new laboratory manual, I have a suggestion.

Don't just compare tables of contents or count the number of exercises. Open the manual to the lab you're teaching this week, then look at it as if you've never done that laboratory exercise before.

Could you tell where to begin? Would you know what equipment you need? Would the sequence make sense? Could you find your place again after you've been distracted for five minutes by a particularly interesting model? Does it tell you the little things an experienced instructor knows—but a beginning A&P student doesn't?

Then try another lab next week. And another.

Maybe even hand the manual to a few students and ask them what they notice.

Because that's how this laboratory manual began in the first place—by trying to see the A&P lab from their side of the bench.

And we're still doing that.

Click the link to receive a complimentary examination copy so you can explore the new 12th edition of Anatomy & Physiology Laboratory Manual and E-Labs.

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Nothing Is “Normal”? Expect Variation

2026-10-12T14:00:00.000-05:00

Why we keep rethinking human variation, representation, and the language of A&P

What does a normal human body look like?

Uh-oh.

That question gets complicated pretty quickly. Is “normal” what is most common? What is average? What falls within some expected range? What is healthy? What looks like the illustration in an anatomy textbook?

Those aren't necessarily the same thing. And that matters when we're telling students the story of the human body.

Variation isn't an exception to the story

Back in 2021, I wrote about our long-running effort toward Diverse Representation in Anatomy & Physiology.

That work goes back several editions, but it kicked into much higher gear during the revision of the 10th and 11th editions. We looked hard at who appeared in our photos and illustrations, whose bodies were represented in our examples, and how our language described the varied humans our students will eventually encounter in healthcare, fitness, wellness, and other professions.

Then we kept going in the 12th edition. Because variation isn't an exception to human anatomy and physiology. Variation is human anatomy and physiology.

I've been thinking aloud about this for years. In The A&P Professor (TAPP) Episode 43, Anatomic Variations in Humans, I wondered whether “normal” anatomy is partly a useful—or maybe even mythical—construct. We need some representative model when we begin teaching anatomy. But no actual human being perfectly matches every feature of that model. The A&P Professor

Age and development change us. Genes vary. Embryological events vary. Hormones vary. Nutrition, activity, environment, injury, disease, and lived experience all contribute to what our bodies look like and how they function. Even genetically identical twins develop differences.

So perhaps the real story of human anatomy is not uniformity.

It's unity with variation.

Then there's that word: “normal”

During the 11th-edition revision, the Patton Team did something rather tedious.

We reconsidered every instance of the words normal and abnormal.

I later shared that project during the 2023 HAPS Annual Conference workshop Editing A&P Textbooks Through a DEI Lens: Authors' Perspectives.

Why fuss over two perfectly ordinary words? Because when we stopped and asked what we meant by normal, we often discovered that we meant something more precise: typical, average, expected, within a reference range, or perhaps simply healthy.

Those aren't synonyms.

Research examining the concept of normality in medicine makes essentially the same point. Normal can refer to statistical typicality, health, desirable function, an ideal, or other concepts depending on context. Mixing those meanings can create confusion.

And abnormal can be even trickier. Being statistically unusual doesn't necessarily mean unhealthy. Being outside an average doesn't necessarily mean pathological.

Yet normal and abnormal carry everyday meanings that can quietly slide from common versus uncommon into good versus bad—or even acceptable versus unacceptable.

Usually, that's not what we're trying to say in an A&P textbook.

So we counted them

Here's what happened when we deliberately reconsidered those terms.

Edition	“Normal”	“Abnormal”	Combined
10th	743	341	1,084
11th	91	68	159
12th	82	54	136

Most of that dramatic shift occurred during the 11th-edition revision. But we didn't declare victory and move on.

The 12th edition gave us another opportunity to make a careful second pass—not only at normal and abnormal, but at many other words, images, examples, and explanations related to human variation.

That graph makes the change rather hard to miss.

And then something interesting happened

Here's a bit of evidence we didn't have when we began this work.

In 2026, researchers published a study specifically examining how anatomical variation is described in anatomy textbooks. They found that abnormal was used more often than more neutral descriptors, including in some contexts involving common or asymptomatic variations. Their recommendation was to teach anatomical variation explicitly and use neutral, prevalence-aware terminology rather than automatically framing variation as defective or pathological.

Well.

That sounds familiar.

I don't mean that as “See? We were right!” Science and teaching are rarely that tidy. But I do find it reassuring that an independent analysis published after much of our revision work identifies essentially the same problem we had already been wrestling with.

This wasn't a search-and-destroy mission

We didn't ban the words normal and abnormal. Sometimes one of them really is the clearest word.

The point was to stop using either one automatically.

If we mean average, say average. If we mean typical, say typical. If we mean disease, say disease. And if we mean outside the expected reference range, perhaps that's what we should say.

A nice example occurs in our homeostasis chapter. For the 12th edition, a figure label changed from setpoint value to setpoint range, and an area previously labeled abnormal became disease. We also added explicit arrows representing physiological fluctuation.

That's more than swapping one fashionable word for another.

It's more accurate physiology.

“Typical” doesn't mean everybody

We use typical fairly often now when we need a representative starting point.

That distinction matters. A textbook has to teach general patterns. We can't introduce every possible variation every time we introduce a structure, so we may begin with the typical structure of something.

But typical isn't meant to imply the only proper version.

In Chapter 1, for example, we clarified the continuum of variation among sex characteristics and added explicit discussion that even twins exhibit anatomical variation.

That reflects something I discussed in TAPP Episode 43: teaching often has to begin somewhere near the middle of a spectrum. Then we help students discover the variation around that starting point.

The representative model is the beginning of the story—not the boundary of reality.

What students see matters, too

Words were only part of this project. We also continued revising the visual story.

The 12th-edition revision notes describe this as an ongoing effort to replace some classic illustrations with a broader spectrum of variation among human subjects. That helps more students see themselves represented, but it also prepares future health professionals to encounter more of the variation they'll see in real people.

That effort shows up throughout the book. Muscle figures were revised to show more varied skin colors and additional examples of human variation. Elsewhere, figures were revised for varied skin tone, hair color and style, and even a subject with a leg prosthesis.

We've updated cases, names, and other details, too. Individually, those changes may seem small. Taken together, they change the population students encounter as they move through the book.

In short, we kept asking not only What do we say? but also What do students see?

Both matter.

Anatomy education still has some catching up to do

There's growing evidence that this is not a trivial concern.

A 2026 analysis of contemporary anatomical education resources found continuing imbalances in sex and skin-tone representation across major anatomy textbooks and digital resources. The study wasn't an analysis of undergraduate A&P survey texts, so I don't want to stretch its findings beyond what it examined. But it reinforces the larger point: the anatomical bodies students repeatedly see help establish their mental picture of what a human body looks like.

And illustrations aren't merely decoration. They're part of the teaching.

If nearly every body a student sees looks essentially the same, that's a lesson.

Maybe not the lesson we intended—but still a lesson.

Why does this matter?

There's an inclusion argument, of course. I've made it before.

Students should be able to see themselves as belonging in the population we're studying and in the health professions they're preparing to enter. That's one reason I discussed reflecting diversity and using inclusive language in TAPP Episode 108, The Inclusive Anatomy & Physiology Course.

But there's also a straightforward A&P argument.

We are supposed to be teaching students about human bodies.

Actual human bodies vary.

Students preparing for health professions need to know that. A healthcare professional who has unconsciously learned that one idealized body represents “normal anatomy” and everything else is a deviation from it has learned an incomplete version of anatomy.

So has an athletic trainer. So has a fitness professional. So has anyone whose work involves understanding real human structure and function.

What does “normal” mean, anyway?

I wrestled with that question directly in TAPP Episode 101, Even MORE Test Answers | Normal Body Temperature?.

Body temperature makes a great example. Even something as familiar as “normal body temperature” varies among people, across the day, with measurement site, under different physiological circumstances, and across populations and historical periods.

A mean can still be useful. A reference range can still be useful. A representative pattern can still be useful.

We don't have to abandon any of those.

We just have to remember what they are: models of reality, not definitions of who counts as a proper human being.

Another pass. And then another.

One thing I've learned from this process is that inclusive and accurate representation isn't a box we can check.

DONE!

Nope.

Language changes. Science changes. Our awareness changes. Sometimes we discover that wording we thought was perfectly clear carries an implication we never intended. Sometimes new research reveals variation we weren't even aware of. And sometimes somebody simply points out something we've been staring at for years without seeing it.

That's why the major push in the 11th edition wasn't the end of this effort. We made another rigorous pass in the 12th edition. The official revision notes explicitly describe bias-aware language and varied representation as continuing, research-informed processes rather than finished projects.

And I'm sure there will be more to fix.

There always is.

Expect variation

A&P works because human bodies share remarkable patterns.

That's the unity part.

But those patterns occur across an equally remarkable range of individual differences.

That's the variation part.

Students need both.

So perhaps the most useful lesson isn't that this structure, measurement, or body is normal.

Maybe it's this:

Here's the pattern. Here's the range.

And expect variation.

If you don't have your own copy to review, please request a free instructor review copy of the new 12th Edition of Anatomy & Physiology.

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Lost in the Chapter? Why A&P Students Get Two Outlines

2026-10-05T14:00:00.000-05:00

How chapter outlines and summaries help A&P students build a conceptual framework

Learning anatomy and physiology isn't simply a matter of collecting facts. Somehow, students have to organize all those facts into a coherent structure.

That's a big somehow.

Learning researchers sometimes describe this process as structure building—constructing a mental representation that connects incoming information into an organized whole. Some readers are better at doing that on their own. Others have more difficulty figuring out which ideas are foundational, how the pieces fit together, and which details belong where.

That seems especially important in A&P. We're asking beginning students to make sense of an enormous number of unfamiliar structures, processes, relationships, and terms—often all at once.

A textbook can either help them build that structure or make them figure it out entirely on their own.

I'd rather help.

Structure isn't just decoration

There's some interesting evidence behind this idea.

Research with college students has found that differences in structure-building skill are associated with differences in remembering facts, making inferences, solving problems, and learning from complex educational text.

Even more interesting, a 2025 study manipulated the coherence of a textbook chapter by removing structural signals—including topic headings, boldface terms, and take-home boxes. Readers with stronger structure-building skills managed pretty well either way. Readers with lower structure-building skills did significantly worse when those signals were removed.

In other words, some students can build the map themselves.

Others benefit when we put up some road signs.

Research on headings points in the same direction. Headings can help readers identify a text's topic structure, remember how ideas are organized, and comprehend what they're reading.

This is one reason we've put so much thought into the structure of each chapter of Anatomy & Physiology.

Two—count 'em, TWO—chapter outlines

Each chapter actually has two outlines.

That may sound like overkill.

It's not.

At the beginning of every chapter is a very brief Chapter Outline. Very brief. It's essentially an indented list of the first- and second-level section headings that the reader is about to encounter.

An embedded Hint encourages students to skim this outline before beginning the chapter. I've written before about why we include these embedded reading hints throughout the book.

Think of that first Chapter Outline as a conceptual blueprint.

Or maybe it's like looking at the acts and scenes listed in a play's program before the curtain goes up. You don't know the story yet, but you have some idea where it's headed.

You know the major locations.

You know when the story is moving from one part to another.

And you have a framework ready when the details start arriving.

Then we tell the story

As readers move through the chapter, they encounter those same section headings again.

That's intentional.

The headings aren't simply labels breaking up gray blocks of text. They remind the reader, Oh yeah. This is where I am in the story.

That may seem pretty ordinary to those of us who are experienced textbook readers. We automatically look at headings. We recognize hierarchies. We anticipate where the discussion is going. We know that a new heading means we're shifting to another branch of the conceptual tree.

Beginning students may not do any of that automatically.

In fact, recent research on headings found that they can support not only comprehension, but also students' ability to judge how well they understand what they've read.

That's a nice bonus. Knowing that you don't understand something yet is a pretty important step toward learning it.

Then we tell them what we told them

At the end of each chapter comes the second outline—the Chapter Summary.

This one is much more robust.

It follows the same basic structure students first saw in the opening Chapter Outline and then encountered in the headings throughout the chapter. But now the outline is filled in with the important concepts and relationships from the chapter.

It's the story again—this time compressed.

As I write this, I'm reminded of something my instructor told us in my first college writing course:

Tell them what you're going to tell them, tell them, then tell them what you told them.

It's good advice for expository writing.

Turns out, it's not a bad strategy for helping students learn A&P, either.

The opening Chapter Outline tells readers where they're going.

The headings keep reminding them where they are.

The Chapter Summary lets them look back at where they've been—and see how the pieces fit together

An outline isn't magic

I don't want to oversell this.

Simply putting an outline in front of a student doesn't magically build a coherent mental model.

One study examining outlines during learning found that skeletal outlines improved recall for students with lower structure-building ability, but didn't by themselves improve deeper explanatory understanding.

That's important.

It's also why I like the combination of learning aids in our chapters.

There isn't just a Chapter Outline. There are section headings, illustrations, tables, Quick CHECK questions, Hints, Big Picture connections, and then the Chapter Summary.

Research on embedded questions is especially interesting here. In a study using a textbook chapter, embedded questions improved performance among readers with lower structure-building ability and helped them form more coherent representations of what they had read.

We've long used those kinds of cues throughout our chapters.

The goal isn't to do the thinking for students.

It's to give them enough structure that they can do the thinking themselves.

Terry took a fresh look at every chapter

Of course, outlines evolve along with chapters.

As we revised chapters over successive editions, we tweaked their summaries to keep them aligned with the changing narrative. Perfectly reasonable.

But after enough rounds of tweaking, little inconsistencies and awkward spots can accumulate.

For the 12th edition of Anatomy & Physiology, Terry Thompson took the lead in reviewing and revising the Chapter Summary outlines across the entire book.

Rather than simply patching individual outlines, Terry looked carefully at their clarity, conciseness, style, and flow.

The result is a more consistent set of Chapter Summaries across the book. They're also somewhat shorter. That helped us make room for updated content while contributing to our larger effort to make this edition shorter overall.

Our revision notes describe the goal pretty well: the summaries were streamlined to make them more useful for PREVIEW and REVIEW.

Preview and review.

Which brings me to something I think we sometimes forget.

The Chapter Summary isn't only for the end

Students can use the detailed Chapter Summary before reading the chapter.

Really.

For a reader who tends to get lost in dense scientific material, previewing that expanded outline can reveal the conceptual structure before the details start flying.

Then the student reads the chapter with somewhere to put those details.

And afterward, the same outline becomes a review tool.

That's also why I've long encouraged students to look over a chapter before they read it—skim the headings, notice the major terms, and look at the illustrations before diving into the narrative.

It's a simple textbook-reading strategy, but students may never think to do it unless somebody tells them.

But don't stop at rereading the summary

There's another step I'd add.

The Chapter Summary works best when it becomes a tool for active review rather than something students simply reread over and over.

Retrieval practice has one of the strongest evidence bases in learning science. Trying to recall information strengthens later learning better than simply restudying it.

So I encourage students to use the summary as a check on their own mental framework.

Look at a heading and try to explain what's underneath it before reading the summary points.

Cover part of the outline and reconstruct it from memory.

Turn a summary point into a question.

Sketch the relationships as a concept map.

Then look back and see what you missed.

Now the Chapter Summary isn't merely summarizing.

It's helping the student build—and test—the structure in their own mind.

I've been harping on retrieval practice and concept mapping for years for exactly this reason.

Tell students why it's there

There's one more ingredient that I think matters.

Transparency.

I've made the case elsewhere that students do better when we stop hiding how a course—or a learning tool—is supposed to work.

We shouldn't assume that students know what to do with a Chapter Outline just because we've put one there.

Tell them.

"Before you read, take a minute and look through this outline. You're building a mental framework for what comes next. As you read, notice how the section headings match that framework. When you finish, use the Chapter Summary to see whether the structure you built matches the structure of the chapter."

That's not remedial advice.

That's teaching students how to learn from a science textbook.

In fact, in Six More Textbook Tricks, I made the case that we faculty rarely talk explicitly with our students about how to use a textbook effectively. We probably should.

A map through a complicated story

A&P is complicated.

There's no getting around that.

But complicated doesn't have to mean disorganized.

A brief outline before the story, clear structural signals along the way, and a fuller outline afterward give readers repeated opportunities to see how the pieces fit.

For some students, those cues may reinforce a framework they would have built anyway.

For others, they may be the difference between seeing a coherent story and seeing a giant pile of anatomy and physiology facts.

Either way, I think it's worth giving them the map.

If you'd like to check out this chapter format yourself, request a free instructor review copy of the new 12th Edition of Anatomy & Physiology.

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Fascia: Following the Connections

2026-09-28T14:00:00.000-05:00

Why this body-wide story keeps growing in Anatomy & Physiology

Fascia is having a moment.

Actually, it's been having a pretty long moment.

Research into fascia has expanded greatly in recent decades, along with interest among anatomists, physiologists, physical therapists, massage therapists, movement specialists, pain researchers, surgeons, and others.

What was once too easily dismissed as the stuff you cut through—or remove—to get to the "real" anatomy is increasingly being studied as an important participant in the structure and function of the body.

Which means fascia deserves appropriate attention in an undergraduate A&P course.

We've thought that for quite a while.

Base image: Henry Vandyke Carter - Henry Gray (1918) Anatomy of the Human Body. Bartleby.com: Gray's Anatomy, Plate 384, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=561537

We've been going deep with fascia

Deep. Get it?

Okay, moving on.

Our coverage of fascia in Anatomy & Physiology didn't suddenly appear in the 12th edition. We've been giving fascia significant attention since the early 1990s, and nearly every edition since then has reflected our expanding understanding of what fascia is and what it does.

Even then, we were asking students to think beyond individual muscles and isolated structures. We pointed out structural and functional relationships among the cytoskeleton inside cells, the extracellular matrix outside cells, and the myofascial structures of the body.

In other words, the little pieces fit into bigger pieces—and those bigger pieces remain connected.

By the 2010 edition, released in 2009, we had also incorporated Thomas Myers's Anatomy Trains concept. Myers developed this model during the 1990s as a way of teaching "connected anatomy." It proposes that muscles and fascia form myofascial continuities, or functional "trains," that can help us think about whole-body posture and movement.

Later anatomical research has found support for several of the proposed myofascial continuities, although not all of them. Their functional significance and the amount of force that may be transmitted along them remain active areas of investigation.

That's an important distinction.

We don't include an interesting model because it settles the science. We include it when it can help students think about the science—including the parts we're still figuring out.

Wait. Is there really a "fascial system"?

You'll notice that in the new edition we sometimes use the term fascial system.

Not everyone likes that term.

And I don't mean that somebody complained about it on social media. There's a genuine scientific and anatomical terminology debate going on.

The Fascia Nomenclature Committee of the Fascia Research Society developed two related definitions. A fascia refers more narrowly to a dissectible sheet, sheath, or aggregation of connective tissue. The fascial system is a broader concept describing a three-dimensional continuum of collagen-containing connective tissues that permeates the body. The broader term is particularly useful when considering the functional relationships among these tissues rather than viewing each named fascia in isolation.

Some researchers want to go further. A 2025 paper in the Journal of Anatomy formally proposed that fasciae and their interstitial components constitute an anatomical system—a body-wide, multiscale network with superficial, musculoskeletal, visceral, and neural components.

Case closed?

Of course not.

A 2026 paper in Clinical Anatomy argues specifically that fascia should not be classified as an anatomical system, particularly within the framework of bormal international anatomical terminology.

So why did we use fascial system in the textbook?

Because we find it to be a useful functional and teaching concept.

We're not announcing the discovery of an additional organ system or claiming that fascial system has become universally accepted anatomical terminology. We're using a term found in the scientific literature that helps students recognize something important: these connective tissues have extensive relationships throughout the body, and many of those relationships make more sense when we don't consider each bit of fascia in isolation.

As the science and the terminology evolve, our usage may evolve, too.

That's what textbooks are supposed to do.

Why should A&P students care?

Because our understanding of fascia has moved far beyond its old reputation as passive wrapping material.

Research is investigating fascia's roles in mechanical force transmission, movement, proprioception, nociception, tissue remodeling, fluid relationships, and pathological processes.

Consider innervation. A systematic review found that fasciae are well innervated, with different types and densities of nerve endings in different fascial tissues. Those include proprioceptive and nociceptive endings, with some evidence of increased innervation in pathological fascia.

That's pretty important information for somebody learning how the body senses itself, moves, and experiences pain.

It's increasingly important clinically, too.

Students heading into physical therapy, massage therapy, athletic training, rehabilitation, sports medicine, and other health professions are likely to encounter fascia again. Some forms of manual therapy and rehabilitation explicitly target fascial tissues or use fascial models to help explain assessment and treatment.

That doesn't mean every proposed fascial mechanism—or every treatment marketed as "fascial"—has been established.

Far from it.

The evidence varies, and research continues.

To me, that's another argument for teaching the basic science appropriately.

Our students need enough anatomy and physiology to understand—and eventually evaluate—the clinical claims they'll encounter.

Fascia is becoming an A&P teaching issue, too

This isn't only a conversation among fascia researchers and clinicians.

It's increasingly a conversation among anatomy and physiology educators.

Rebecca Pratt made an especially useful argument about this several years ago. How do we squeeze an increasingly complex understanding of fascia into an already packed health-sciences curriculum?

Her answer was essentially: put it where it belongs. Everywhere.

Because fascia itself is found throughout the body, Pratt argued that it can be integrated throughout an existing curriculum rather than requiring another isolated block of material. Her article puts it nicely: fascia can fit anywhere in the curriculum because it is found everywhere.

That sounds awfully familiar.

More recently, my colleague and former student Dr. Kate Oland has become something of a fascia advocate among A&P teachers, encouraging us to give fascia the emphasis it deserves in our courses.

Kate Oland and me at a recent HAPS Conference in Pittsburgh PA.

Kate and I explored many of these ideas in Episode 152 of The A&P Professor podcast, Fascinating Fascia: Kate Oland Unravels the Ties That Bind. We talked about the traditional tendency to rip fascia out of the way during dissection, the increasingly connected view of fascia, clinical applications, and why fascia deserves more attention in undergraduate A&P.

Then, at the 2026 HAPS Annual Conference, fascia showed up prominently on the program.

Dr. Alan Detton presented an Update Seminar, Fascia, What Is It and Why Should I Care? HAPS described his presentation as addressing the meaning of the anatomical term fascia and its significance in A&P.

And Kate presented a workshop with a title that gets right to the issue: The Fascial System: A Missing Link in A&P Education.

Two fascia presentations at one HAPS conference?

I'd say the conversation has arrived.

Peggie keeps us connected

Which brings me back to the 12th edition of Anatomy & Physiology.

Author Peggie Williamson took the lead in implementing and coordinating much of our fascia-related work for this revision.

Peggie is our Patton Team fascia expert. Besides being an experienced A&P educator, she's a doctor of physical therapy who has worked directly with patients and now serves on the faculty of a Doctor of Physical Therapy program, helping prepare the next generation of physical therapists. Her clinical background includes myofascial release and other approaches to soft-tissue treatment.

That gives her a particularly valuable perspective for this topic. She understands what beginning A&P students need, but she also knows where those basic concepts may eventually lead in clinical education and practice.

So when Peggie tells the rest of us that we need to take another look at something involving fascia, we take another look.

More fascia in the 12th edition

What did that mean for this edition of Anatomy & Physiology?

In Chapter 9, Tissue Types, we added a completely new Connect It! article, Fascia: The Body's Not-So-Hidden Network.

I like that title because fascia really isn't hidden.

It's everywhere.

As anyone who has spent much time in a traditional dissection lab knows, however, fascia is often dissected away so that muscles, nerves, vessels, and organs can be seen more clearly.

That's understandable.

But it can also leave students with the unintended impression that fascia is something obscuring the anatomy rather than something that is part of the anatomy.

In Chapter 10, Skin, we've added an explicit connection between the hypodermis and the fascial system.

And in Chapter 15, Axial Muscles, we've added further explanation of fascia to an illustration, along with clarification of related connective-tissue structures.

Those may sound like relatively modest changes when they're listed one at a time.

But they're additions to fascia coverage that was already distributed through several parts of the book.

That's intentional.

Why isn't there a fascia chapter?

If fascia is increasingly important, why don't we simply put it all together in one chapter?

Maybe someday we will.

We've done that sort of thing before.

Over the long history of Anatomy & Physiology, topics that were once scattered through several chapters have sometimes developed enough—and become important enough—that we've brought them together into a more unified story. Homeostasis, stress, and the lymphatic system have all evolved substantially in our book over the years.

Most recently, we gathered much of our distributed coverage of the human microbiome into the new Chapter 49.

Could fascia eventually get similar treatment?

Maybe.

But fascia presents an interesting teaching problem.

Its connections to other structures are part of the story.

When students are learning connective tissues, fascia belongs there.

When they're learning about the hypodermis, fascia belongs there.

When they're studying skeletal muscles, muscle compartments, and movement, fascia belongs there.

And when we're asking students to connect what happens inside cells with the extracellular matrix outside them—and then follow those relationships into tissues and larger body structures—we're building another part of the same story.

That's why, at least for now, we think its reappearance at pivotal points is one of the clearest ways to teach fascia.

Besides, repeated encounters let students keep adding to their mental model.

They don't learn "fascia" once and put it away.

It keeps coming back.

Sort of like fascia.

Ahead of the curve?

I'd like to think we've been a bit ahead of the curve.

Not because we've somehow known in advance where fascia research would lead.

We haven't.

Some ideas about fascia have changed. Others remain unsettled. Some claims will undoubtedly be revised or discarded as the evidence improves.

What I think we got right fairly early was taking fascia seriously.

We didn't treat it simply as disposable packing material surrounding the structures that really matter. We emphasized relationships among cells, extracellular matrix, fascia, and muscle. We introduced students to body-wide myofascial relationships. And as the science expanded, we kept revisiting the story.

Now we're seeing researchers working toward broader models of fascia, clinicians applying fascial concepts in practice, and A&P educators asking whether fascia has been getting enough attention in our courses.

So we're not scrambling to insert an unfamiliar topic into the textbook.

We're continuing a story we've been telling—and revising—for decades.

One chapter someday?

Maybe fascia eventually deserves a chapter of its own.

Or maybe not.

There is something pedagogically satisfying about meeting fascia again and again as we work our way through tissues, skin, muscles, movement, and other parts of the A&P story.

After all, its repeated appearance is part of the point.

The structures and functions of the human body don't operate in isolation.

Fascia keeps reminding us of that.

And we'll keep watching the research—and listening to instructors, students, clinicians, and researchers—to see where this story takes us next.

What?! You don't have a free examination copy to review? Please request a free instructor review copy of the new 12th Edition of Anatomy & Physiology.

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What's Up with Eponyms in A&P? Part 3

2026-09-21T14:00:00.000-05:00

Keep them? Dump them? Or learn to live in the messy middle?

Way back in 2018, I discussed various issues with using eponyms—terms derived from a person's name—in Part 1 and Part 2 of this article series.

Among those issues are whether to use the possessive or nonpossessive form, when to capitalize the term, and some of the historical and social baggage that can come along with certain eponyms.

At the end of Part 2, I promised that Part 3 was "coming up in my next blog post."

That was in August 2018.

Apparently, next is a fairly elastic concept.

I wrote about half of this post back then, set it aside, and forgot about it. My recent post, Say It. Take It Apart. Learn It., describing our global terminology update for the 12th Edition of Anatomy & Physiology, reminded me that I never finished this part of the story.

So, eight years later, here we are.

This time I want to tackle what may be the hardest eponym question of all:

Which term should we actually teach?

When both an eponym and a descriptive term are in common use, which should be our primary term? Which one gets relegated to secondary status? And when should we simply stop mentioning the eponym at all?

Turns out, that's not an easy question.

Snippet from the Brief Atlas and Quick Guide to the Language of Science and Medicine that accompanies Anatomy & Physiology. If you cannot see the image click here.

It's not really a yes-or-no choice

As we prepared the 12th Edition of Anatomy & Physiology, the Patton Team revisited this issue.

Was this finally the edition in which we should ditch eponyms altogether?

Should we continue using them sparingly, as we had been doing?

Or had we moved too far, too fast, and ought to restore more of the familiar eponyms our students are likely to hear in clinical settings?

Another of our lively Patton Team discussions followed.

There was shouting. Punches were thrown.

Okay, no.

But people did have opinions.

We considered what would best help beginning A&P students, what terminology they're likely to encounter in later courses and healthcare careers, what's happening in academic anatomy, and what's actually happening in clinical practice.

And I think we all came to appreciate something that should have been obvious from the beginning:

This isn't a simple binary choice.

There are reasonable arguments at both ends of the keep-'em-or-dump-'em spectrum.

Recent discussions among professional anatomists haven't resolved that tension, either. A 2024 survey of editors of major anatomy journals found that respondents generally preferred Latin- and Greek-derived terminology when communicating with students and other anatomists, yet many also considered eponyms acceptable in publications and useful in discussing the history and ethics of anatomy.

In other words, even the terminology people are living in the messy middle.

That made us feel a little better.

Anatomy gives us a pretty good roadmap

For anatomical structures, our decision was relatively straightforward.

The International Federation of Associations of Anatomists (IFAA) maintains the FIPAT anatomical terminologies, including Terminologia Anatomica, Terminologia Histologica, Terminologia Embryologica, and Terminologia Neuroanatomica. These provide international standards for the anatomical sciences.

For more than a century, formal anatomical nomenclature has been moving away from eponyms as the official names of structures.

The current Terminologia Anatomica 2 takes a nuanced approach. Its official terms are standardized and noneponymous, but familiar eponyms and other unofficial names can still appear as related terms.

Sound familiar?

That's pretty close to where we landed.

For anatomical structures, our general rule is to use the descriptive term as the primary term. We'll mention a familiar eponym as a secondary alternative only when we think knowing it will genuinely help the student.

So pancreatic islets wins over Langerhans islets.

Uterine tube wins over fallopian tube.

We aren't pretending the older terms never existed. We're simply giving the descriptive term priority.

There are several advantages.

A descriptive term often tells a student something useful about the structure. Pancreatic islets at least tells me where to start looking for them. Islets of Langerhans tells me that somebody named Langerhans is involved in the story.

And yes, I still really enjoy saying islets of Langerhans.

But enjoyment isn't much of a pedagogical argument.

But won't our students hear the eponyms?

Absolutely.

That's one of the strongest arguments for continuing to mention at least some of them.

Clinical terminology changes slowly. Many healthcare professionals learned eponyms and have used them for decades. Some will continue using them regardless of what an international terminology committee recommends.

And accuracy in healthcare communication matters.

So students living through this transition need some degree of terminology bilingualism. They should know the preferred descriptive term, but they also need to recognize important older names when they encounter them.

That's different, though, from asking beginning students to memorize two names for everything.

We discussed that possibility, too.

Sure, knowing every traditional eponym alongside every descriptive term could be useful. Knowing Norwegian would be useful, too. Our students would be exceptionally well prepared to give their acceptance speeches when they win a Nobel Prize.

There's another eponym for you.

But an A&P course already asks beginning learners to master an enormous vocabulary. Adding a second name wherever a familiar eponym survives would increase an already enormous terminology load. That doesn't strike us as a good tradeoff—especially because the descriptive term is often more informative.

If a student later enters a setting where a particular eponym is still routinely used, learning one additional synonym is not an extraordinary burden.

We all do that constantly in ordinary language.

Meanwhile, we can model preferred descriptive terminology for students, help them understand why professional language changes, and perhaps help them learn how to appropriately advocate for clearer terminology in their future professional environments.

That's how languages evolve.

Some eponyms aren't ready to leave

Then there are eponyms for which we don't have a satisfactory, widely used replacement.

Golgi apparatus is an obvious example.

It's unquestionably an eponym. But what are we going to call it instead?

Dictyosome sometimes gets offered as an alternative, but that's not a clean substitution. Current biological terminology uses dictyosome as a synonym for a Golgi stack, which is a component of the larger Golgi apparatus.

So Golgi stays.

For now.

That's another reason a rigid "no eponyms" rule doesn't work very well in a real A&P textbook.

Terminology has to be usable.

Physiology makes everything messier

Once we move from anatomy into physiology, the eponym question gets considerably harder.

Unlike human anatomy, physiology does not appear to have a single internationally recognized, comprehensive terminology comparable to Terminologia Anatomica.

At least, we have not been able to identify one.

There are authoritative terminology and nomenclature systems for many of the sciences that feed into physiology. The International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry—IUPAC—maintains extensive international recommendations for chemical nomenclature and terminology.

For physical quantities and units, we have internationally standardized systems such as the International System of Units (SI).

And we use those authoritative resources when revising Anatomy & Physiology.

But none of them gives us a comprehensive answer to questions such as:

What should we call every physiological process?

Every physiological relationship?

Every effect, response, test, or clinical method that students encounter?

That's where things get dicier.

Consider the Bohr effect, named for physiologist Christian Bohr, for example. It's an eponym for a physiological relationship deeply embedded in the language of respiratory physiology.

Or consider the Apgar score, named for Virginia Apgar. That's an eponym for a clinical assessment our health professions students may encounter.

There's no comprehensive descriptive-terminology list we can consult that says, "Here is the approved replacement."

Sometimes the eponym simply is the term currently used by the scientific and clinical community.

Science itself is full of eponyms

And then there are the terms we borrow from chemistry and physics.

Try teaching introductory A&P without using volt, joule, hertz, or degree Celsius.

Those names commemorate Alessandro Volta, James Prescott Joule, Heinrich Hertz, and Anders Celsius.

They're eponyms.

They're also internationally standardized units.

In fact, the SI rules preserve that history in an interesting way. The spelled-out unit names volt, joule, and hertz are lowercase ordinary nouns, while their symbols V, J, and Hz are capitalized because the units were derived from personal names. Celsius retains its capital letter in degree Celsius because it remains a proper name.

So much for simply banning every term derived from a person's name.

Science is full of them.

So what did we decide?

After years of gradually reducing our reliance on eponyms—and another round of lively discussion for the 12th Edition—we arrived at a pretty simple working policy.

Avoid eponyms as primary terms whenever a well-established descriptive term is available.

Use eponyms sparingly as secondary terms when knowing them is likely to help students.

Accept that we're stuck with some eponyms until scientific and clinical terminology evolves.

Simple policy.

Messy implementation.

Because every individual term still requires judgment.

How well established is the descriptive alternative?

How widely is it currently used?

Will students encounter the eponym frequently enough that failing to mention it would put them at a disadvantage?

Is the descriptive alternative truly equivalent?

Does an authoritative terminology or nomenclature source weigh in?

And, sometimes, has the history attached to an eponym given us another good reason to move away from it?

Those decisions can require more digging than you might expect.

The language keeps moving

One thing I'm more certain about now than I was when I started writing this series in 2018 is that anatomical terminology isn't finished.

It never will be.

Even Terminologia Anatomica continues to evolve. There are active debates among anatomists about which terms should be official, which alternatives should be retained, how clinical terminology should be accommodated, and whether some attempts at standardization have gone too far—or not far enough.

A particularly interesting collection of recent discussions in Anatomical Science International shows just how lively these disagreements remain.

So we're not trying to freeze the language of A&P at some supposedly perfect moment.

We're trying to give beginning learners the terminology that will serve them best now, while preparing them to recognize that the language will continue changing throughout their careers.

That's why our choices in Anatomy & Physiology will keep changing, too.

And that's where you come in.

If you have thoughts about our approach to eponyms—or about a particular term you think we've gotten right, wrong, or somewhere in between—please let us know.

Authors and editors can research terminology.

But thousands of A&P instructors, students, scientists, and clinicians are a pretty good early-warning system for changing usage.

Language evolves.

We need watchers.

If you want to be a watcher for us, please request a free instructor review copy of the new 12th Edition of Anatomy & Physiology.

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Say It. Take It Apart. Learn It.

2026-09-14T14:30:00.000-05:00

How we rebuilt the terminology tools in Anatomy & Physiology, 12th Edition.

An A&P course is partly a language course.

Okay, it's a huge language course.

Our students encounter hundreds of unfamiliar terms, many of them long, difficult to pronounce, and constructed from word parts they've never seen before. And we're asking students to learn all that new language while simultaneously learning some pretty challenging concepts.

That's why Anatomy & Physiology has long provided terminology-learning tools that you may not find—or may not find in the same depth—in other A&P textbooks.

For our new 12th Edition, we decided those tools deserved a major tune-up.

And that's how Frank got himself into trouble.

A word list with a job

At the beginning of each chapter, we provide a chapter word list.

It's comprehensive. The list gathers all the boldface terms from the chapter narrative, along with an occasional italicized term when we think it's useful to include it.

That gives students one convenient place to preview the important language of the chapter.

But these aren't intended simply as "vocabulary words that might be on the test."

I've previously explained the idea in Word Lists Help Students Build Their Mental Lexicons.

One useful way to prepare for reading an A&P chapter is to scan its terminology before digging into the narrative. That gives the reader a chance to start becoming familiar with the words before trying to understand the concepts they represent.

Learning research gives us good reason to think about new vocabulary this way. Becoming familiar with a word involves developing connections among how the word is written, how it sounds, and what it means.

That's one reason I don't want students meeting carbaminohemoglobin cold in the middle of an already complicated explanation of blood-gas transport.

Give the poor student a fighting chance.

Say it

Our chapter word lists include a simple phonetic pronunciation guide for each term, along with an embedded hint instructing the reader how to use it.

The comprehensive Glossary does, too.

That lets students practice saying a term before encountering it within a sentence that's already asking them to understand some new anatomical or physiological idea.

Yes, I actually encourage students to say the terms aloud.

I've been beating that drum for years—in Word Lists Help Students Build Their Mental Lexicons, in The A&P Professor podcast Episode 20, Reading A&P Terms Out Loud Helps Reading Comprehension, and again in Episode 145, A Tongue Twister's Guide to Mastering Anatomy Pronunciation.

There is learning science behind my nagging.

Research on what's called the production effect has repeatedly found that saying words aloud can improve later memory for them compared with simply reading them silently. One leading explanation is that producing the word makes its memory more distinctive.

Does that mean saying carbaminohemoglobin three times will suddenly make you understand blood-gas transport?

Nope.

But the term can begin to "sound right" in the learner's mental lexicon. When it later appears in a sentence, the reader has one less completely unfamiliar thing to wrestle with while trying to understand the actual A&P.

That can be especially helpful for readers who aren't yet very comfortable predicting the pronunciation of unfamiliar English words.

Which, when you think about English pronunciation, could be just about anybody.

Why not put the pronunciation right in the sentence?

Some textbooks put pronunciation guides immediately after a term the first time it appears in the narrative.

There's an obvious advantage to that: the pronunciation is sitting right there when the reader needs it.

But we chose a different approach.

A beginning A&P learner is already trying to hold unfamiliar structures, processes, relationships, and vocabulary in mind while making sense of a sentence. Dropping a phonetic pronunciation guide into the middle adds another piece to process—and interrupts the flow of an explanation that may already be challenging.

We'd rather give students the pronunciation before they read.

And if they need it again, it's waiting in the chapter word list or Glossary.

I should be clear that I don't know of research directly comparing our approach with inline pronunciation guides in A&P textbooks. That's our application of what we know about reading, vocabulary learning, memory, cognitive load, and our experience watching beginning A&P students wrestle with unfamiliar terminology.

Take it apart

Pronunciation is only part of the job.

Most A&P instructors I know are constantly taking terms apart for their students.

Hyper- means above.

Hypo- means below.

Cardi- refers to the heart.

-itis means inflammation.

We do this almost without thinking.

Why?

Because once students start recognizing commonly used roots, prefixes, and suffixes, an intimidating scientific term becomes a lot less intimidating.

Our chapter word lists support that approach by showing useful word parts and their basic translations. Students can skim them while previewing a chapter.

Our Glossary provides those same kinds of clues when students look up terms later.

I've discussed this strategy before in Word Parts Help Students Master the Language of Science and Handy Supplement Helps Students Master the Lingo of A&P.

Word parts can act as little mnemonic clues. They may help students remember the spelling and meaning of a term.

More importantly, each familiar word part becomes another tool students can carry forward. When they encounter a term they've never seen before, they can often begin taking it apart and making an educated guess about what it means.

That's a skill they'll keep using in later courses and eventually in clinical settings.

And isn't that exactly what we A&P professors already do?

We point out word parts during lectures and discussions. We explain them in handouts and assignments. We keep reminding students that this bit means one thing and that bit means another.

The difference is that our chapter word lists give students a complete, consistent resource that's always handy.

Research on morphological learning—learning to recognize and use meaningful word parts—supports its usefulness in building vocabulary. A 2023 study with college learners, for example, found that explicit morphological training improved receptive academic vocabulary learning. The National Library of Medicine likewise teaches medical terminology by having learners identify prefixes, roots, suffixes, and other components and use them to work out meanings of unfamiliar medical terms.

Anatomy-specific research has also found benefits from explicitly teaching Latin and Greek etymologies alongside anatomical terminology

No, learning a pile of Greek and Latin roots isn't a magic shortcut to mastering A&P. Research with undergraduate A&P students has found only a weak relationship between their existing knowledge of Greek and Latin roots and overall course performance.

That's fine.

We're not trying to turn the chapter word lists into a Latin course.

We're giving students another tool for figuring things out.

Names change, too

Another part of our terminology cleanup involved continuing a transition we've been making for years: moving farther away from eponyms as our preferred anatomical terms.

An eponym names something after a person. Islets of Langerhans, haversian canal, and fallopian tube are familiar examples.

Eponyms remain deeply embedded in clinical language, and our students are going to encounter many of them. So we don't pretend they don't exist.

But international efforts to standardize anatomical terminology have long favored standardized descriptive terminology rather than eponyms as the preferred names for structures. Clinical usage has not always moved at the same speed.

So our general approach is practical: teach students the currently preferred descriptive terminology while helping them recognize important alternate terms they'll still hear and read elsewhere.

I've written about some of this before in What's Up with Eponyms in A&P? Part 1 and What's Up with Eponyms in A&P? Part 2.

And yes, at the end of Part 2 I promised a Part 3.

In 2018.

I really ought to get back to that.

Especially because A&P faculty still have some pretty lively disagreements over what we should do with eponyms. We had a few of those discussions within the Patton Team, too.

Or what passes for lively disagreement among us.

More about that another time.

Then Frank got the job

All of this sounds fairly straightforward until you realize how many terms we're talking about.

And how many pieces each entry has.

Which term should be preferred?

Which alternate terms should remain?

Is the pronunciation accurate?

Is it consistent with similar terms elsewhere in the book?

Are the syllables and word parts divided appropriately?

Are their translations useful to a beginning learner?

Does the formatting make the entry easier to understand?

Now multiply that by an entire A&P textbook.

Then remember that our revision team included four authors, at least three editors, and a collection of reviewers, copyeditors, proofreaders, compositors, and others.

Having all of us independently "fix" terminology seemed like an excellent recipe for making it less consistent.

Clearly, we needed one person to wrangle the whole thing.

Author Frank Bell, our in-house terminology guru, seemed like the obvious choice.

I vaguely recall that Frank was absent from the weekly Patton Team meeting when his name came up as the perfect person for the job.

Pure coincidence, I'm sure.

When the news reached him, Frank didn't hesitate.

Much.

A global terminology cleanup

Frank took on a global review of the terminology resources for the entire book.

And it turned out to be a much bigger job than any of us anticipated.

Besides reviewing the terminology itself against current usage and authoritative sources, he went through the pronunciation guides, word parts, translations, and formatting.

Occasionally, Frank would come back to me with a question such as, "Why did you do it this way?"

That's always a fun question for an author who has been revising a textbook for decades.

Sometimes I could explain the original thinking.

Sometimes the answer was probably some variation of, "Well, I'm sure there was a reason."

With that background, Frank could decide whether the original approach still made sense—or whether he had found a better one.

Once Frank completed his review, the other authors incorporated his terminology changes throughout the chapters and other elements being revised.

Then editors checked us.

Then copyeditors checked us.

Then proofreaders checked us.

And, as always, despite all that checking, I'm sure somebody will eventually find something we missed. That's what happens in a project containing thousands upon thousands of tiny details.

But this is by far the most systematic and consistent terminology review we've ever done.

And there's the Glossary

As I mentioned in the first post of this series, The A&P Textbook You May Have Overlooked, we've moved our large Glossary from the back of the printed textbook to the Evolve Student Resources.

That helped us make the physical book noticeably shorter without taking this resource away from students.

The Glossary is more comprehensive than the chapter word lists. It includes all the boldface and italicized terms from the text narrative, plus some additional terms that students encounter only in figures or tables.

And it reinforces the same learning tools students encounter in the chapter word lists.

How do I say this term?

What useful word parts can I recognize?

What do those parts mean?

So a student can preview terminology in the chapter word list, encounter it while learning the chapter's A&P, and return to it later in the Glossary.

Same language. Same system. Same tools.

Our best terminology tools yet

When Frank finally emerged from beneath the mountain of terminology, the 12th Edition had the most carefully reviewed and internally consistent collection of A&P terms, simple pronunciations, and useful word-part translations we've ever produced.

Having looked at the terminology resources available in the other A&P textbooks we examined, I suppose I could claim that ours is the best A&P terminology collection in the universe.

I'm not going to claim that.

But I think I could.

What I will claim is that we worked very hard to make these resources accurate, consistent, easy to use, and genuinely useful to beginning A&P learners.

Terminology isn't something we add around the edges of an A&P course.

It's the language students need to learn the course.

So we think it's worth getting the words right.

If you'd like to explore these terminology resources yourself, request a free instructor review copy of the new 12th Edition of Anatomy & Physiology.

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The Ovary Is Not a Conveyor Belt

2026-09-07T14:00:00.000-05:00

Rethinking how we tell one of the trickiest stories in reproductive A&P.

In my previous post, Why We Flipped the Reproductive Story, I explained why we reorganized three chapters in the new 12th Edition of Anatomy & Physiology.

But reorganizing chapters was only the beginning.

Once we started taking apart our traditional reproductive story and putting it back together, we found ourselves looking much more closely at some familiar explanations and illustrations.

One of the biggest examples was the ovary.

The ovary is harder than it looks

The basic story seems straightforward enough.

Ovarian follicles develop. An oocyte is released at ovulation. The remaining follicular tissue becomes a corpus luteum. If pregnancy does not occur, the corpus luteum degenerates. Meanwhile, hormonal changes help regulate the whole process.

Simple, right?

Well, not really.

The more closely we looked at how introductory A&P textbooks—including our own previous editions—portray this story, the more we wrestled with a basic problem:

How do we make ovarian structure and function simple enough for a beginning learner without making it so simple that we teach something misleading?

That's always a challenge in A&P.

We aren't trying to prepare our students to become reproductive biologists during one chapter of an introductory course. But we don't want the simplified story they learn now to become something they'll have to unlearn later, either.

A cycle isn't a straight line

One particular problem is the cyclical nature of ovarian function.

Textbook illustrations necessarily arrange developmental stages in some kind of sequence so students can follow them. That's useful. But a sequence laid out from left to right can begin to look like a conveyor belt.

One follicle progresses to the next stage, then the next, then ovulation happens, and then comes the corpus luteum.

Except an ovary doesn't really work like a factory assembly line.

Follicles at different stages can be present at the same time. Most do not proceed all the way through the sequence. And the whole process operates within recurring ovarian and menstrual cycles regulated by changing physiological conditions.

So one of our goals was to preserve a clear developmental sequence while making the cyclical nature of ovarian function easier to see.

That's harder than simply drawing a circle instead of a line.

Simple, but not too simple

We spent a lot of time discussing what a beginning A&P student actually needs to know about ovarian follicles.

How many developmental stages do we name?

Which structural changes really matter for understanding function?

How much histological detail helps the story, and when does added detail start obscuring it?

What terminology best prepares students for what they'll encounter in later courses?

And how closely can an introductory illustration resemble actual ovarian structure while still functioning as an explanatory diagram?

Those questions generated considerably more discussion than you might expect from looking at the finished pages.

Yeah. We can talk about follicles for a surprisingly long time.

Our goal was not to include everything that's currently known. Our goal was to identify the structural and functional ideas that give beginning students a sturdy conceptual framework.

Then they can keep building on it.

Some terminology changed, too

Rethinking the story also meant looking carefully at the words we use to tell it.

For example, the new edition introduces vesicular ovarian follicle in place of the older term graafian follicle in our chapter-opening vocabulary. That change also aligns with our ongoing quest to deemphasize the use of eponyms.

We've also made terms such as oocyte, menstrual cycle, and menstrual phase more visible in the reproductive story.

These aren't simply vocabulary swaps.

Terminology affects how students organize concepts in their minds. If we're asking them to understand ovarian function as part of recurring reproductive cycles and as part of changes across the life span, the vocabulary should support that framework.

Menopause belongs in the larger story

We also took a fresh look at our coverage of menopause.

In Chapter 46, we now introduce perimenopause and postmenopause and describe what happens during each stage. These terms are becoming increasingly familiar to patients and are showing up more often in conversations with their healthcare providers. We think our health professions students should begin building that framework in A&P.

Menopause, after all, isn't simply the point when menstrual cycles stop. It belongs to a broader physiological story involving changing ovarian function, reproductive hormones, and effects that extend beyond the genital system.

So we refined the discussion in Chapter 46: Reproduction and coordinated it with the broader life-cycle coverage in Chapter 47: Growth, Development, & Aging.

That's another advantage of our new organization.

Chapter 46 can establish the reproductive physiology—including perimenopause, menopause, and postmenopause. Chapter 47 can then revisit those changes within the larger context of aging.

Same concept. Different perspective.

You may recognize a familiar theme here: students build stronger conceptual frameworks when important ideas show up again in meaningful new contexts.

Textbook illustrations are arguments

I've often said that an illustration in an A&P textbook isn't merely decoration.

It's part of the narrative.

In some ways, every anatomical illustration makes an argument about what students should notice, what they should connect, and what they should remember.

That became especially obvious as we worked on the ovary.

We wanted our revised presentation to say, visually as well as verbally:

This is a dynamic organ. These processes are cyclical. The stages are related, but they are not simply beads moving along a string.

And, as always, this is the beginning of the story—not the last word on ovarian biology.

Take a look

When you receive your review copy of the new 12th Edition, spend a few minutes with Chapters 45 and 46 and compare our new ovarian story with the one you remember from earlier editions—or with the way you currently explain it to your students.

I'd be interested to know whether you think we've found the right balance between clarity, accuracy, and just enough detail.

If you haven't already requested a free instructor review copy of the new edition, click here and do that now.

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Hello %0%, This is a mail advert for Avant Brian ... by Doroles Watson https://www.blogger.com/profile/04506542021385499164
All good points, Jamie! I like you refocused your ... by Kevin Patton https://www.blogger.com/profile/15202042487646206423
It's bizarre just how much ovarian follicular ... by Jamie Chapman https://www.blogger.com/profile/10998740833466853326

Why We Flipped the Reproductive Story

2026-08-31T14:00:00.000-05:00

Rethinking the traditional male-first organization of A&P.

In my earlier post, The A&P Textbook You May Have Overlooked, I mentioned that in our revised 12th Edition of Anatomy & Physiology, we turned our story of the human reproductive systems inside out, upside down, and flipped around.

Here's what I meant.

In the 11th Edition of Anatomy & Physiology, our organization probably looked very familiar:

Chapter 45: Male Reproductive System
Chapter 46: Female Reproductive System
Chapter 47: Growth, Development, & Aging

That's also the traditional organization in many A&P textbooks and curriculum documents. The currently posted HAPS A&P Learning Outcomes, for example, list male reproductive anatomy before female reproductive anatomy, followed by spermatogenesis before oogenesis. Of course, the HAPS Learning Outcomes are not intended to prescribe a teaching sequence.

The same male-first convention remains in the other major A&P textbooks we examined. Current examples from Saladin, Tortora, and OpenStax all begin their reproductive-system coverage with the male system before moving to the female system.

So why did we decide to change it?

We didn’t simply reverse the old chapters. We changed the way the reproductive story is organized.

The old story made sense

We had a legitimate pedagogical reason for our traditional organization.

We regarded the typical male genital system as the structurally simpler of the two systems. Starting there allowed students to establish some basic structural principles before moving to the more complex typical female system.

And because the story then moved toward fertilization, gestation, and birth, having the female system immediately precede that content also seemed logical.

I still think those are reasonable arguments.

But we eventually had to ask ourselves how much of our reasoning came from pedagogy and how much came from that very powerful force in education:

That's the way we've always done it.

We were also hearing concerns from professors, students, and others that routinely starting with the male system can carry an unintended message. It can suggest that male anatomy is the starting point or standard, with female anatomy following as a variation on that story.

That certainly wasn't the message we intended.

But intent isn't the only thing that matters in telling a story.

We weren't the only ones thinking about this

Once we began looking into the issue, we found that scholars had been raising related concerns for decades.

In 1992, Susan Lawrence and Kae Bendixen examined 31 anatomy textbooks used by U.S. medical students from 1890 through 1989. They found that illustrations, vocabulary, and syntax commonly presented male anatomy as the norm or standard against which female anatomy was compared.

Susan Morgan and colleagues later examined contemporary anatomy textbooks. They likewise found problems with equal representation of female and male anatomy. Interestingly, their research with medical students suggested that many students did not recognize some of these issues themselves.

Then, in 2021, Katherine Ray King, Linda Fuselier, and Harshini Sirvisetty analyzed four widely adopted undergraduate nursing A&P textbooks. They specifically described a "male-first" perspective in which males occupy the central position and female and nonbinary identities become the "other."

Elizabeth Whitaker and Raffaella Baccolini looked at a different setting—Italian middle-school science resources—but found the same ordering convention. All the books they examined followed a male-first sequence when presenting reproductive topics.

These studies don't all examine the same learners, the same kinds of textbooks, or the same issue in exactly the same way. So I don't want to stretch their findings beyond what they actually show.

But they did reassure us that we hadn't rocketed off to an entirely new planet by questioning the traditional sequence.

There really is something worth thinking about here.

Just flipping the chapters wasn't enough

The obvious solution would be easy:

Chapter 45: Female Reproductive System
Chapter 46: Male Reproductive System

Done!

Except we didn't like that solution very much.

It would still make one system the starting point and the other the follow-up. It wouldn't really rethink the story. It would simply reverse it.

We wanted to organize these topics around something other than male versus female.

And we had another important consideration.

As I've explained previously [Chunking Chapters—By The Numbers], we've deliberately divided our A&P story into relatively small chapters. In our comparisons, our chapters average about half the size of those in many other undergraduate A&P textbooks.

We think that kind of chunking makes a huge body of unfamiliar information more manageable for beginning learners.

So we wanted to keep three relatively small chapters. We didn't want to solve one problem by creating one or two monster chapters on reproduction.

Yeah, it took us a while to figure this out.

The Patton Team discussed and debated the reorganization for several years. A change this large unravels all kinds of other things in a textbook—figures, tables, review questions, online resources, cross-references, and much more. And the limited amount of time between editions is a very real factor in deciding whether a major change can actually be accomplished.

We also weren't yet sure where our A&P colleagues and students wanted this story to go.

Eventually, two familiar ideas came together and gave us our solution.

Structure first, then function

When we've divided larger chapters into smaller chunks in previous editions, one approach that has often worked well is a structure/function split.

We aren't alone in finding that sequence useful. Even within the larger chapters of other A&P textbooks, it's common to establish important anatomical structures before moving more deeply into the physiological processes involving them. You can see versions of that pattern throughout A&P—for example, respiratory anatomy before pulmonary ventilation, or kidney anatomy and histology before renal physiology.

Of course, anatomy and physiology ultimately belong together. Many of us quite rightly say that we integrate structure and function in our teaching.

But to integrate things, students first need some things to integrate.

At some point, a beginning learner needs a reasonably clear picture of the structures involved and a reasonably clear picture of the processes involving those structures. Then the connections between them can become richer and more useful.

That familiar structure/function approach gave us one part of our solution.

The other part came from terminology.

Genital or reproductive?

We had been noticing increasing use of genital system, especially when the emphasis is on anatomy.

And that term has a solid anatomical pedigree.

Terminologia Anatomica, the international standard for human anatomical terminology, calls its Chapter 9 Genital Systems. It lists the Female Genital System first, followed by the Male Genital System. It also recognizes female reproductive system and male reproductive system as synonymous terminology.

Now, Terminologia Anatomica is a terminology standard, not an A&P curriculum guide. Its ordering doesn't tell us how to teach.

But the terminology helped us see an elegant way forward.

We didn't want to abandon reproductive system, either. That's the familiar term that our students will continue to encounter in courses, learning outcomes, clinical settings, and other textbooks.

So we explain that the terms can be used interchangeably. But in our own narrative, we tend to use genital when we're emphasizing the structures and their basic functional anatomy. We tend to use reproductive when we're emphasizing the physiological processes involved in producing offspring.

And there it was.

Instead of dividing our chapters into male and female, we could divide them largely into structure and reproductive function.

And within each part of the story, we could use a female-first sequence.

It’s not just a claim: the new chapter actually begins the anatomical story with the typical female system.

The goal wasn't to declare female anatomy the new "default." The more important change was getting rid of sex as the dividing line between the chapters.

Act 1: Genital Systems

Our new Chapter 45: Genital Systems establishes the structures and their basic functional anatomy.

And yes, we flip the traditional sequence. We begin with the typical female genital system.

Here's the first half of the program:

Chapter 45: Genital Systems—Typical Female Genital System

Overview of the Genital Systems
Overview of the Typical Female Genital System
Ovaries
Uterine Tubes
Uterus
Vagina
Vulva
Breasts

Within those sections, students explore location, structure, microscopic anatomy where appropriate, and basic functions.

Then we move to:

Chapter 45: Genital Systems—Typical Male Genital System

Overview of the Typical Male Genital System
Testes
Epididymis
Vas Deferens
Ejaculatory Ducts
Urethra
Accessory Genital Glands
Supporting Structures
Composition and Course of Seminal Fluid
Differentiation and Development of Genital Organs

Notice that we haven't simply reversed two chapter titles.

We've brought the anatomy of both genital systems together into one chapter.

That lets students encounter them as related variations on the same basic biological story. It also makes their similarities, differences, and developmental relationships easier to connect.

Act 2: Reproduction

Once students know the structures and their basic functions, Chapter 46: Reproduction moves more deeply into reproductive physiology.

Again, we begin with female functions.

Here's that program:

Chapter 46: Reproduction

Overview of Reproductive Physiology
Female Reproductive Physiology
Female Reproductive Cycles
- Recurring Cycles
- Control of Female Reproductive Cycles
- Importance of Female Reproductive Cycles
- Menarche and Menopause
Male Reproductive Physiology
- Hormonal Regulation
- Male Fertility
Sex Cell Production and Fertilization
- Production of Sex Cells
- Fertilization
- Infertility

I really like the way this story now unfolds.

We first explore female reproductive physiology and its recurring cycles. Then we explore male reproductive physiology.

Finally, those two threads come together as we explore sex-cell production, fertilization, and infertility.

Instead of telling two mostly separate stories called Male and Female, we are telling one reproductive story involving both systems.

Act 3: The whole life cycle

After fertilization, the story flows naturally into Chapter 47: Growth, Development, & Aging.

Here's the program:

Chapter 47: Growth, Development, & Aging

Prenatal Period
- Cleavage and Implantation
- Placenta
- Periods of Development
- Stem Cells
- Formation of Primary Germ Layers
- Histogenesis and Organogenesis
Birth
- Stages of Labor
- Multiple Births
Postnatal Period
- Growth, Development, and Aging
- Infancy
- Childhood
- Adolescence and Adulthood
- Older Adulthood
Aging
- Mechanisms of Aging
- Effects of Aging
Causes of Death

So our three-chapter story now has a pretty simple logic:

Chapter 45: What are the genital structures, and what do they do?

Chapter 46: How do the two systems function in reproduction?

Chapter 47: How do offspring develop, grow, and age?

To us, that turned out to be a cleaner and more logical story than the one we started with.

It preserves our short-chapter approach. It uses a familiar structure/function progression. It keeps all the traditional reproductive content that A&P instructors expect. And it no longer requires maleness to be the automatic starting point for telling the story.

But do I have to reorganize my course?

Nope.

We believe this new organization responds to perspectives we're increasingly hearing from our colleagues and students while retaining the familiar content expected in an undergraduate A&P course.

If you're moving from our 11th Edition to the 12th Edition of Anatomy & Physiology, I think you'll find it relatively straightforward to rearrange your course content to follow the new sequence.

But you don't have to.

All the familiar content is still there.

You may decide that your own course works best with topics in another sequence. There's nothing wrong with students encountering material in one order during class and another order in their textbook. Seeing relationships from more than one direction may even help students develop a more flexible conceptual framework.

The same is true if you're moving to our book from another A&P textbook.

We didn't reorganize these chapters to tell you how you must teach reproduction.

We reorganized them because, after several years of thinking, researching, discussing, arguing, rearranging, and rearranging again, this is the clearest and most coherent way we found to tell the story.

There's more to the reproductive story

Reorganizing three chapters wasn't the only thing we changed.

We also took a fresh look at some of the most challenging reproductive concepts to explain and illustrate clearly for beginning A&P students.

One of the biggest examples is the ovary. How do we portray ovarian follicles simply enough for a beginning learner, realistically enough to avoid teaching something that isn't really there, and dynamically enough to convey that ovarian function is cyclical?

Yeah. We spent some time on that one.

I'll show you what we came up with in my next post.

If you haven't already requested a free instructor review copy of the new edition, click here and do that now.

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The Human Microbiome Belongs in A&P

2026-08-24T14:00:00.000-05:00

Why this essential story shouldn’t be left entirely to other biology courses.

In my previous post, The Human Microbiome Was There All Along, I briefly outlined the story of how we developed the new Chapter 49: Human Microbiome for the 12th Editon of Anatomy & Physiology. But the more important story, I think, is WHY we added this chapter.

Is your microbiome missing?

Conversations with my colleagues tell me that a lot of A&P faculty haven't given much thought to teaching their students about the human microbiome.

In the A&P textbooks and curriculum documents we examined, microbiome coverage was often limited, scattered, or absent. That absence can easily be interpreted as a signal that the topic belongs somewhere other than the undergraduate A&P course. That makes perfect sense, right?

Other courses?

Some of our students may encounter the human microbiome in introductory biology, microbiology, pathophysiology, nutrition, or another course. That’s great. Important concepts should not appear once and then disappear.

We already revisit basic concepts from chemistry, cell biology, genetics, homeostasis, and other foundational areas in several courses. Each encounter lets students add new connections and consider the concept in a different context. Over time, those connections can become stronger and more complex, making the knowledge easier to retrieve and apply.

The A&P course brings its own perspective to the microbiome. Our task is to help students connect microbial communities with body structures, physiological functions, homeostatic mechanisms, health, and disease. Another biology course may approach the same concept from a different direction—and that is exactly as it should be. The courses complement one another rather than compete for ownership of the concept.

Big-picture thinking

The microbiome is also a wonderfully integrative A&P concept. Its connections across body systems help students develop the big-picture, whole-body thinking we want them to build.

That fits naturally with a long-standing theme of our textbook. Every chapter ends with a Big Picture section that asks students to step back from the details and see how structures and functions connect across the whole body. The microbiome practically demands that kind of thinking.

The microbiome also has known—and still-emerging—clinical applications that many of our health professions students are likely to encounter. Giving students a basic framework now helps prepare them to understand and apply those connections when they encounter them later in their education and careers.

Adding the microbiome doesn't have to mean adding much

We know that A&P evolves, and when there's something new that has proven its importance to our understanding of A&P, somebody has to take a step in that direction.

Adding the human microbiome to A&P does not mean carving out a week of lectures or piling another large block of content onto an already crowded course. Our textbook's coverage is more substantial than it was in earlier editions—and more substantial than what we found in the other A&P textbooks we examined—but it is still concise.

Brief mentions throughout the book help students connect the microbiome with the structures and functions they are already studying. For many courses, assigning the short Chapter 49 as reading, rather than devoting an entire lecture to it, may be entirely sufficient.

The goal is not to turn A&P into a microbiology course. It is to give students enough of a framework to understand that microbial communities are part of the human biological story. Later—or earlier—encounters in introductory biology, microbiology, pathophysiology, nutrition, and other courses can add new layers. And as the clinical importance of the microbiome continues to develop, that framework gives students something sturdy on which to build.

Our textbook has been nudging instructors toward the microbiome with small steps starting in the early 1990s, culminating in the big step I've been describing here—a whole new microbiome chapter. You can wait if you want to, but I think my students are better prepared knowing the basics of the microbiome than if I'd never mentioned it in my course. They'll be applying it in their later courses and clinical settings, and I want to get my students ready by giving them a small, easy-to-grasp introduction in their A&P course. Maybe you already do that, too.

We don’t have to teach students everything currently known about the human microbiome. We do need to give them enough of the story to recognize its connections with human structure and function—and enough of a framework to keep learning as they encounter the microbiome again.

That’s why we believe the human microbiome belongs in A&P.

Doesn't hurt to take a look!

I strongly suggest that you take a look at the new Chapter 49: Human Microbiome.

If you haven't already requested a free instructor review copy of the new edition, click here and do that now. Then you'll receive it as soon as it becomes available on or about September 15, 2026

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The Human Microbiome Was There All Along

2026-08-17T14:00:00.000-05:00

How decades of scattered coverage became a new chapter in Anatomy & Physiology.

As I mentioned in my previous post, the new 12th Edition of Anatomy & Physiology has a new chapter devoted entirely to the human microbiome. I also mentioned that we'd been covering the human microbiome for decades—but in small pieces placed strategically throughout the textbook.

Our explanation of essential concepts related to the human microbiome goes back at least to our 1993 edition, when we talked about the roles of microorganisms living on the surfaces of our skin, intestines, and other membranes—each in the chapter where it naturally belonged. We didn't call the concept the "human microbiome" because that term was not in common use back then.

Google Ngram Viewer Showing Book Usage of "Human Microbiome"

(click here if the chart is not visible)

The chart above suggests that use of the term “human microbiome” in published books rose sharply after 2012.

Something else happened during those years. In 2007, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) launched the Human Microbiome Project. Its researchers began the ambitious task of characterizing the microbial communities associated with different regions of the healthy human body. A coordinated collection of major findings appeared in 2012, helping push the human microbiome into the scientific spotlight.

In our 2013 edition, we introduced the term as our discussion of the microbiome concept evolved and expanded to reflect its growing importance in anatomy and physiology (and its clinical applications).

The 2016 edition of Anatomy & Physiology saw the introduction of our Connect It! (formerly A&P Connect) library of online "special interest" articles, including one about the human microbiome.

As I've previously explained, many of these articles are intended to help students draw together core concepts that play roles in many different regions and processes of human biology. Because this approach helps our readers gradually build their conceptual frameworks, that microbiome article remains in our Connect It! library. Of course, we revised it to reflect the addition of our new Human Microbiome chapter.

After much research and discussion among the Patton Team of authors and editors, we recognized that the human microbiome deserves its own chapter. We saw how well giving homeostasis its own chapter worked for student understanding and we wanted to give similar emphasis and coherence to the increasingly important microbiome concept.

In 2022, the final year shown in the Google Ngram chart, with use of the term still climbing, we began our work for this new edition.

Behind the scenes: how did we do it?

It sounds simple. And it may even sound easy. But it wasn't, of course. Such things never are, right?

First, we asked for a volunteer from among our author team to be the designated wrangler of this new chapter. Author Terry Thompson stepped up and is largely responsible for what you see in the new chapter.

But hey, we're the Patton Team, so we all pitched in to help Terry. Anything you don't like in the new chapter? That's probably because we talked Terry out of something that we shouldn't have. We went back and forth on the new chapter for several years. Despite its brief length and straightforward storyline, there was a lot of research, debate, and hard work that went into producing the version you see.

As alluded to earlier, Terry scanned the entire previous edition to assess our existing microbiome content. Then, using her new research on current scientific thinking, she developed a storyline that we wanted to tell our readers.

From Patton (2027) Anatomy & Physiology 12e. Elsevier. Contents p. xxxv

Our goal was to give your students the basic concepts they need to build and expand their conceptual frameworks, improve their understanding of A&P, and prepare for later clinical courses and health careers.

Terry wove the previously scattered microbiome content into the new chapter, leaving brief mentions in its previous locations to help students map out where the microbiome applies in their studies. For example, the human microbiome is still mentioned when discussing the skin, the gut, the respiratory tract, and other body regions.

She moved content about what microorganisms are and their roles in the body from Chapter 2's Mechanisms of Disease section and adapted it to the new Chapter 49 on the microbiome. Throughout the process, she added current content based on what microbiome experts are telling us—and what we believe our students really ought to know about.

This is a good spot to give a shout-out to HAPS member Brian Elliott at Saint Louis University, who has been introducing his A&P students to the microbiome concept. He graciously gave us feedback that helped guide us in developing our new chapter. When I participated in the HAPS Book Club discussions of the book, I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life, I gained greater insight into how microbiome concepts intersect with the mainstream A&P curriculum. Thanks, bookclub friends!

Where to put the new chapter?

One issue that we really wrestled with was this: "Where do we put this new chapter in the book?"

There are good arguments for putting it among the very earliest chapters. Microbial communities occupy many body sites, and the microbiome influences structures and functions throughout the body. We decided against that for at least two reasons.

One reason is practical. It's not a small thing to renumber all the subsequent chapters and each of their numbered figures, boxes, and tables—not only in the book itself, but also in all the many, many supporting resources organized by the numbering in the textbook's table of contents.

The other reason is pedagogical. We didn't want to overwhelm the beginning A&P learner, whose head is already spinning with all those anatomical, chemical, cellular, and metabolic terms by adding another new introductory topic with its own hard-to-pronounce terminology. So we mention it broadly, starting early in the book, but we put the microbiome chapter at the very end.

We could not find an ideal location later in the book, either. It really "goes with" nearly every chapter, so it wasn't clear to us where the "best" placement might be.

Setting all that aside, putting the new chapter at the end of the book gives both readers and instructors some real agency in deciding when they want to dive a bit more deeply into the human microbiome. Early on, we suggest that readers "peek ahead" to the last chapter. They have the option to do that, or to wait.

Instructors likewise have the option to assign it early or late in the course—or at any point in between.

Placing it at the end makes it easier to assign the chapter wherever it fits best—or to use only selected parts—without disrupting the book’s traditional sequence.

There's much more to this story.

I think this blog post is getting to be longer than the new chapter is! But now you know part of the story behind our new Chapter 49: Human Microbiome.

In my next post, I’ll get to the most important part of this story by explaining why we believe the human microbiome belongs in A&P—even when students may also encounter it in introductory biology, microbiology, pathophysiology, or other courses.

I strongly suggest that you take a look at the new chapter.

If you haven't already requested a free instructor review copy of the new edition, click here and do that now.

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The A&P Textbook You May Have Overlooked

2026-08-10T14:00:00.000-05:00

A new edition of my popular two-semester A&P textbook is coming—and I’d like to show you what makes it different. Who knows? Perhaps it’ll be a better fit for your students.

It's Anatomy & Physiology 12th edition by Patton, Bell, Thompson, and Williamson. Published by Elsevier, it's scheduled for release on or about September 15, 2026. If you're an A&P instructor and would like a free examination copy to explore as soon as it becomes available, click this link:

Reserve a Review Copy

I know that you are wondering: What ARE the big upgrades to the new Anatomy & Physiology 12th edition? Too many to describe in one blog post, that's for sure. So I'll simply list a few here and then follow up with a series of additional posts with more details about the revisions, why we made them, and how they will help your students learn A&P.

One thing we did was add a new chapter! But wait, these A&P textbooks are already too big, right? Right. So we also made this edition 40 pages shorter.

The new chapter is titled Human Microbiome and draws together existing coverage of this increasingly important A&P concept from previous editions. It then updates and expands microbiome coverage into a concise, accessible, illustrated narrative of its important role in human structure and function. To our knowledge, this textbook was the first major two-semester undergrad A&P textbook to offer a distinct Homeostasis chapter. Now we believe it's the first to offer a Human Microbiome chapter.

(Check out The Human Microbiome Was There All Along and The Human Microbiome Belongs in A&P)

Throughout the book, we made our explanations and layout more concise and either removed bits of content not needed for an essential understanding of A&P or moved it to our online resources. For example, our large, comprehensive Glossary—a student favorite—has now been moved to the online Evolve Student Resources. That alone has reduced the amount of pain caused by carrying a huge A&P textbook around!

We turned the story of the human reproductive systems inside out, upside down, and flipped around. Our flipped narrative puts the female system first. I think that's another notable "first" among major textbooks. But there's a lot more. We upended and improved the traditional coverage of the genital organs and reproductive functions—which I'll explain in a subsequent post.

(Check out Why We Flipped the Reproductive Story and The Ovary Is Not a Conveyor Belt)

We've added to our already groundbreaking coverage of fascia, added some cool videos from the Complete Anatomy suite of resources, upgraded our systems for learning terminology, replaced the content of all of our Career Choices sidebars with new stories about current health professionals, improved our representation of variations of the human body, and a whole lot more!

(Check out Say It. Take It Apart. Learn It. and What's Up with Eponyms in A&P? Part 3)

The whole "Patton Team" of authors, editors, and designers has been working long hours over many months to update, upgrade, and upend our story of human anatomy and physiology. Our previous revisions have made the narrative clearer while incorporating the latest scientific thinking about the topics we cover. This revision steps that work up a couple of notches—so much so that we took extra time to get it right.

The Patton Team met virtually nearly every week to discuss and debate every aspect of this revision. I think the extensive research, lively discussions, coworking, and great care we took have made this a truly remarkable revision.

Since inviting my awesome coauthors to the Anatomy & Physiology project, I've been meaning to introduce them in this blog. So I'm taking this opportunity.

You may already know Frank Bell, Terry Thompson, and Peggie Williamson from their years of active participation in the Human Anatomy & Physiology Society (HAPS). Terry Thompson is a President Emeritus of HAPS. All three have earned several relevant degrees, including the Master of Science in Human Anatomy & Physiology Instruction (HAPI), in which I served as their faculty mentor. Frank Bell and Peggie Williamson currently serve on the faculty of the HAPI program.

Besides having worked with them in these capacities, I have enjoyed their contributions to previous editions of this and other textbook revision projects. Working on this revision—and observing their keen awareness of how our students read and learn A&P—has solidified my view that they are exactly the right A&P educators for this team.

Be sure to subscribe to the Patton Anatomy & Physiology blog to stay up to date on upcoming posts introducing specific revisions in our new edition!

Active Concept Maps Help Students Make Connections

2022-03-28T13:00:00.002-05:00

We all know that concept maps help students learn anatomy and physiology in at least two ways.

One way is when we use concept maps to teach principles in a visual manner that clearly shows relationships among several ideas. Students thus clearly see how to organize their thoughts about connected ideas as they construct their own conceptual frameworks as they learn.

Another way concept maps help students learn is when they build their own concept maps from what they already know about anatomy and physiology. Concept-map-making can thus be a powerful study tool. However, students without prior experience with concept maps often have a difficult time getting started. A few good examples of concept maps that relate to the ideas they are learning in your course are all they need to get a good start in making their own.

Starting with this edition of Patton Anatomy & Physiology we are providing Active Concept Maps in the Student Resources in Evolve.

Each Active Concept Map is an animated video of a concept map presented in a similar style to the concept maps used throughout the text of Patton Anatomy & Physiology. However, these concept maps are "active" in the sense that they build from a single block as the narrator walks the viewer through each related concept that appears as the concept map branches and grows.

The block-by-block guided walk-through of a major concept will help students understand what they have read and heard in class more deeply. It will also model for students how they can build their own concept maps for other sets of related ideas that they encounter in your course.

Perhaps most importantly, the Active Concept Maps will provide a template for how to think in a "connected" way about the major concepts of the anatomy and physiology course. For many of our challenged students, this is an especially important skill they must develop to succeed.

Here's a brief video walk-through that shows where to find Active Concept Maps in Evolve and how they work:

Tips and Shortcuts for Surviving and Succeeding in A&P

2022-03-10T15:12:00.000-06:00

A feature of Patton Anatomy & Physiology that is often overlooked by faculty, but loved by beginning anatomy and physiology students is called

Tips and Shortcuts for Surviving and Succeeding in A&P.

As soon as an A&P student unwraps and opens their new textbook, they flip over that endpaper and find this one-page guide on how to get started on the path to success. That one page is loaded with great study tips and how-to-read-a-textbook guidance organized in an intuitive, graphic manner.

From metacognition to tackling new terminology to retrieval practice, this guide uses simple language to quickly outline the key strategies needed to succeed in A&P.

This guide also give faculty a place to quickly send students asking for study advice. And it gives faculty a place to find quick and easy tips for them to share in class or in a syllabus or course website.

Embedded throughout each chapter are brief Hints that remind students to use these strategies just at the moment they need them. Read more about these Hints at Embedded Hints Improve Reading Comprehension.

Patton Anatomy & Physiology is a textbook that is truly focused on helping students succeed!

Netter 3D Anatomy—Now Better Than Ever!

2021-10-21T17:29:00.002-05:00

We've been offering Netter 3D Anatomy as a supplement to Patton Anatomy & Physiology at no added cost through the past few editions. Faculty and students alike have enjoyed the adventures they've undertaken as they explore the various regions of the human body using three-dimensional, dissectible images. That won't change in the new 11the edition. Or will it?!

The availability of Netter 3D Anatomy will still be there. And it will continue to be offered at no added cost to students. But it will be better in several ways.

You probably already know the name of Frank Netter, the brilliant and widely respected anatomy and medical illustrator. Dubbed "the Michelangelo of medicine" by the Saturday Evening Post, Netter revolutionized how anatomy is learned and taught through visual depictions. His work is realistic, yet clear and uncluttered. And it is beautiful.

Netter 3D Anatomy adapts Netter's vast library of anatomical art to a gamification environment to make the study of Netter's "virtual" anatomy highly engaging. The environment does this by melding 3D versions of anatomical structures with the ability to manipulate them in real time—thus adding the fourth dimension of time.

Netter 3D Anatomy uses advanced gaming technology and interactive 3D anatomy models to learn, review, and teach anatomy. That's still true, but many improvements have been made to the ease-of-access and functionality of the platform.

Students using Patton Anatomy & Physiology will no longer have to create a separate account and login through a separate system. It'll all be contained within the Evolve Student Resources that students already use—and have logged into—for all their other textbook tools and resources. As instructors, we know how important a single-login system can be for our students.

Students and instructors will find that the ease of use of Netter 3D Anatomy has improved tremendously. We worked closely with the developer, wearing our teacher hats, then wearing our student hats, to make sure that any obstacles to easy use are eliminated. And we're very happy with the results!

Because each user is "in control" as they zoom, twist, pull apart, unwrap, peel away, and pan, this program also adds the kinesthetic dimension characteristic of the best "virtual reality" experiences. Users can add or remove labels at will. This multimodal approach implements principles of brain-based learning a a way that gives the user the enjoyment of playing an exploratory game.

Professors can also use this tool in the classroom or lab to demonstrate anatomical relationships in a way that 2D illustrations, plastic models, and even dissection specimens cannot. For example, layers of the GI wall can be easily peeled away to demonstrate each coat. The skull bones can be pulled apart—then put back together—to help students quickly learn this tricky part of the skeleton.

Something new in Patton Anatomy & Physiology is that we've added guided explorations to the Netter 3D Anatomy platform. These are developed in key areas with our own students in mind. They walk users through a specific set of concepts. This not only guides learning, it also gives students practice in using the platform so that they can be more confident about striking out on their own to explore other areas of the body.

The really cool thing about using Netter 3D Anatomy as a teaching tool is that each student can recreate—and extend—this experience on their own during individual or group time! This is a perfect tool to use in remote learning. If you suddenly have to shift to fully remote, you students will already have an interactive tool they can use independently!

Oh—did I mention?—Netter 3D Anatomy is provided at no additional cost to students!

Enough of me jabbering away about it—why not have your Elsevier Educational Solutions Consultant give you a free, personalized demonstration.

The Lymphatic System Deserves Its Own Chapter

2021-08-21T12:52:00.001-05:00

A social media thread I ran across recently laments that the lymphatic system is an undervalued and undertaught topic in the anatomy and physiology curriculum. That puzzles me.

Admittedly, I don't bring up the lymphatic system a lot in my day-to-day conversations. Not even in chats with other A&P enthusiasts. But it does come up sometimes in conversations about teaching or learning A&P. And when it does, I think the usual reaction involves some variety of love for the lymphatic system. So I'm puzzled.

In our Patton Anatomy & Physiology textbook, the lymphatic system certainly gets the love and attention it deserves. In fact, we feel that it deserves its own chapter! Unlike most A&P textbooks, Patton Anatomy & Physiology has a separate Lymphatic System chapter that follows Blood, Heart, Blood Vessels, and Circulation of Blood chapters and precedes the chapters Innate Immunity, Adaptive Immunity, and Stress.

That placement of the chapter puts it in exactly that spot in the story where we want it. That is, our story of the lymphatic system picks up the story of circulation begun in the Circulation of Blood chapter by explaining where the excess fluid left out of venous return goes. It goes back to the bloodstream via an elegant lymphatic drainage system.

But wait! There's more! That fluid being returned to the bloodstream from the tissues is filtered in the lymph nodes before joining the blood supply. Which then allows us to introduce the concept of immunity and the lymphatic system's key role as a partner in the immune system.

The next chapters Innate Immunity and Adaptive Immunity then pick up that part of the story after the Lymphatic System chapter. Then, after all those parts of the story set the final pieces needed, the Stress chapter integrates diverse concepts learned in previous chapters into a big picture of how our body deals with the world.

Although that social media thread lamenting that the lymphatic system is undervalued and undertaught puzzles me on one level, I wholeheartedly agree that the lymphatic system deserves any love we do give it. In the eleventh edition of Patton Anatomy & Physiology, available November 2021, we've added a bit more love by adding a brief description of the emerging concept of the glymphatic system. And, in our usual style, we generally refined and clarified our story of the amazing lymphatic system.

Check out the heavily illustrated story of the lymphatic system in Patton Anatomy & Physiology. I think you'll agree that we really do show this system some love.

Diverse Representation in Anatomy & Physiology

2021-06-29T09:01:00.000-05:00

From the earliest days of my involvement with the Anatomy & Physiology textbook, I've strived to ensure that the representation of people in the illustration program, the chapter narratives, the examples and cases presented, reflects the diversity of humanity.

My publisher has fully supported my (rather expensive) requests for creating new artwork and shooting new photographs. They have also supported my chapter revisions and have helped me find and revise passages that need improvement.

Why is this important?

Our students—my readers and users of the textbook—must see themselves and their lived experiences reflected in this textbook and other learning materials. If they cannot, then it's difficult for them to see themselves fully accepted as part of the humanity that we explore in the anatomy and physiology course. This perceived lack of acceptance is a very real barrier to learning. When they cannot easily see themselves as part of the world of A&P, then it's also a barrier for students as they pursue their career path.

Diverse representation in Anatomy & Physiology is also important because students must develop an understanding, acceptance, and appreciation of the normal variation and diversity among the human population if they are to be successful as healthcare and athletic professionals.

The seventh edition of Anatomy & Physiology marked the moment when diverse and inclusive representation became a goal of every revision cycle. In the tenth edition, we were able to significantly diversify our photo collection and anatomical illustrations.

For example, in the tenth edition, we were among the first to use Black female subjects for the key illustrations of human musculature—overturning centuries of white males serving that role.

Diversity and inclusion has been a primary goal of the upcoming eleventh edition of Anatomy & Physiology, as well. As we review our page proofs and make our final tweaks, we continue our strong effort to make our textbook one of the most inclusive science textbooks on the market.

However, as much as we have made admirable progress and maintained our lead in this area, we still have a long way to go. It's a daunting task. And the path is not always clear. The resources are not always available. Our awareness is still expanding. Nonetheless, I think you'll be pleased with the new edition when it is published later this year.

And I hope you'll join us in pointing out where we've made good progress and where we still need to improve. We're in this together.

Stress Deserves Its Own Chapter

2021-03-31T15:00:00.001-05:00

One of the advantages of organizing anatomy and physiology concepts into short, modular chapters is that it gives us more flexibility in teaching. It also permits us to focus on important topics that are often buried within a large chapter that covers many subtopics. Taking this advantage, Anatomy & Physiology puts the clinically important concepts of stress into a single, independent chapter.

The concepts of stress interconnect with concepts of neuroscience, endocrinology, immunology, and many others—covered in diverse chapters of a textbook and diverse modules of an A&P course. Putting the core concepts of stress into its own independent chapter means that the instructor has more flexibility in where they place in their own course structure—into their own unique telling of the story of the human body.

Our book was the first A&P textbook to have an independent stress chapter. Since its introduction, we've been keeping the content up to date and relevant to student learning—and to the clinical applications of stress they'll be making in their professional courses and careers.

More recently, we enlisted the advice of the late Dr. Bruce McEwen, an icon of the modern concepts of human stress and it's real-life implications. Contributing author Dr. Peggie Williamson and I used Bruce's advice and his generous stack of resources to give our stress chapter a major refresh and update. You will find that the engaging story-of-stress approach remains, but with the more recent parts of that story reflected with greater clarity and relevance.

We need not let the concepts of stress be stressors themselves in our teaching and learning. Using the stress chapter in Anatomy & Physiology—a reader favorite—can help us all better understand the pivotal role stress can have in wellness and disease.

Your Modular Anatomy & Physiology Textbook

2021-03-22T15:00:00.000-05:00

Ever dreamed of rearranging the order of topics in your course. That is, have you ever wanted to shift the order of topics as they are presented in your textbook to fit the way you tell your story of the human body? Without the obstacles of assigning a half-chapter here and the other half-chapter there—and possibly causing some students to get a bit lost?

Yeah, me too. That's why I've worked hard to move away from the gigantic-chapter model we see in most A&P textbooks to the modular model in our Anatomy & Physiology textbook. Instead of the usual 20-something large chapters commonly seen, our textbook has 48 chapters—but about the same number of pages as all the others. That is, those gigantic chapters have been broken down into smaller bits.

Besides the advantage of making our reading assignments less intimidating for students, the arrangement of concepts in smaller chapters also means that it is far easier for any instructor to move things around a bit to better suit their particular telling of the A&P story.

For example, because the introduction to homeostasis is its own short chapter, faculty have the choice to move it's place in the course to the very beginning—before all those directional terms and cavities, and so forth Or one could move it a bit later in the course, after the foundational chemistry, cell, and tissue coverage to just prior to beginning covering the first body system.

The short stress chapter could be moved earlier or later in the course, without having to separate it out of another larger chapter that covers other topics as well.

One could even decide to have students learn the appendicular skeleton first, before getting to that intimidating skull and vertebral column.

If you've not looked at the Patton Anatomy & Physiology text in a while, this might be a good time to check it out and think about it's modular structure may be a better fit for your A&P course.

You may want to learn more about the story of our smaller chapters by reading these brief posts:

Pandemic Scramble: Keeping It Simple

2020-06-22T08:15:00.003-05:00

In my opinion, the big mistake that professors commonly make when moving an on-campus course to remote teaching is to make things more complicated than they need to be. That unnecessary complexity stems from the idea that one must take their entire course, including every element and detail, and move it more or less "as is" to an online environment. I think we get much better outcomes if we strive to keep it simple.

First, "remote" need not always be "online." There are a lot of learning opportunities to be had with reading and retrieval practice assignments from the Patton Anatomy & Physiology textbook. Students have invested a lot in acquiring this resource and a large team has worked together to make it an effective learning tool. Now's a great time to do better by our students by helping them engage fully in both reading and raiding their textbook.

Second, now is a great time to revisit our learning outcomes and compare those to our course design. Most of us keep adding more expected outcomes, and therefore more content, to our courses over the years. As we consider various learning activities, we often add them rather than replace existing activities. Our course becomes bloated, complex, and heavier than it needs to be. So my advice is to prune, prune, prune to the main outcomes—the truly essential concepts—of our A&P course. Then, and only then, are we ready to move to remote teaching.

Third, rather than simply digitize our course components—recording lectures, converting tests and quizzes to online formats, etc.—we should rethink our course design. I suggest trimming back on what we are telling and showing showing students and rely more on their own discovery. And resisting the urge to use every last one of the cool toys that our instructional designers are helping us to discover.

What I mean by that is focusing our recorded lectures on the hard-to-understand "pain points" of A&P. And even then, we should consider trimming our narrative down to half or less of that 50-minute time block that we are used to. Then taking those shorter lectures and chunking them into even smaller, bite-sized pieces.

We can also substitute those occasional, mind-bending summative tests with frequent, low-stakes formative tests by using the our learning management system's online quizzing engine. This leverages the learning benefits of retrieval practice by shifting the work of learning to the student—where it belongs. This approach also makes light work of learning, thus avoiding a burdensome load during this time of stress and uncertainty.

To learn more about these suggestions and more, watch my video presentation Simple Ideas for Moving to Remote Learning or listen to an audio version from my podcast.

Don't forget all the tips I have for you at my Pandemic Teaching Resources page.

Pandemic Scramble: Use Netter's 3D Anatomy Included with Your Textbook

2020-06-15T08:15:00.008-05:00

A big part of the still-in-progress "pandemic scramble" of trying to get our A&P course from is on-campus venue to a remote or semi-remote format is grappling with finding a good tool to teach the anatomy that we usually teach in a lab. Many of my colleagues are looking here and there and everywhere for just the right tool. A tool at an affordable price.

Guess what? If you and your students are using the Patton Anatomy & Physiology textbook in your course, you already have a great tool! At no extra cost! Really. No new licenses. No subscriptions. No extra fees. Not only that, there's nothing for you to arrange in order for your students to have it. They already have it!

Open the book and on the page facing the inside front cover, you'll see the scratch-off label for Netter's 3D Anatomy. Use the access code and you'll unlock a beautiful set of anatomy tools based on the famous illustrations by Frank H. Netter and his successors. Rendered in three dimensions, these amazing illustrations of the structures of the human body can be moved and rotated around easily to see them from any angle. Structures can also be pulled apart and put back together, thus making this platform a true virtual dissection tool.

Now might be a good time to review my post Netter's 3D Interactive Anatomy Provides a Multimodal Learning Experience.

But how does one use Netter's 3D Anatomy in teaching a course—especially when trying to replicate an in-lab learning experience? There are many options, but here are a few to spark your own creative solutions:

Use your "lab list" of required structures to identify in a dissection—or develop such a list—and assign students to find them, just as they would in a "wet" dissection.
Consider having students take screen shots of their work and compile their own "guide to the body."
Take your own screen shots—perhaps even a narrated video screen shot—to guide students through each region you'd like to have them "dissect" on their own.
Use captured screen shots to produce a virtual dissection quiz.
Assign students a set of structures to "teach" the class, and let them share their screens and walk the rest of the class through their assigned structures.

I use Snagit by TechSmith for my screen captures—both still and video—because I've become comfortable with its many features, such as easy markups of screen captures. However, you can use any screen capture tool—including the one probably already installed in your system.

Have any other ideas for using Netter's 3D Anatomy in your course? Just go to the bottom of this post at the Anatomy & Physiology blog and share your idea!

Don't forget all the tips I have for you at my Pandemic Teaching Resources page.

Pandemic Scramble: Use Your Included Online A and P Course

2020-06-01T08:10:00.002-05:00

As we scramble this summer—and possibly through the fall—to shift our A&P course from its usual on-campus venue to remote teaching, let's not forget the tools that we already have at hand. Why go out looking for new tools when we already have all or most of what we need right there in our toolbox?

One such tool that we may already have handy is Anatomy & Physiology Online. This product is packaged at no extra cost with many versions of the Anatomy & Physiology textbook. Check which version has been adopted in your course to see if the online course is included. If it's not included, check with your Elsevier education consultant about your options. But mostly likely, you and your students already have it!

Anatomy & Physiology Online is a ready-to-go online experience for your students! Let me say that again. Ready. To. Go.

There's nothing to prepare, organize, plan—nothing.

Well, okay, there is one thing you have to do. That is to decide whether you want to import the course into your learning management system and operate it there or instead operate it within Elsevier's learning management system (Evolve).

As I recommend in my free eBook Pandemic Teaching: A Survival Guide for College Faculty, a good strategy is to trim back the "extras" and focus on the core concepts that students really need to take with them into their next courses. Anatomy & Physiology Online does that for you! Yep, it's already aimed at those core principles from the textbook in a manner well-suited for most courses.

Yeah, okay, maybe if you'd created an online course, you'd have done this or that a bit differently. Perhaps added a bit here or left that other thing out. But this is a pandemic scramble, right? We don't have time now to do it perfectly. But if you do have extra time—an amusing concept—nothing is stopping you from adding other course elements alongside Anatomy & Physiology Online.

So why invent a wheel you and your students already have? Anatomy & Physiology Online seems custom-made for this pandemic scramble we're in right now!

If you need help, contact your Elsevier education consultant any time.

Pandemic Scramble: Adapting to Remote Learning, Suddenly

2020-03-16T17:11:00.001-05:00

Well, friends, I'll bet most of us didn't see this pandemic coming. Not to the extent of impact it's had on the teaching and learning of anatomy and physiology. But it's here and we're going to roll with the punches and deliver a positive and productive learning experience for our students, right?

To help us all get ourselves organized and on the right track as we adapt to suddenly having to move our face-to-face course homes to a remote venue out there in the vast expanse of space, I've assembled a few "get started" resources to help you adapt.

Quickly Moving to Remote Delivery—The Musical

This is an "emergency" bonus episode of my podcast (The A&P Professor). The brief audio presentation presents nineteen tips on how to get started. And there are three A&P songs from my friend and fellow A&P teacher, Greg Crowther. For a sing-along! We could all use a light-hearted sing-along about sodium ions right now, am I right?

Go to theAPprofessor.org/64b for an audio player plus a lot of links and other resources. Or subscribe in your favorite podcast player and look for Episode 64b.

There is also an earlier episode called Mid-Winter Winterizing of Our Courses meant to help prepare us before this all flooded in upon us. Many of these prep tips are still useful, even as the metaphorical flood waters continue to rise all around us. Go to theAPprofessor.org/63b

TEACH Instructor Resources for Anatomy & Physiology

This little gem has been there all along! Really. In your Evolve (Instructor) Resources for Anatomy & Physiology 10th Edition. TEACH has all kinds of tips and strategies that can be used to generate ideas for learning activities that can be adapted for remote teaching.

Included in TEACH are:

Lesson Plans
Student Handouts
PowerPoint Slides
Pretest Questions and Pretest Answers

If you don't have an Evolve account, then just go to evolve.elsevier.com and click on Sign In in the upper right, then click on Create Account near the bottom of the form that pops up. Make sure you apply for a faculty account. It will take a day or so to verify your faculty status. In the search box on the home page, or when you click Catalog at the top, type in Evolve Resources for Anatomy & Physiology 10th Edition, then request access. The TEACH resources will be listed in the Instructor Resources tab.

But wait! There's more...

Teaching Tips

Also found in your Evolve (Instructor) Resources for Anatomy & Physiology 10th Edition, a separate sheet of advice—simply called Teaching Tips—supplements the TEACH resources to spark ideas for your transition to remote teaching.

Besides the TEACH resources and Teaching Tips, there are all kinds of other resources in your Evolve (Instructor) Resources for Anatomy & Physiology 10th Edition:

Audience Response Questions—meant for "clicker" systems in a classroom, they can be easily adapted for online presentations to spark student thinking during an online "lecture" or demonstration.
Image Collection—contains (labeled and unlabeled) jpeg and PowerPoint versions of each image from the textbook.
Test Bank—can be a great resource for quickly constructing online quizzes and reviews. Consider using them for Testing-as-Teaching, a type of retrieval practice mentioned later in this post.

The A&P Professor

I already mentioned The A&P Professor podcast, but there is lot more there for you than those "emergency" bonus episodes. It's worth exploring the whole list for practical tips and advice as you move to remote teaching. The great thing about podcast episodes is that you can listen to them while you are wiping down the surfaces in your home, making your family's meals, and rearranging your stacks of toilet paper. Here are a few selected topics to start with:

Advice for online teaching

50: Connecting in the Distance Course Special (general advice for staying connected to students remotely—especially important at this time)
52: The Case for Case Studies (case studies are a great way to teach remotely)
19: Caring for Students Helps Them Succeed

Handling the chaos

63: Mistakes in Teaching Anatomy & Physiology (yep, if we're gonna make a lot of mistakes, this will be when—learn how to handle that)
51: The Case for Transparency (why being up front and honest with our students about what's happening is important)

Testing-as-Teaching (retrieval practice)

Besides the podcast, The A&P Professor website includes other resources, such as online seminars for teaching anatomy and physiology. Here are a couple that may be helpful as this time:

Online Lecture Previews (can be adapted for any kind of online presentation)
Testing as Teaching (randomized testing to allow multiple attempts—using retrieval practice for learning)

Free eText

VitalSource and Elsevier have partnered to provide eText access to students. To assist students at disrupted semester-calendar schools who are losing access to course materials due to COVID-19 campus closures, VitalSource has been joined by Elsevier to offer free access to etexts to students whose classes have moved online from March 16 through May 25, 2020. Students will be able to access the expansive catalog of eTexts from participating publishers through the VitalSource Bookshelf app effective immediately.

Besides this being useful to students who are "stuck without" their textbooks, it can offer additional opportunities to connect with students in a remote environment.

For example, something that I do in an online course I teach is let my students "subscribe" to the highlights and notes in my own copy of the eText version of the textbook.

I can mark areas of particular importance, add commentary on what they should be looking at in a section or illustration, and clarify concepts that commonly challenge student learning. This could be particularly useful in "holding the hand" of a confused and dazed student who is trying to adapt to a new learning environment.

Coloring Book

I've been seeing a lot of advice to folks in general, telling them to sit around as a family and color in their coloring books. That makes a lot of sense in terms of diffusing stress and connecting in a positive way with those with whom we are house-bound.

Why not suggest to students to do that, but use Mosby's Anatomy & Physiology Coloring Book as one of their coloring books?

In a post from my blog The A&P Student, I recommend coloring as a way to study anatomy and physiology in a new and fun way—that also calms the nerves. So their nerves will become calm as they study their nerves! Check out Coloring Books Are Powerful Study Tools (And They Help Manage Stress).

Okay, whew! That's enough for now, eh? Don't hesitate to reach out if I can be of help to you.

The New Adaptive Quizzing Tool Is Available!

2018-09-20T12:18:00.000-05:00

Did you know that there's a new version of Elsevier Adaptive Quizzing (EAQ) now available for Anatomy & Physiology 10th edition?

I've mentioned the value of EAQ in the past, but this version has been updated and enhanced to be an even more valuable learning and teaching tool!

Have you ever wished that you could tell where your students are struggling with content by just glancing at a dashboard?

Wouldn’t it be amazing if your students were being quizzed on material they’re struggling with versus material they’ve already mastered?

How would you like to create a quiz or a test that adapts to your student’s needs, in just 3 easy steps?

Check out this 1 minute video below to show you how!

Set up an EAQ quiz in 3 easy steps!

My friend Ashley Nagel over at Elsevier Publishing is hosting a 30-minute live demo on EAQ for Anatomy & Physiology 10th edition on Thursday, October 4th at 1:00 PM CST.

If you would like to attend, simply register by clicking or copying/pasting this link:

https://elsevier.zoom.us/meeting/register/0e4dc230bd47f4498c34be5db4a05ad8

If you attend, Ashley will send you a fantastic gift that’s fit for an A&P Instructor!

If you’re unable to make it to this demo, but would like to set up a private demo at a time that better works for your schedule, still register for this meeting and then shoot Ashley an email at a.nagel@elsevier.com . She’ll be happy to set up a time with you!

What's Up with Eponyms in A&P? Part 2

2018-08-21T14:00:00.000-05:00

In my previous article, I gave some reasons why in the Anatomy & Physiology textbook I avoid possessive form for all eponyms (which I lump together with toponyms) and avoid capitalizing eponyms in which the name is converted to a different form. For example, I use Henle loop instead of loop of Henle and I use eustachian tube instead of Eustachian tube.

Next, why are eponyms usually presented as only the secondary or alternate term? For example, why is the term preferred in the textbook pancreatic islets and not islets of Langerhans or Langerhans islets? It turns out that this is another contemporary trend that I agree with.

Eponyms can be problematic. As much as I love saying Islets of Langerhans out loud—and I truly do—the term does not tell anyone much about the actual structure. Okay, it tells me that they are small and isolated, which I get from the term islets. However, the eponym doesn't tell me where to find them. Or what they do. Or much of anything very useful. But pancreatic islets tells me much more about them. Not everything, of course—but such descriptive terms tell me much more than does the eponym islets of Langerhans.

Another potential problem with eponyms has to do with the people themselves. For example, recent discussions of Hans Asperger have expressed concerns about a potentially complicated relationship with Nazi "race hygiene." Although named for him, the condition Asperger syndrome (AS) may have been first described nearly two decades earlier by a Russian woman working in the field of child psychology.

Besides that, the Asperger eponym has been dropped from the ICD (International Classification of Disease) and the DSM (Diagnostic & Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) in favor of a new range of conditions under the umbrella term autism spectrum disorder (ASD). In general, the ICD and DSM usually consider eponyms as secondary alternatives to "proper" disease terminology.

There are several issues at play with terms like the Asperger eponym. One is the fact that many (perhaps most) eponyms recognize the individual with the best awareness ratio, most aggressive supporters, and (probably mostly) lucky timing—not necessarily the person(s) most deserving of recognition.

Another issue is the fact that we don't want to be reminded of Nazi ideology or atrocities when we are using scientific and medical terminology—nor are we anxious to honor individuals who may have used morally questionable methods or have other unsavory qualities.

Yet another potential issue with such eponyms is that they may reflect the dark underbelly of the history of science.

Cross section of fallopian tube

For example, Asperger syndrome may have been first described by a woman—but the condition was named for a man. This case is probably more about luck of timing and particulars of awareness of the existing literature at a time when scientific reports were not as easily accessed across the globe as is the case nowadays. However, it can't be denied that most eponyms are named for men and that probably reflects the historical exclusion of women from science—and from scholarly endeavor in general.

A number of discussions have also questioned why many anatomical structures that are uniquely female are named with eponyms that honor men such as Fallopius, Bartholin, Skene, and so on.

Even though this my second consecutive article on the topic of eponyms, I'm still not finished! Stay tuned for Part 3 of my discussion...coming up in my next blog post. In that, I discuss the various lists of terminology and how we A&P teachers can best help our students deal with a changing terminology during this time of transition.

What's Up with Eponyms in A&P? Part 1

2018-07-29T16:58:00.000-05:00

Eponyms are terms based on a person's name—such as Langerhans islet. Often, it's the recognized discoverer of a structure, process, condition, medical procedure, or whatever.

Toponyms are similar, but are named for a place rather than a person. For example, Lyme disease is a toponym, named for a town in Connecticut where the condition was first identified. In anatomy and medical circles, toponyms are often lumped together with eponyms. I'll do that here, too—because my explanations apply equally to both kinds of terms.

In Anatomy & Physiology, you may notice some things about the use of eponyms and toponyms that you are wondering about. So here's the scoop...

First, you may wonder why I avoid the possessive form of eponyms. For example, Parkinson disease rather than Parkinson's disease. This method converts the possessive form to an adjective. By doing that, it's clear that Dr. Parkinson did not own the disease, nor did he have the condition himself. It's now very clear that the term refers to a particular disease named after Parkinson. I agree with this strategy.

It turns out that this has been the trend for a quite a while, but only recently becoming widespread in use. For example, the American Medical Association (AMA) and other professional organizations that have something to say about terminology, recommend this approach. Because I think a textbook should reflect contemporary usage and engage with emerging approaches that have recently become mainstream, it makes sense to go in this direction.

Something else you may wonder about is that some eponyms are capitalized and others are not. For example, why are fallopian tube and eustachian tube not capitalized when Corti organ and Henle loop are capitalized?

Honestly, I only recently learned about this issue—when my copyeditor and I started going back and forth changing each other's terms from capitalized to lowercase, back to capitalized again, then lowercase again. It turns out that it's an increasingly common style to drop the capitalization when the person's name is converted to an altered form. As when Fallopius is altered to fallopian.

What is important to remember is that using possessive forms eponyms is not wrong. Nor is capitalizing Haversian canal. However, neither usage is in favor around many professional circles right now. My purpose is merely to explain why my usage may differ from the way you and I were trained.

You may also wonder why I usually relegate eponyms to only secondary or alternate status when naming structures and processes of the body. And you may wonder how we handle these changes in usage in a world where some professionals still use the older terminology. Those answers will have to wait until my next few articles. This one is already too long!

Anatomy & Physiology

An A&P Lab Manual That Thinks Like a Student

What’s new—and what has always been different—about the Anatomy & Physiology Laboratory Manual and E-Labs

Start before you begin

Where was I?

And please don't make hamburger

Something new: Venn diagrams

Yes, we still color

Dissection is changing, too

And then there are the eLabs

We didn't forget the instructor

Even the paper matters

It doesn't have to marry our textbook

Try looking through it like a student

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Nothing Is “Normal”? Expect Variation

Why we keep rethinking human variation, representation, and the language of A&P

Variation isn't an exception to the story

Then there's that word: “normal”

So we counted them

And then something interesting happened

This wasn't a search-and-destroy mission

“Typical” doesn't mean everybody

What students see matters, too

Anatomy education still has some catching up to do

Why does this matter?

What does “normal” mean, anyway?

Another pass. And then another.

Expect variation

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Lost in the Chapter? Why A&P Students Get Two Outlines

How chapter outlines and summaries help A&P students build a conceptual framework

Structure isn't just decoration

Two—count 'em, TWO—chapter outlines

Then we tell the story

Then we tell them what we told them

An outline isn't magic

Terry took a fresh look at every chapter

The Chapter Summary isn't only for the end

But don't stop at rereading the summary

Tell students why it's there

A map through a complicated story

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Fascia: Following the Connections

Why this body-wide story keeps growing in Anatomy & Physiology

We've been going deep with fascia

Wait. Is there really a "fascial system"?

Why should A&P students care?

Fascia is becoming an A&P teaching issue, too

Peggie keeps us connected

More fascia in the 12th edition

Why isn't there a fascia chapter?

Ahead of the curve?

One chapter someday?

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What's Up with Eponyms in A&P? Part 3

Keep them? Dump them? Or learn to live in the messy middle?

It's not really a yes-or-no choice

Anatomy gives us a pretty good roadmap

But won't our students hear the eponyms?

Some eponyms aren't ready to leave

Physiology makes everything messier

Science itself is full of eponyms

So what did we decide?

The language keeps moving

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Say It. Take It Apart. Learn It.

How we rebuilt the terminology tools in Anatomy & Physiology, 12th Edition.

A word list with a job

Say it

Why not put the pronunciation right in the sentence?

Take it apart

Names change, too

Then Frank got the job

A global terminology cleanup