“Anatomical Variations: Connecting Physicians and Anatomists”

Prairie Doc Perspective Week of June 15th, 2025
“Anatomical Variations: Connecting Physicians and Anatomists”
By Ethan L. Snow, PhD


It’s remarkable how much anatomy education and medical practice overlap, yet anatomist-physician collaborations are often underutilized for improving student learning and patient care outcomes.


Becoming an anatomist or a physician requires commitment to many years of education and practical training. Both generally require four years of comparable, comprehensive baccalaureate coursework followed by four or more years of concentrated graduate/medical education and practical training. Amid both career paths, students work diligently to achieve predefined benchmarks for competency in complex human anatomy, meticulous clinical applications, and interrelated skills. Nevertheless, it is natural for anatomists to lose insight about practical clinical skills and physicians to lose insight about anatomical intricacies – most notably while the other person is keenly maintaining expert-level knowledge and knowhow of that very information. Anatomical variations offer a course of action for efficiently and effectively addressing the “use it or lose it” principle for both experts.


Human anatomy is taught and learned according to its foundational morphologic norm – that is, the typical configuration, form, and function of structures in the body. Understanding typical anatomy allows physicians to draw clinical insights from patients’ chief complaints. For example, knowing the typical arrangement of bones, muscles, nerves, and vessels in the body allows orthopedic physicians to discern differential diagnoses and establish safe and effective surgical and therapeutic treatment plans for patients with musculoskeletal issues. However, anatomical variations – structures that do not present in typical location or form – are common and can complicate both learning and medical practice.


As authorities in the granularity of human anatomy, anatomists develop and maintain expertise about the development, presentation, and impact of anatomical variations, especially as they uncover specific cases during routine cadaveric dissection. As authorities in the minutiae of patient care, physicians develop and maintain expertise about adaptive clinical practices to address anatomical variations, especially as they come across specific cases during patient examinations and surgeries. In these regards, each professional can strategically benefit from the other’s expertise to create better outcomes, and this “bench-to-bedside” collaboration is known to promote translational medical education, high-definition patient care, and exemplary interprofessional behavior.


Despite their inherent benefits, strategic anatomist-physician collaborations appear underutilized. Investigating anatomical variations cases permitted by cadaveric donors and/or living patients offers one way to encourage these collaborations. Common field interest seems to effortlessly reciprocate enthusiasm from both parties. Anatomists can leverage workload designated for research/scholarship and physicians can fulfill contractual service obligations, thus offering a manageable framework for each to strategically contribute expertise and achieve high-quality and high-impact productivity. Simultaneously involving students can further distribute workload while providing them with meaningful research experience and influential mentorship.


As indicated, cadaveric donors and living patients play a critical role in this framework by willfully permitting analysis of their associated tissues and records. Human cadaver dissection offers complete and unrestricted views of anatomical variations, and patient records (diagnostic imaging, physician summaries, etc.) convey the clinical presentation and impact of variations. Anatomists, physicians, and students remain extremely grateful to each for their incredible contributions to advancing medical education and patient care.


Ethan L. Snow, PhD is an Anatomist and currently serves as an Assistant Professor of Innovation in Anatomy at South Dakota State University in Brookings, South Dakota. Follow The Prairie Doc® at www.prairiedoc.org, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and Threads. Prairie Doc Programming includes On Call with the Prairie Doc®, a medical Q&A show (most Thursdays at 7pm streaming on Facebook), 2 podcasts, and a Radio program (on SDPB), providing health information based on science, built on trust.