Current trends in anatomy course characteristics across US physician assistant programs

Anatomy is a required curricular component within physician assistant (PA) programs, but the Accreditation Review Commission on Education for the Physician Assistant (ARC-PA) does not regulate specific course characteristics such as how or when anatomy is taught or the inclusion or type of specific laboratory approaches. The growing number of newly accredited PA programs could impact trends in these and other course characteristics. This project presents descriptive and correlational outcomes of US PA programs and their anatomy course characteristics. Program names and year of initial accreditation were obtained from the ARC-PA website for currently accredited programs. Two independent evaluators reviewed and extracted data from each program website related to term(s) anatomy was taught, whether anatomy was taught independently or combined with other subjects, the instructional format of lab components, and anatomy credit hours. Additional contextual measures included the term system used, overall program and didactic curriculum lengths, and program credit hours. Summary and inferential statistics were used to test relationships between these data. Most anatomy courses are taught independently and in a single term, and the number of newly accredited PA programs since 2019 did not shift emphases on laboratory instruction. Programs averaged 5.5 credit hours for anatomy, but averages differed between semester versus quarter-system courses, independent anatomy courses versus courses that combined anatomy with other subjects, and courses that used dissection versus prosection laboratory instruction. Broad variation in program and course characteristics aligns with previous findings that local curricular decisions are made according to program and institution resources and constraints.