What are We Measuring in Anatomy Education? An Exploratory Mapping from Anatomical Learning to Clinical Competence

Anatomical knowledge is a necessary foundation for clinical practice, but clinical competence develops progressively through its integration with other foundational sciences and supervised clinical experience. The extent to which anatomy education research evaluates downstream application of anatomical learning remains unclear. In this Perspective, supported by an exploratory metadata-based mapping, we examined whether reported outcomes are concentrated at proximal educational levels or extend to clinical performance and healthcare impact. A Scopus search conducted on 2 June 2026 retrieved 19,956 records. After duplicate removal, restriction to original articles, and application of predefined anatomy-education filters, 8088 articles were retained. Titles, abstracts, and author keywords were classified using conservative hierarchical rules into perception/descriptive outcomes, anatomical knowledge, applied anatomical skills, clinical reasoning/professional behavior, patient/healthcare impact, or unclear/not classified. Outcomes related to clinical reasoning/professional behavior and patient/healthcare impact, the two highest translational categories, were identified in 3.20% of the refined corpus and 4.24% of classified records. Signals corresponding to applied anatomical skills, clinical reasoning/professional behavior, or patient/healthcare impact increased over time, whereas the odds of outcomes specifically related to clinical reasoning/professional behavior or patient/healthcare impact did not increase significantly. These findings do not indicate that anatomy education fails to contribute to clinical competence. Rather, they suggest that the literature more often documents proximal or applied outcomes than direct downstream transfer. Outcome selection should therefore be aligned with the stated purpose and curricular stage of each intervention, while future longitudinal and clinically integrated studies examine anatomy's contributory role within the broader development of competence.