Morphology, the new challenges for 2015

In recent decades we assisted in continuous changes which affect the teaching process of basic sciences in the medical curriculum: 1) The remarkable progress of some scientific fields such as molecular biology and genetics. 2) The inclusion of ethics and bioethics courses. 3) The consequent decrease in the of credits of our courses (anatomy, histology and embryology). 4) The difficulties of access to public and private funding for research on morphological issues. 5) The scarcity of postgraduate courses in the morphological area. Ironically, these disadvantageous conditions for morphological science occurs in parallel with advances in medical imaging techniques, procedures that require a high anatomical knowledge. On the other hand, the difficulty in the access to human corpses, the inorganic increase enrollment in health careers, the pressure from the political world to reduce their duration and the emergence -from the social world-of themes like inclusion and equity, forced anatomists and now we have: more students -with different cultural capital-, fewer teachers, less access to cadavers and a high demand for courses of applied morphology. To address this adverse situation, we propose: 1) Move morphological courses to the second or third semester of the undergraduate curriculum, thereby accessing to mature students, who face in a responsible way their training. 2) Create chapters of regional morphology at higher levels of the curriculum, so to bring the anatomical knowledge at the time of the clinical request. 3) In relation to neuroanatomical topics, leave matters such as internal configuration, nuclei, nerve pathways and neuronal connectivity, to treat them at higher levels, closer to the rotations in neurology and neurosurgery. 4) Technify evaluation processes of our courses, using different platforms and teaching management support offered by universities, resources that enable an optimization of time devoted to academic evaluation. 5) Develop remedial programs for students who enter by special admission mechanisms to health careers.