Advan. Physiol. Edu. 31: 244, 2007;
doi:10.1152/advan.00016.2007
1043-4046/07 $8.00
ADV PHYSIOL EDUC 31:244, 2007
© 2007 American Physiological Society
LETTER TO THE EDITOR
Paul H. Brand
Department of Pharmacology and Physiology
College of Medicine
University of Toledo
3035 Arlington Ave.
Toledo, Ohio 43614-5804
E-mail: paul.brand{at}utoledo.edu
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Idiosyncratic Usage in Physiology Objectives
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The publication by the American Physiological Society (APS) of objectives as an instructional aide provides a useful service for faculty members preparing teaching materials (1). Ideally, these objectives provide guidance in selecting topics to present or emphasize. However, careful editing of the objectives is important to avoid the inclusion of idiosyncratic or obscure terminology that may cause confusion and wasted effort. For example, consider the following objective:
GI 85. Contrast the colonic motor activity during a "mass movement" with that during haustral shuttling and the consequence of each type of colonic motility.
The phrase "haustral shuttling" does not appear in the section on colonic motility or in the index of four current popular textbooks of medical physiology (2–6), although the discussion of colonic motility in the monograph by Barrett (2) apparently explains the concept. A search for "haustral shuttling" in Highwire (including PubMed) and Google Scholar yielded only one reference (7), which was published in 1975. The introduction to this article mentions haustral shuttling, without any explanation, and refers to an abstract published in Gut in 1969 (8). This abstract concerns the issue of whether or not the haustra represent fixed anatomical structures, but it does not contain the phrase haustral shuttling. There, the trail ends.
Although the APS objectives primarily emphasize consensus topics that should be covered in a medical physiology course, it seems likely that this example is not the only obscure term that can be found therein. Faculty members using the objectives would provide a valuable service if they called attention to other such examples as they come upon them.
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REFERENCES
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- American Physiological Society. American Physiological Society Medical Curriculum Objectives Project. Gastrointestinal Medical Physiology Objectives. http://www.the-aps.org/education/MedPhysObj/gastro.htm [15 March 2007].
- Barrett KE. Gastrointestinal Physiology. New York: Lange Medical Books/McGraw-Hill, 2006, p. 162.
- Berne RM, Levy MN, Koeppen BM, Stanton BA (editors). Physiology. St. Louis, MO: Mosby, 2004, p. 560–563.
- Boron WF, Boulpaep EL. Medical Physiology: a Cellular and Molecular Approach. Philadelphia, PA: Elsevier/Saunders, 2005, p. 890.
- Costanzo LS. Physiology. Philadelphia, PA: Elsevier/Saunders, 2006, p. 342.
- Guyton AC, Hall JE. Textbook of Medical Physiology. Philadelphia, PA: Elsevier/Saunders, 2006, p. 788–789.
- Margulis JA, Stoughton AR, Stein LA. Non-contractile movement of tantalum powder in the canine rectum. Am J Roentgenol 125: 244–250, 1975.[Abstract]
- Ritchie JA, Ardran GM, Truelove SC. Haustral movement in human colon (Abstract). Gut 10: 1048, 1969.[ISI][Medline]
Copyright © 2007 by the American Physiological Society.
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