Hi Lisa,
Although I have retired from active classroom teaching almost 8 years ago, I still continue writing textbooks and, in that fashion, I am still teaching, though at a distance. In my textbooks, atlases, and review books I still discuss the classification of exocrine glands and if I were still lecturing I would still go through the classification scheme. I would expect medical and dental students to know that there are unicellular and multicellular glands. I would want them to know that there are serous, mucous, and mixed glands and examples of each. As far as acinar, tubular, tubuloacinar are concerned, if they knew that that's great but if they didn't that would also be fine with me. I would want them to know that the ducts of some glands branch and some do not, but as to whether a gland is simple or compound, that would not be of consequence in my view. My reason for this is not that I think that it is unimportant for these students to know this material, but because the scant amount of class time devoted to the Anatomical Sciences demand that we reduce the quantity of factual information that students are expected to learn.
Of course, in many other countries Histology, Embryology, Neuroanatomy, and Gross Anatomy are full-fledged courses that resemble those taught in US Medical and Dental School in the 1960's and their medical and dental students are expected to know as much as our students did in the 1960's.
Les
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Leslie P. Gartner
Professor of Anatomy (Retired)
Dental School
University of Maryland
Baltimore, MD
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