2025 Anato-Bee Regional Competitions

• Lab Introduction: A lab introduction will be presented to all participants before lunch covering ethics related to cadaver donation and dissection, discussing what to expect when meeting a cadaver, and providing guidelines for respectful behavior in the anatomy lab.
• Meeting the Donors: Prior to entering the anatomy laboratory, students will be required to sign form(s) pertaining to donor confidentiality. Students will participate in a brief introductory session in the anatomy lab to familiarize themselves with the donors and acclimate to the novel testing environment. Students will have the opportunity to ask questions about the donation process and/or anatomical content.
• Reflections: The day after the practical examination, before the oral and final sub-test of the competition, students will work through a guided reflection as they process their experience in a cadaver lab.

• Students will be provided with personal protective equipment (gloves, apron, etc.) before the exam and meeting the donors. You will also be provided with materials to take the examination.
• The lab practical will contain 50 multiple choice questions. 40 of these questions will be anatomy focused and 10 histology focused. The practical will include tagged donor structures, models (whole or disarticulated skeleton), and histology images.
• Students are not allowed to touch the donors during the practical. This ensures tags remain consistent between participants as they rotate through questions.
• Students will have one minute per question, totaling 50 minutes for this sub-test.
• Tagged structures will be only those indicated in the Anatomy and Histology Checklists
• We recommend using the Anatomy and Histology Atlases to review this content to become familiar with the differences between illustrations and a real human body.
• Students will NOT be provided with their scores for this sub-test until the completion of the competition.

• A standardized patient (SP) in medical education is one that has been trained to accurately present the signs and symptoms associated with a specific disease or disorder. 
• There will be ten standardized patients located in separate classrooms or mock clinical examination rooms/stations at each regional competition site. The SP cases will be identical at all regional competition sites.
• Each student will be randomly assigned to work with another regional competition participant. 
• Each standardized patient will read an illness script that characterizes a single disease/disorder. Illness scripts may include patient demographics (age, race, ethnicity, etc.), history of the present illness(HPI), signs and symptoms, and time course of the illness (recent, chronic). 
• Each student will be allowed to ask TWO questions from the list provided in the example below. The students will take alternate turns in asking their questions. Student A – Question 1, followed by Student B – Question 1. Student A - Question 2, followed by Student B – Question 2. A total of FOUR questions may be asked of the standardized patient. 
• Students will alternate their roles as Student A. SP encounter #1: Student A is “Suzy.” Student B is “Joe.” SP encounter #2: Student A is “Joe.” Student B is “Suzy.” Until all 10 patients have been interviewed.
• SP’s will only respond to student questions with YES/NO answers. Responses are standardized. SP’s will give the same responses to participant’s questions across the regional competitions.
• Every participant will be provided with the list of all 40 possible Anato-Bee Standardized Patient Cases.
• Participants will select their diagnosis for each SP case – by marking their SP form. The form will be turned into the SP Regional Coordinator for grading. 
• Students will NOT be provided with their scores for this subtest until the completion of the competition.

Scenario: Young woman sitting on chair in examination room with a male toddler (doll/mannequin, etc.) sitting on her lap.

Competition Participants: Good morning, what brings you to the clinic today?

Standardized Patient: Hello. My name is Lucia Hernandez and this is my 4-year old son Javier. I am from Puerto Rico, but my son was born here in the U.S. I am a single mother and work as a CNA (certified nurses aide) at the long-term care center for elderly adults, 2 blocks from this clinic. Javier and I live in a small apartment here in the center of the city. I don’t make a lot of money at my job, but my parents are also here from Puerto Rico, and they help us both, as much as they can. Javier does go to a “Head Start” pre-school in our neighborhood. They do a good job preparing their students for kindergarten, but it is also a place where many cold and flu viruses are circulated among the children. Children are not supposed to attend if they are ill or have a fever, but I think some of them do not have any symptoms when they leave for the pre-school – but develop them once they are there. There are many times I have had to leave work to pick Javier up and take him to my parents because he started showing signs of a cold, especially with prolonged coughing. 

For the last two nights, Javier has had very long “coughing spells” after I have put him to sleep for the night. They are so severe that they wake him up and then it is difficult to get him to go back to sleep. I do not smoke cigarettes, but my father does, and I have noticed that on the days that Javier spends with my parents, even though he is not sick and does not have a fever, he does seem to cough more, when he is with his Grandpa. Javier is a very active child; he loves to run and play on the playground behind our apartment building. Recently I have noticed, that at this time of year when it is so hot and humid – that even if he runs for a short period of time he seems short of breath and he says that his chest “hurts.” That’s when he usually just asks to go back inside to play quietly in our apartment. I did want to let you know that Javier may have had an allergic reaction to shellfish about a year ago, but he was never tested, I just make sure that he is never given any shrimp-based dishes. What do you think could be wrong with my son?

Participants are allowed to ask their questions NOW. Maximum total of 4 questions between the TWO participants.

1. Have the symptoms you are describing been present since birth? 

• Patient Answer: NO

2. Can the symptoms you are describing be alleviated by corrective surgery? 

• Patient Answer: NO

3. Do other family members have similar symptoms?

• Patient Answer: YES

4. Have these symptoms become more noticeable as he has gotten older?

• Patient Answer: YES

5. Are his symptoms related to lifestyle choices/environmental factors? 

• Patient Answer: YES

6. Are your symptoms related to uncontrolled cell division of specific cell types?

• Patient Answer: NO

7. Would you describe his symptoms as present only intermittently? 

• Patient Answer: YES

8. Have his symptoms recently gotten much worse or worsened over weeks to months?

• Patient Answer: YES

9. Is there anything you have done that seems to minimize or alleviate his symptoms.

• Patient Answer: NO

10. Would collecting a sample of body fluids aid in my diagnosis of his illness?

• Patient Answer: YES

11. Would sending your son to our Diagnostic Imaging department aid in my diagnosis of your illness?

• Patient Answer: YES

Participants will then write down the name or number of the suspected illness out of the 40 provided illnesses. The correct diagnosis for this specific patient example is asthma.

• Participants will be seated in chairs in the front-most rows of a large classroom/auditorium.
• Chaperones will be allowed to observe this final competition in real time. The audience will be seated behind the competitors, at the back of the auditorium.
• A question will be asked out loud by the sub-test moderator. The question will be repeated a second time.
• Participants will have 60 seconds to enter their response using an electronic polling system on their personal devices. Reasonable spelling alternatives will be counted as correct.
• The electronic polling system will tabulate students correct and incorrect responses in real time. When a participant enters a third incorrect response – no further correct answers will be added to their sub-test score. Example: If a participant has three incorrect responses for the first ten oral questions that are asked, their final sub-test score would be 7 total correct responses.
• A total of 30 integrated oral questions may be asked to participants. These questions will be identical at all four regional competition sites. See example question provided below. 
• This final sub-test score will be added to each competitor’s cumulative point total from the previous day’s sub-tests.

Moderator:   

A patient reports that they have always had issues with constipation and infrequent defecation. An X-ray using a contrast agent like barium, shows a distended colon. A biopsy taken from the colon wall shows the absence of specialized clusters of cells. What cell type may have failed to migrate during embryonic development to this region of the digestive tract?

The moderator will then repeat this prompt. Afterwards, students are given 60 seconds to type their short answer response in the electronic polling system and submit their answer.

Answer: Neural crest cells