A survey investigation of the imaging practices of human body donors in gross anatomy laboratories

The imaging of human body donors, as photographs and videos, is increasing in need as digital access of educational materials increases. In the past several years, several professional societies have published guidelines and recommendations for imaging human body donors for all who work with human body donors. However, the implementation of policies, the storage of images, and the compliance with these policies are largely unknown. The Human Anatomy and Physiology Society Anatomical Donor Stewardship Committee distributed a survey to determine the policies for imaging human body donors to institutions that use human body donors through professional anatomy organization listservs. A total of 74 (n = 74) responses were returned. The most common policy was to request permission before any imaging of human donors. Imaging policies were influenced by the amount of donors, where the donors were obtained (internal programs, external programs, or mixed), but not by the type of institution or the use of the donors (dissection, prosection, etc.). Of those who took images, photographs were more common over videos for both educational and research use. However, those who took videos for education mainly reported policies prohibiting imaging. When storing images, more restrictive imaging policies were more likely to report secure storage of digital donor materials. This study shows that each institution still has a variety of policies for imaging of human donors, and not all follow the published guidelines. Overall, the landscape of current policies demonstrates a strong need to standardize policies for imaging of donors.