The A&P Textbook You May Have Overlooked

A new edition of my popular two-semester A&P textbook is coming—and I’d like to show you what makes it different. Who knows? Perhaps it’ll be a better fit for your students.

It's Anatomy & Physiology 12th edition by Patton, Bell, Thompson, and Williamson. Published by Elsevier, it's scheduled for release on September 1, 2026. If you're an A&P instructor and would like a free examination copy to explore as soon as it becomes available, click this link:

Reserve a Review Copy

I know that you are wondering: What ARE the big upgrades to the new Anatomy & Physiology 12th edition? Too many to describe in one blog post, that's for sure. So I'll simply list a few here and then follow up with a series of additional posts with more details about the revisions, why we made them, and how they will help your students learn A&P.

One thing we did was add a new chapter! But wait, these A&P textbooks are already too big, right? Right. So we also made this edition 40 pages shorter. 

The new chapter is titled Human Microbiome and draws together existing coverage of this increasingly important A&P concept from previous editions. It then updates and expands microbiome coverage into a concise, accessible, illustrated narrative of its important role in human structure and function. To our knowledge, this textbook was the first major two-semester undergrad A&P textbook to offer a distinct Homeostasis chapter. Now we believe it's the first to offer a Human Microbiome chapter.

Throughout the book, we made our explanations and layout more concise and either removed bits of content not needed for an essential understanding of A&P or moved it to our online resources. For example, our large, comprehensive Glossary—a student favorite—has now been moved to the online Evolve Student Resources. That alone has reduced the amount of pain caused by carrying a huge A&P textbook around!

We turned the story of the human reproductive systems inside out, upside down, and flipped around. Our flipped narrative puts the female system first. I think that's another notable "first" among major textbooks. But there's a lot more. We upended and improved the traditional coverage of the genital organs and reproductive functions—which I'll explain in a subsequent post. 

We've added to our already groundbreaking coverage of fascia, added some cool videos from the Complete Anatomy suite of resources, replaced the content of all of our Career Choices sidebars with new stories about current health professionals, improved our representation of variations of the human body, and a whole lot more!

The whole "Patton Team" of authors, editors, and designers has been working long hours over many months to update, upgrade, and upend our story of human anatomy and physiology. Our previous revisions have made the narrative clearer while incorporating the latest scientific thinking about the topics we cover. This revision steps that work up a couple of notches—so much so that we took extra time to get it right.

The Patton Team met virtually nearly every week to discuss and debate every aspect of this revision. I think the extensive research, lively discussions, coworking, and great care we took have made this a truly remarkable revision.

Since inviting my awesome coauthors to the Anatomy & Physiology project, I've been meaning to introduce them in this blog. So I'm taking this opportunity.

You may already know Frank Bell, Terry Thompson, and Peggie Williamson from their years of active participation in the Human Anatomy & Physiology Society (HAPS). Terry Thompson is a President Emeritus of HAPS. All three have earned several relevant degrees, including the Master of Science in Human Anatomy & Physiology Instruction (HAPI), in which I served as their faculty mentor. Frank Bell and Peggie Williamson currently serve on the faculty of the HAPI program. 

Besides having worked with them in these capacities, I have enjoyed their contributions to previous editions of this and other textbook revision projects. Working on this revision—and observing their keen awareness of how our students read and learn A&P—has solidified my view that they are exactly the right A&P educators for this team.

Be sure to subscribe to the Patton Anatomy & Physiology blog to stay up to date on upcoming posts introducing specific revisions in our new edition!

Diverse Representation in Anatomy & Physiology

From the earliest days of my involvement with the Anatomy & Physiology textbook, I've strived to ensure that the representation of people in the illustration program, the chapter narratives, the examples and cases presented, reflects the diversity of humanity. 

My publisher has fully supported my (rather expensive) requests for creating new artwork and shooting new photographs. They have also supported my chapter revisions and have helped me find and revise passages that need improvement.

Why is this important? 

Our students—my readers and users of the textbook—must see themselves and their lived experiences reflected in this textbook and other learning materials. If they cannot, then it's difficult for them to see themselves fully accepted as part of the humanity that we explore in the anatomy and physiology course. This perceived lack of acceptance is a very real barrier to learning. When they cannot easily see themselves as part of the world of A&P, then it's also a barrier for students as they pursue their career path. 

Diverse representation in Anatomy & Physiology is also important because students must develop an understanding, acceptance, and appreciation of the normal variation and diversity among the human population if they are to be successful as healthcare and athletic professionals. 

The seventh edition of Anatomy & Physiology marked the moment when diverse and inclusive representation became a goal of every revision cycle. In the tenth edition, we were able to significantly diversify our photo collection and anatomical illustrations. 

For example, in the tenth edition, we were among the first to use Black female subjects for the key illustrations of human musculature—overturning centuries of white males serving that role.

Diversity and inclusion has been a primary goal of the upcoming eleventh edition of Anatomy & Physiology, as well. As we review our page proofs and make our final tweaks, we continue our strong effort to make our textbook one of the most inclusive science textbooks on the market.

However, as much as we have made admirable progress and maintained our lead in this area, we still have a long way to go. It's a daunting task. And the path is not always clear. The resources are not always available. Our awareness is still expanding. Nonetheless, I think you'll be pleased with the new edition when it is published later this year. 

And I hope you'll join us in pointing out where we've made good progress and where we still need to improve. We're in this together.

Stress Deserves Its Own Chapter

One of the advantages of organizing anatomy and physiology concepts into short, modular chapters is that it gives us more flexibility in teaching. It also permits us to focus on important topics that are often buried within a large chapter that covers many subtopics.  Taking this advantage, Anatomy & Physiology puts the clinically important concepts of stress into a single, independent chapter.

The concepts of stress interconnect with concepts of neuroscience, endocrinology, immunology, and many others—covered in diverse chapters of a textbook and diverse modules of an A&P course. Putting the core concepts of stress into its own independent chapter means that the instructor has more flexibility in where they place in their own course structure—into their own unique telling of the story of the human body.

Our book was the first A&P textbook to have an independent stress chapter. Since its introduction, we've been keeping the content up to date and relevant to student learning—and to the clinical applications of stress they'll be making in their professional courses and careers. 

More recently, we enlisted the advice of the late Dr. Bruce McEwen, an icon of the modern concepts of human stress and it's real-life implications. Contributing author Dr. Peggie Williamson and I used Bruce's advice and his generous stack of resources to give our stress chapter a major refresh and update. You will find that the engaging story-of-stress approach remains, but with the more recent parts of that story reflected with greater clarity and relevance.

We need not let the concepts of stress be stressors themselves in our teaching and learning. Using the stress chapter in Anatomy & Physiology—a reader favorite—can help us all better understand the pivotal role stress can have in wellness and disease.

Pandemic Scramble: Adapting to Remote Learning, Suddenly

Well, friends, I'll bet most of us didn't see this pandemic coming. Not to the extent of impact it's had on the teaching and learning of anatomy and physiology. But it's here and we're going to roll with the punches and deliver a positive and productive learning experience for our students, right?

To help us all get ourselves organized and on the right track as we adapt to suddenly having to move our face-to-face course homes to a remote venue out there in the vast expanse of space, I've assembled a few "get started" resources to help you adapt.

Quickly Moving to Remote Delivery—The Musical

This is an "emergency" bonus episode of my podcast (The A&P Professor). The brief audio presentation presents nineteen tips on how to get started. And there are three A&P songs from my friend and fellow A&P teacher, Greg Crowther. For a sing-along! We could all use a light-hearted sing-along about sodium ions right now, am I right?

Go to theAPprofessor.org/64b for an audio player plus a lot of links and other resources. Or subscribe in your favorite podcast player and look for Episode 64b.

There is also an earlier episode called Mid-Winter Winterizing of Our Courses meant to help prepare us before this all flooded in upon us. Many of these prep tips are still useful, even as the metaphorical flood waters continue to rise all around us. Go to theAPprofessor.org/63b

TEACH Instructor Resources for Anatomy & Physiology

This little gem has been there all along! Really. In your Evolve (Instructor) Resources for Anatomy & Physiology 10th Edition.  TEACH has all kinds of tips and strategies that can be used to generate ideas for learning activities that can be adapted for remote teaching.

Included in TEACH are:

• Lesson Plans
• Student Handouts
• PowerPoint Slides
• Pretest Questions and Pretest Answers

If you don't have an Evolve account, then just go to evolve.elsevier.com and click on Sign In in the upper right, then click on Create Account near the bottom of the form that pops up. Make sure you apply for a faculty account. It will take a day or so to verify your faculty status. In the search box on the home page, or when you click Catalog at the top, type in Evolve Resources for Anatomy & Physiology 10th Edition, then request access. The TEACH resources will be listed in the Instructor Resources tab.

But wait! There's more...

Teaching Tips

Also found in your  Evolve (Instructor) Resources for Anatomy & Physiology 10th Edition, a separate sheet of advice—simply called Teaching Tips—supplements the TEACH resources to spark ideas for your transition to remote teaching.  

Besides the TEACH resources and Teaching Tips, there are all kinds of other resources in your  Evolve (Instructor) Resources for Anatomy & Physiology 10th Edition:

• Audience Response Questions—meant for "clicker" systems in a classroom, they can be easily adapted for online presentations to spark student thinking during an online "lecture" or demonstration.
• Image Collection—contains (labeled and unlabeled) jpeg and PowerPoint versions of each image from the textbook.
• Test Bank—can be a great resource for quickly constructing online quizzes and reviews. Consider using them for Testing-as-Teaching, a type of retrieval practice mentioned later in this post.

The A&P Professor

I already mentioned The A&P Professor podcast, but there is lot more there for you than those "emergency" bonus episodes. It's worth exploring the whole list for practical tips and advice as you move to remote teaching. The great thing about podcast episodes is that you can listen to them while you are wiping down the surfaces in your home, making your family's meals, and rearranging your stacks of toilet paper. Here are a few selected topics to start with:

• Advice for online teaching
• 50: Connecting in the Distance Course Special (general advice for staying connected to students remotely—especially important at this time)
• 52: The Case for Case Studies (case studies are a great way to teach remotely)
• 19: Caring for Students Helps Them Succeed
• Handling the chaos
• 63: Mistakes in Teaching Anatomy & Physiology (yep, if we're gonna make a lot of mistakes, this will be when—learn how to handle that)
• 51: The Case for Transparency (why being up front and honest with our students about what's happening is important)
• Testing-as-Teaching (retrieval practice)
• 01:Spaced Retrieval Practice
• 02: Testing As a Teaching Strategy

Besides the podcast, The A&P Professor website includes other resources, such as online seminars for teaching anatomy and physiology. Here are a couple that may be helpful as this time:

• Online Lecture Previews (can be adapted for any kind of online presentation)
• Testing as Teaching (randomized testing to allow multiple attempts—using retrieval practice for learning)

Free eText

VitalSource and Elsevier have partnered to provide eText access to students. To assist students at disrupted semester-calendar schools who are losing access to course materials due to COVID-19 campus closures, VitalSource has been joined by Elsevier to offer free access to etexts to students whose classes have moved online from March 16 through May 25, 2020. Students will be able to access the expansive catalog of eTexts from participating publishers through the VitalSource Bookshelf app effective immediately.

• See the announcement
• FAQs for students and educators
• List of publishers and resellers who are supporting this effort
• For students who need assistance accessing free etexts

Besides this being useful to students who are "stuck without" their textbooks, it can offer additional opportunities to connect with students in a remote environment. 

For example, something that I do in an online course I teach is let my students "subscribe" to the highlights and notes in my own copy of the eText version of the textbook. 

I can mark areas of particular importance, add commentary on what they should be looking at in a section or illustration, and clarify concepts that commonly challenge student learning. This could be particularly useful in "holding the hand" of a confused and dazed student who is trying to adapt to a new learning environment.

Coloring Book

I've been seeing a lot of advice to folks in general, telling them to sit around as a family and color in their coloring books. That makes a lot of sense in terms of diffusing stress and connecting in a positive way with those with whom we are house-bound. 

Why not suggest to students to do that, but use Mosby's Anatomy & Physiology Coloring Book as one of their coloring books? 

In a post from my blog The A&P Student, I recommend coloring as a way to study anatomy and physiology in a new and fun way—that also calms the nerves. So their nerves will become calm as they study their nerves! Check out Coloring Books Are Powerful Study Tools (And They Help Manage Stress).

Okay, whew! That's enough for now, eh? Don't hesitate to reach out if I can be of help to you. 

New Unit Pre-Tests Help Jump-Start Student Learning

A particularly exciting update in the new edition of Anatomy & Physiology is the new learning feature in the opening of each unit of the book.

Recall that A&P is chunked into more, smaller chapters than other 2-semester A&P textbooks to reduce a reader's cognitive load while learning. This improves both the reader's engagement with the book, making them more likely to actually read it, and the overall ability to learn from it. These small chapters are grouped into six logical units, mapped out in the color-coded list on the first page of the book (facing the cover) that corresponds to the color tabs visible on the page edges.

In previous editions, the unit-opener page had a listing of the chapters within that unit plus a brief introduction to the "story" of the unit. I have now expanded that into a two-page spread that also includes a brief pre-test to get students engaged in the upcoming topics.

Learning science shows that pre-tests help jump-start student learning. Long used solely to measure students' prior knowledge, pre-tests have demonstrated their own ability to enhance learning outcomes—even if teachers never look at the scores. I have found this to be profoundly true in my own A&P teaching.

The concept and design of our new unit openers was worked out by textbook learning guru Michael Greer, veteran A&P teacher Terry Thompson, and myself. Terry then worked in consultation with me and our editors and book designers to execute the final versions.

Students will see just a few illustrated questions that help students refresh learning from prior chapters that they'll need when reading the new unit, along with questions that preview new concepts they'll encounter. Such pre-testing "primes the pump" by getting them thinking about key concepts ahead of their reading. And it sets the stage for connecting new learning with prior learning.

Readers get immediate feedback on the accuracy of their answers by using the answer key printed sideways along the page edge.  Just like in a magazine quiz, eh? That ensures that they're not accidentally remembering the wrong answer as they read.

Readers also get an embedded hint that tells them why the pre-test is there (to jump-start their learning).

Of course, our students may just skip the unit openers. So we need to tell them about it. Continued and emphatic reminders of the value of these pre-tests in making their reading and learning easier is a key to its role in student success in our course.

New 10th Edition of Patton's A&P textbook is now available!

I'm excited about the official release of the new edition of my textbook for 2-semester courses in human anatomy and physiology!

Although at first glance the cover of Anatomy & Physiology looks similar to that of the previous 9th edition—black background with splashes of bright colors—closer inspection reveals a series of bright human figures.

Those brightly colored human figures may at first appear to be medical images. However, they are artist’s renderings of what the human skeleton looks like as a person plays basketball.

The human skeleton in action represents several important aspects of what readers will learn by studying this textbook. First, the images get us thinking about what is going on inside our bodies as we do ordinary things—as we live our lives. 

The fact that the cover of Anatomy & Physiology shows a sequence of images reminds us that even simple processes are made up of many individual steps. We can also clearly see that form fits function, that the elements of the skeleton fit together and move in a way that allows certain kinds of actions.

That phrase, form fits function, has been standardized into that one formulation—from its many variants—in this edition. I have used it repeatedly, where appropriate, to help students absorb and eventually own that important principle of anatomy and physiology.

And a version of this explanation of the cover art is found just inside inside the book. Curious students who pick up the book for the first time may thus get a head start on learning human science.

Over the next few weeks and months, expect more posts from me that explain the story behind all the great new things you'll find inside the new edition of Anatomy & Physiology. Stay tuned by subscribing to my newsletter!

In the mean time, contact my friends at Elsevier to get a review copy or to schedule a conversation with a consultant who can tell you all about the new edition.

NOTE: The digital versions and binder-ready version of Anatomy & Physiology will be released very soon!

Easter Eggs in A&P

In my introductory post for this blog, I promised some behind-the-scenes trivia from the Anatomy & Physiology textbook—and I realize I have yet to deliver on that promise. So, with actual Easter eggs still fresh on our minds, I thought I'd reveal a few bits of the "hidden information" that gamers like to call easter eggs.

This round (yes, I'm implying more in the future) features a few visual easter eggs.

First up is that illustration in the Big Picture section that introduces the Anatomy & Physiology textbook, It's on page 2, facing the opening page of Chapter 1. The woman in the central photo of that illustration is my wife, Jenny. 

Early editions of Anatomy & Physiology used a different model, but we needed to update the photo for a planned rearrangement of its elements. So Jenny and I went out to our college's Lake Patton (that's what I call it, anyway), and Jenny posed on a boulder in the same position as the original model (who was sitting on stairs). She wore clothing of similar color and style to the drawn art components, and held a book the same way.

Although we have reconfigured that Big Picture illustration a few times since then, we're still using Jenny's picture. For each edition, our production team replaces the cover within the photo with a cover to match that edition.

The ninth edition of Anatomy & Physiology features a whole new set of photos that depict different types of body movements, such flexion, extension, circumduction, etc. Most of them appear in Chapter 14 (Articulations).

Before I tell the story of the new photos, I'd like to mention that I had some hesitation in replacing some of the older photos. I had some ideas for a new approach, so I finally made the leap to a new set of photos with a consistent presentation. But a few of the older images were from a way-back photo with my co-author Gary Thibodeau, featuring his two kids, Doug and Beth, who were teens at the time. Although I hated to lose that "family connection," I think the new images work really well for teaching, too.

The new series was shot at a huge photo studio in St. Louis, just down the street from my old high school. I live near St. Louis and my editors are all based at the St. Louis offices of Elsevier Publishing. It was an amazing experience. The advanced equipment, advanced facilities, and skilled photographers and professional models, all made the several days of shooting seem more like fun than work. Before that day, I didn't even know there was such a thing as a "foot model," so it was a great learning experience, too!

All those photos were shot in front of a gigantic green backdrop that curved forward to cover the floor. After choosing our final selections of each photo, the photographer digitally replaced the green background with a transparent background. By doing so, each model appears to have the page itself as a background—and the text can be easily wrapped around some of the images without being distracting. I also like the "clean" look of photos with no apparent background.

A pair of illustrations on page 196, in Chapter 10 (Skin) are two more more illustrations with a bit of a story.

Figure 10-19 is another photo from the multi-day photo shoot I just mentioned. We wanted a new shot of male pattern baldness and we hadn't hired a model for just for that shot.

In fact, this shot wasn't even on our planned list of new photos. But when it came up, a photographer said, "just a minute!" and picked up his camera as he ran off to a suite of offices down the hall. He came back with a smile and great photo of a colleague from an office down the hall.

On the same page (196), that photo of the mix of black and white hairs that make up a typical head of gray hair is a shot of my head. When I was working on revising this chapter in a previous edition, I grabbed a digital camera and handed it to my wife, Jenny, and asked her to take a close up of hairs on my temple. I'm thinking of using this on the "about the author" page in the next edition.

Getting back to that amazing photo shoot in St. Louis, there is one more photo I want to mention. It's a shot of a slice of pizza used in a Case Study on page 961, near the end of Chapter 41 (Nutrition and Metabolism). It was nearing lunch time on the first shooting day, and an astute photographer brought up the "pizza shot" we had on our planning list. He suggested ordering a pizza from a nearby pizzeria that had very photogenic pizza that also happened to taste amazing.

Although it wasn't the thin-crust St. Louis style pizza that had originated in that very neighborhood, I have to say it really was amazing. And photogenic. And it really was that loaded with toppings (no trickery, truly!).

Wow, here I am at the end of a too-long blog post and I haven't even covered the tip of the iceberg. So I'll have to make this a recurring series of behind-the-scenes trivia, gossip, and St. Louis food recommendations. Be sure to subscribe, so you don't miss it!