Kayla Combs stands at the head of the Anatomy Lab table surrounded by medical students examining their patient 鶹Ʒ Ss musculoskeletal system. 鶹Ʒ SIf you pull on this tendon here, it will cause the fingers to move, 鶹Ʒ S Combs demonstrates.

But the teacher isn 鶹Ʒ St a med school faculty member. She 鶹Ʒ Ss a doctoral candidate in UCF 鶹Ʒ Ss physical therapy program participating in an interdisciplinary session designed to better educate future doctors on human anatomy. She is one of three PT graduate students serving as teaching assistants during this year 鶹Ʒ Ss Anatomy Lab module.

鶹Ʒ SIt 鶹Ʒ Ss a win-win situation, 鶹Ʒ S says Daniel Topping, who directs the College of Medicine 鶹Ʒ Ss Anatomy Lab and began the physical-therapists-as-educators program. 鶹Ʒ SPhysical therapy students get more intensive anatomy training than our medical students because their profession is very anatomy dependent. They are so knowledgeable and great with the med students that it 鶹Ʒ Ss just like having another faculty member. It was an experiment that I think is going really well. 鶹Ʒ S

The College of Medicine 鶹Ʒ Ss Anatomy Lab module is unique nationally. Cadavers are considered a student 鶹Ʒ Ss first patient. First-year medical students don 鶹Ʒ St just memorize organs and body systems 鶹Ʒ S they become forensic detectives trying to determine their patient 鶹Ʒ Ss cause of death. PT students provide additional expertise, Topping says, because they have spent seven months studying in a cadaver lab compared with 17 weeks for med students.

The PT students 鶹Ʒ S Combs, Akash Bali and Kelly LaMaster 鶹Ʒ S were chosen based on their expertise and teaching experience. They come in every Friday for the four-hour lab, and teach under the supervision of Topping and other core and volunteer faculty.

“We get to open their eyes to what we do and offer them a different perspective on anatomy. 鶹Ʒ S 鶹Ʒ S Kayla Combs, physical therapy doctoral candidate

鶹Ʒ SWhat 鶹Ʒ Ss really good as physical therapy students, is that we get to open their eyes to what we do and offer them a different perspective on anatomy, 鶹Ʒ S Combs says, 鶹Ʒ Slike having them pull on tendons to see what the muscle actually does, actually seeing that it flexes the finger or flexes the toe. 鶹Ʒ S

鶹Ʒ SAnd in teaching them, we 鶹Ʒ Sre also teaching ourselves, 鶹Ʒ S Combs says. 鶹Ʒ SOur PT labs are purely about identification. For the med students, their lab is much more about investigating and asking questions, as they have to determine the cause of death of their 鶹Ʒ Spatient 鶹Ʒ S. So it 鶹Ʒ Ss been fun to see them question things, whether or not an organ looks normal or not and I learned a lot too from that process. 鶹Ʒ S

The PT students say the collaboration has been an opportunity to 鶹Ʒ Sget inside the mind of med students 鶹Ʒ S which will give them a better understanding of the physician 鶹Ʒ Ss perspective as far as pathologies, clinical diagnoses and treatment.

鶹Ʒ SIn the future when we need to talk to a physician about a patient we will know where the physicians mind is at or why they made the referral or recommendation, 鶹Ʒ S LaMaster says. 鶹Ʒ SWhen everyone is on the same page, the better the outcomes are going to be for the patient. 鶹Ʒ S

Medical students enjoy the casual peer-to-peer interaction, which they say helps them learn better.

鶹Ʒ SBeing students themselves, they understand what it is like to learn anatomy for the first time, 鶹Ʒ S says medical student Kevin Boyd. 鶹Ʒ SAnd so they 鶹Ʒ Sre able to sort of communicate a little differently than faculty, and we felt more comfortable asking them questions that we would probably be intimidated to ask faculty. 鶹Ʒ S

鶹Ʒ SI think interprofessional collaborations such as these will provide a more well-rounded healthcare provider both for physical therapists and medical doctors.” 鶹Ʒ S Patrick Pabian, program director for the Doctor of Physical Therapy program

With the development of UCF 鶹Ʒ Ss new Academic Health Science Center (AHSC), which will ultimately bring many UCF health programs to Lake Nona, Topping says such collaborations are only the beginning of an exciting future for healthcare education.

鶹Ʒ SAnatomy is a discipline that 鶹Ʒ Ss so fundamental to all healthcare professions, speech therapy, physical therapy, nursing, anyone involved in direct patient care, and we have such a great facility here, so it 鶹Ʒ Ss just a great place for us to collaborate and to begin partnerships. 鶹Ʒ S

He and other AHSC faculty hope to make such educational partnerships a staple for the new UCF health sciences center. 鶹Ʒ SIt was a very easy decision to make when Dr. Topping approached us with this idea, 鶹Ʒ S says Patrick Pabian, program director for the Doctor of Physical Therapy program. 鶹Ʒ SI think interprofessional collaborations such as these will provide a more well-rounded healthcare provider both for physical therapists and medical doctors. Getting our students working together and becoming familiar with each other as much as possible is paramount because it 鶹Ʒ Ss really going to benefit patients in the future. 鶹Ʒ S