Seventeen weeks of anatomy and pathology analysis culminated for first-year medical students on February 11 as they presented their Autopsy Reports for their first patients, people who willed their bodies to science.
Sixteen teams of students presented their findings to a judging panel of faculty members and a renowned local expert, Dr. Jan Garavaglia, chief medical examiner for Orange and Osceola counties, and star of聽 Discovery Health鈥檚 鈥淒r. G: Medical Examiner.鈥�
鈥淭ypical medical schools are not going to have you talk about pathophysiology and why the patient died,鈥� she said.聽 鈥淭his is really a novel way to introduce the students to critical thinking and putting the pieces of the puzzle together.鈥�
The 麻豆原创 medical students diagnosed illnesses including chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, pneumonia, lung cancer and Cushing鈥檚 disease. They arrived at their conclusions based on visual evidence, biopsies and other tissue samples examined under a microscope. After each presentation, the judges revealed the patient鈥檚 official cause of death and students were graded based on the accuracy of their findings.
At the end of the day, two teams were selected as winners. The first was Group 7, whose members were: Adam Almaguer, Deeva Berera, Davd Cantu, David Griffin, Kirstin LaBell and Jennifer Loftus . The other winning team was Group 5: Christal Crooks, Lauren Furman, Errol Inci, Shannon Moore, Jeffrey Peacock, Matthew Schwenke and Pouya Shoolizadeh.
Each winning team member will take home a cash prize, thanks to a generous donation to the College of Medicine. While there could only be two winning teams, anatomy professor Dr. Andrew Payer applauded all the hard work, analysis and spirit of inquiry that went into the reports.聽 鈥淥ur goal is to make sure students aren鈥檛 just learning for the sake of learning,鈥� he said. 鈥淏ecause they are going to be physicians, we want them to apply this information to the patients they鈥檒l be working with in the future.鈥�