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  Discovery Health’s “Dr. G: Medical Examiner.”

“Typical medical schools are not going to have you talk about pathophysiology and why the patient died,” she said.  “This is really a novel way to introduce the students to critical thinking and putting the pieces of the puzzle together.”

The Â鶹ӳ»­´«Ă˝ medical students diagnosed illnesses including chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, pneumonia, lung cancer and Cushing’s 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’s 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.  “Our goal is to make sure students aren’t just learning for the sake of learning,” he said. “Because they are going to be physicians, we want them to apply this information to the patients they’ll be working with in the future.”

Unlike most medical schools, Â鶹ӳ»­´«Ă˝ doesn’t tell first-year students how their cadaver died. Instead, students must play detective during their 17 weeks in a state-of-the-art anatomy lab run by Professor Andrew Payer. During lab, students scrutinize the organ systems, pathologies and even cell samples of their first patient, the remains of people who have willed their bodies to science.

This year, Payer invited the renowned Dr. G to participate in judging the autopsy reports. “As medical examiner, Dr. Garavaglia serves our community in everything she does,” said Dr. Deborah German, vice president for medical affairs and dean of the College of Medicine. “We are honored she has volunteered to share her expertise with our students.”

After each presentation, Dr. Garavaglia read the patient’s actual death certificate. In one instance, the students believed their patient had died of ischemic heart failure. “In looking at the death certificate, I wish this doctor would have consulted with you,” she said. “He just put down everything he knew about the patient – hypertension, diabetes, cardiac arrhythmia – and figured one of those must have caused his death.”

Dr. Garavaglia presented the top award to Team 13 – Students Galal Elsayed, Giorgio Guiulfo, Michelle Hidalgo, Rikin Patel, Erin Purdy, Morgan Stines and Megan Vu, who found that their patient, a 55-year-old woman, had died from pneumonia related to lung cancer.

After the awards, Dr. Garavaglia attended a reception and posed for pictures with students and members of the College of Medicine’s Assessment Team, who tallied the scores of the autopsy reports. Dr. G’s response to the day of forensic reports: “Today I was so impressed,” she said.

Parsons, director of Anatomical Facilities at the medical school, is spreading the word through talks with local groups and unveiled the outreach plan to colleagues November 29.

“I get calls every day about the program,” she said.

Â鶹ӳ»­´«Ă˝ is one of three medical schools in Florida that is state-approved to receive willed bodies to train medical students. Until a year ago, people who wanted to will their bodies to medical science had to have their remains sent to the University of Florida in Gainesville or the University of Miami. Through its approved receiving sites, the Anatomical Board of Florida provides donated bodies for the training of physicians, dentists, physician assistants, and other health workers.

“The procedure for donating a body is simple,” Parsons said.

A donor, who must be 18 or older, fills out a dedication form stating his or her wishes. Copies of “Instructions to Survivors” should be given to relatives and close friends so that the donor’s wishes are known. The donor or family then contacts a funeral home to arrange for handling of the body and transportation to Orlando. Funeral-home expenses are paid by the family, but the Anatomical Board assumes costs for storage, cremation and final disposal of the cremains.

Bodies are kept for up to two years for medical education and research, Parsons said. Bodies are then cremated, and the ashes returned to the family, or the family may choose to have the ashes spread over the Gulf of Mexico.

Individuals who donate their bodies make a real difference in the education of medical students, said Dr. Andrew Payer, professor of anatomy and director of the College of Medicine’s Willed-Body Program.

“Computer modeling can’t account for all the differences among human bodies,” Dr. Payer said, adding the Willed-Body Program “provides a richer learning experience for students. “

Details about the willed-body program can be found at med.ucf.edu/giving/willed-body-program/. Groups interested in having Parsons talk with them can contact her at 407.266.1142 or Jennifer.Parsons@ucf.edu.

In a send-off ceremony that is a medical school tradition at the end of Anatomy Lab, the 60 M-1 students lit candles, presented white roses and spoke about the “precious souls” who had not only taught them science, but also important lessons about life, death and giving back.

At first, “we were frightened to meet you,” said M-1 Omar Shakeel as he described the four-month Anatomy Lab. “Then you began to teach us. You had the answers to our questions. We are grateful for the lessons we will have for the rest of our lives and will be used to save others one day.”

In opening the ceremony, Class of 2014 President Robert Palmer asked classmates to “remember the sacrifice these patients made for us.” M-1 Social Chair Christina Hsu read a tribute written by a Connecticut medical school professor whose mother donated her body to science. The professor had mixed feelings about the donation but realized that her mother’s decision illustrated her love of education and science and her belief that a single person can make a difference. “Study me hard,” the writer said her mother would tell young medical students.

Faculty members compared the send-off ceremony to how they had left Anatomy Lab years ago. There was no chance to reflect, no closure, no chance to express gratitude for the patient’s dedicated gift to helping others. Dr. Jim Sanders, who spoke for Anatomy Professor Andrew Payer, told of a young man dying of a brain tumor who donated his body to Dr. Payer’s medical school lab in Galveston, Texas. Dr. Payer talks frequently about the terminally ill young man and the message he wanted Dr. Payer to give to his medical students: “Tell them I’m a good guy and I hope they learn a lot from me.”

Dr. Richard Peppler, associate dean for faculty and academic affairs, asked the medical students to remember that the donors were “fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers, aunts and uncles. Celebrate what they have contributed to your education.”

As a permanent tribute to the donors, the Class of 2014 will place a brick in the future piazza at the College of Medicine. The brick will be inscribed with these words:  “Beyond flesh, you are woven into the fabric of our future. Beyond words, your spirit is threaded through our lives.”

Dr. German hosted the tour, telling the college’s benefactors that the upstart medical school offered Â鶹ӳ»­´«Ă˝ the opportunity “to do it right” with technology that “surpasses the technology of any medical school in the country.”

The Tavistock Group saw plenty of that technology, including digital slides in the Microscopy Lab, touch-screen computers above dissection tables in the Anatomy Lab and the Harriet F. Ginsburg Health Sciences Library, which is 98 percent digital.

“Students want instant access to information,” explained College of Medicine Professor Andrew Payer as he welcomed the visitors to “the anatomy lab of my dreams.”

Rasesh “Sesh” Thakkar, CEO of the Tavistock Group, talked about the company’s commitment to the College of Medicine and the emerging medical city at Lake Nona. Medical city will strengthen the area’s economy and supply needed jobs and other opportunities, he said. “The region will never be the same again.”

Students were asked to determine a cause of death for each of their patients. Professor Andrew Payer then compared the students’ findings with the official cause of death for each cadaver.

Dr. Payer praised the students for their thoughtful and professional work and noted the delighted looks from fellow clinical professors as they watched the presentations. “You did us proud,” he told the charter class. Dr. Payer noted that the autopsy reports were a major project for students with only 28 weeks of medical training, adding that the assignment tested their observation, interpretation and research skills.

The students presented their findings to a crowd of more than 70 that included faculty members, Dean Deborah German and College of Medicine staff. Part of the presentation included an examination of lifestyle factors that may have caused patient conditions such as heart disease, skin lesions and emphysema. The students repeatedly expressed respect for the donated cadavers. A group of students whose patient was an 84-year-old artist specifically included artwork in their PowerPoint presentation to honor her.

Medical student Lynn McGrath thanked faculty members “for being in the trenches with us” during the project, saying that one-on-one help from faculty helped students immediately get oriented on ways to use laboratory work to learn anatomy and disease.

Medical student Shawna Bellew said the exercise helped the class understand the wide variety of resources available in determining risk factors and treatments. “It taught us what you do as a physician when you need to determine what’s wrong with someone,” she said. “It taught us how to find out.”

This was the students’ first opportunity to work as a medical team to document observations on their “first patient” and report their findings to their peers, faculty and staff. The students also had the opportunity to answer questions about their findings.