Perspectives Winter/Spring 2018

34 Nova Southeastern University Medical Sonography Fort Lauderdale The Role of Ultrasound Expands in Interprofessional Education INTERPROFESSIONAL EDUCATION intended for the health care profession is focused on engaging students in interactive learning. The goal is to integrate knowledge and skills from professions outside their specialty. This integration will require interprofessional education to become part of the curriculum rather than just an additional lecture to be added on to an already existing course. This trend has been extremely evident for the medical sonography field, which is now being taught to other health professions, specifically medical and physician assistant students. During the past four years, Medical Sonography (MS) faculty members located at the Fort Lauderdale/Davie Campus were invited to provide an annual lecture with a correlating lab session to the NSU Physician Assistant (PA) Program at the Fort Lauderdale/Davie and Jacksonville campuses. The lecture content is aimed at point-of-care ultrasonography, which is intended to help students understand and learn how to obtain sonographic images. Point-of-care-ultrasonography is intended for the practi- tioner, because it helps in providing the answers to a working hypothesis during a physical examination. An immediate diagnosis will result in a quicker treatment plan of action for life-threatening cases, such as deep-vein thrombosis, ectopic pregnancies, obstructive nephrolithiasis, and emergent traumatic occurrences. By Deborah Mendelsohn, D.H.Sc., RDCS, RDMS, RVT, General Clinical Coordinator, and Patricia Vargas, D.H.Sc., RVT, Vascular Clinical Coordinator A full-day training session was given to the Fort Lauderdale/ Davie physician assistant students, which included a lecture- and-lab session that was overseen by a medical sonography student and supervised by the MS faculty. The lecture content included physics principles on how sound travels through a medium, as well as the ability to differentiate the anatomy as seen on a sonographic image. The lab sessions offered the students an opportunity to apply their knowledge and practice their scanning skills during the hands-on session. With these trainings, the college is not only increasing the knowledge of students from both professions, but also improving the future levels of cooperation, coordi- nation, and collaboration between these professionals while delivering patient-centered care. The location of both MS and PA programs is beneficial for faculty members and students to interact and have access to the ultrasound equipment beyond the needs of the point- of-care lectures. It provided an opportunity to enhance the Electrocardiography (ECG) course taught to the PA students at the Fort Lauderdale/Davie Campus by using ultrasound to visualize the correlation between the electrical activity and the heart in motion. The initial lecture provided a live demonstration of the heart contracting and relaxing throughout cardiac cycle. The demonstration was able to provide a frame-by-frame