Szabo PL, Wong CK; Touro College, Bay Shore, NY. pszabo@touro.edu.

PURPOSE: The purpose of this study was to determine whether students who take "Anatomy and Physiology" (A&P) as part of the pre-professional preparation for entry-level Physical Therapy education perform better in Gross Anatomy during the professional phase. This study was undertaken at Touro College, which offers a 2+3 entry-level Physical Therapy Program at two campuses. Gross Anatomy on the Long Island (LI) campus is taught using cadaveric dissection while the Manhattan (NYC) campus uses computer anatomy programs, models, and limited prosection demonstrations. The curriculums on the two campuses are otherwise equivalent. SUBJECTS: 69 students from the Classes of 2003 and 2004 on both campuses were surveyed to determine how many semesters of A&P they had completed during the pre-professional phase. Admissions criteria on both campuses are the same: A&P is not a pre-requisite course. METHODS: After the first semester of the professional phase of the program, the grades the students received in the Physical Therapy Gross Anatomy course were correlated with the number of semesters of the pre-professional A&P course they had completed. ANALYSIS: Analysis was run on SPSS 9.0 for Windows using t-tests and ANOVA. RESULTS: The survey showed that all A&P courses taken by the students had some type of laboratory component. On the LI campus 29 of 38 students and on the NYC campus 16 of 31 students had taken a prior A&P course. There was a significant difference (t = -2.186, p = .032) in prior preparation between the students on the two campuses. A two-tailed t-test with 95% confidence intervals revealed no significant difference in the Gross Anatomy grades of all students from both campuses who had taken prior A&P courses and those who had not (p = .264). A one-way ANOVA was performed to see whether the number of semesters of prior A&P students had taken affected the mean Gross Anatomy grades. No significant differences in the grades of the students in the NYC campus were noted between those who had taken one, two or no semesters of prior A&P coursework. However, the mean grades of the LI campus students who had no prior A&P course were significantly lower (p = .007) than those who had taken two semesters of A&P. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION: To maximize student academic success, educators should attempt to determine which courses enable students to perform well in a professional Physical Therapy program. The results of this study suggest that students taking a Gross Anatomy course with cadaveric dissection benefit from previous A&P course preparation. Two semesters of A&P are now prerequisite to the professional phase of the Touro College Physical Therapy Program. FUNDING SOURCE: None.

Copyright 2004 by the American Physical Therapy Association

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