Assistant Professor Tyler Redway, Ph.D., sat down with Swanick and went throug every ligament in the pelvis and helped her understand how pelvic ligaments attach.
Assistant Clinical Professors Jay Roop, D.O., provided guidance on construction techniques and adhesives and Stuart Damon, D.O., suggested using exercise bands to represent ligaments, a stroke of innovative brilliance that led Swanick to use the brown bands from her own physical therapy exercises for a lower back injury.
“The pelvis is such a dynamic part of the skeleton, yet it’s so often shown as a solid, immovable structure—especially in most anatomical models,” Redway said. “Sarah was on a mission to better understand the more intricate movements of the pelvis and their connections to the vertebral column and femur.”
At the national conference in Nashville in September, Swanick’s poster presentation about her pelvic model drew praise from faculty and physicians. Professors from other osteopathic schools, such as the New York College of Osteopathic Medicine, requested information about replicating the project, Swanick said.
Her professors at UNE’s medical school, which is Maine’s only medical school, called her quest a combination of creativity, resourcefulness, anatomical precision, and unwavering persistence.
Assistant Clinical Professor Lynette Bassett, D.O., encouraged Swanick to bring the model to a medicine training workshop in the Massachusetts Berkshire Mountains, where physicians who had authored medical textbooks praised her work. Mangalam asked Swanick to present the model during a class on physiologic changes during pregnancy.
“Sarah’s passion for the project was palpable whenever we spoke about it,” said Redway, whose research focuses on anatomy education programs for high schools. “The final product was a detailed, functional pelvic model that not only highlighted the anatomical relationships among the sacrum, innominate (hip bone), and femur, but also allowed for demonstration of their key joint movements.”
Swanick is currently completing her clinical rotations at MaineGeneral in Augusta before she plans to take a year off to serve as a teaching fellow with UNE Professor Frank Willard, Ph.D., before graduating in 2028.
Swanick, shown above on rotation at MaineGeneral, made the model in her free time.