Touro medical students work with horses at Eagle Mount

Eagle Mount hosted medical students from the Touro College of Osteopathic Medicine in Great Falls at their equestrian center on Friday for the students to work on their nonverbal communication skills.

Eagle Mount is a non-profit organization that provides adaptive recreation for people of all ages with diagnosed disabilities.

Noah Ziskrout, a first-year medical student, said “The school really emphasizes us being able to communicate with patients, and the goal of today, I believe, was trying to improve our nonverbal communication.”

“It allows the students to be able to interact with the horses and be able to work on their nonverbal communication, along with verbal communication and teamwork, leadership skills, you name it. The horses are very sensitive and able to be a teacher for them,” said Morgan King, an equine assisted learning facilitator at Eagle Mount.

The “Empact” program at Eagle Mount combines medicine and horsemanship, allowing Touro College medical students to interact with horses, helping them learn more about how their body language and communication skills impact their interactions with patients.

From the Eagle Mount website :

Led by a Certified Equine-Assisted Learning Facilitator, participants engage in a series of hands-on activities designed to promote growth in leadership skills, nonverbal and verbal communication, teamwork, and personal development. Through these experiences, the horses impart valuable lessons and insights, fostering meaningful personal growth.

“There's really no way you can see yourself the way other people see you, and so getting that perspective from a horse, of all things, was actually really eye opening in learning to interact nonverbally,” said Ziskrout.

Touro College of Osteopathic Medicine believes in the importance of experiential learning and feel this program has a variety of benefits to the students and their future patients.

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“Here they're able to connect with their classmates, they’re able to work with the animals that really don't hold back about how they feel of the approach to the student. Whereas maybe a student might not really share that full experience, but in here, they're really self-reflecting and understanding their approach really does impact their connection with the patient,” said Stephanie Zutek, assistant clinical dean at Touro College.

According to King, horses mimic human emotions, allowing the medical students to practice interpreting their patients’ behavior.

“Learning about how their presence walking into a room, how they are interacting with other individuals, being able to just recognize their own body language, their communication skills, how well they are able to verbally tell people how to do things, there were a lot of powerful takeaways,” said King.

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