From 2013 to 2016, Justin Coffeen taught anatomy, physiology, histology, and pathology at Life Chiropractic College West while maintaining an active clinical practice. The two roles ran in parallel — he was seeing patients and teaching the science behind patient care at the same time. That combination produced habits of explanation that remain part of how he works today.
What Teaching Anatomy and Physiology Requires
Teaching at the graduate level in a health sciences program is different from lecturing to undergraduates. The students are studying for licensure. They will use what they are learning in clinical settings where errors carry real consequences. That raises the standard for precision. An instructor who explains a mechanism imprecisely — who lets a simplification stand when accuracy is available — is giving students a foundation they will eventually have to correct in practice.
Anatomy, physiology, histology, and pathology are foundational courses. They describe how the body is structured, how it functions, how it is organized at the tissue level, and how disease changes those structures and functions. A clinician who does not have a clear command of these areas will have gaps that show up in patient care — in misread imaging, in misattributed symptoms, in diagnoses that miss the underlying mechanism.
The Practice of Explanation
Teaching these subjects to students who are preparing to practice develops a specific skill: the ability to explain complex material clearly without losing accuracy. A good explanation of a physiological process is not a simplified version of the real process. It is a framing that helps the listener build an accurate mental model, even if the model is built up incrementally over multiple sessions.
That skill carries into clinical research in ways that are not always obvious. A research coordinator who can explain a protocol to a participant in clear terms — without misrepresenting what the study involves, without oversimplifying the risks, without making the consent conversation feel perfunctory — is a coordinator who has practiced the art of accurate explanation. Informed consent is not a form. It is a communication process, and the quality of that process matters for participant welfare and for data integrity.
Running a Practice and a Classroom at the Same Time
The logistics of teaching while practicing are not trivial. Justin Coffeen was seeing patients in a chiropractic practice and working in a chronic pain clinic during the same years he was teaching at Life Chiropractic College West. That required the ability to shift contexts — from clinical problem-solving to instructional explanation to the administrative demands of practice — without losing precision in any of them.
That kind of context-switching is normal in clinical research settings. A coordinator on a busy site is managing consent conversations, data entry, adverse event monitoring, and sponsor communication, often on the same day. The capacity to move between these contexts without dropping detail is something that a period of dual clinical and instructional work develops.
What It Left Behind
The instructional period also left Justin Coffeen with a working command of the foundational sciences that underlie the therapeutic areas he works in today. Orthopedics, oncology, and hepatology each draw on anatomy, physiology, and pathology in different ways. A research professional who can read a protocol and understand the biological rationale behind the study design — not just follow the procedure — is better equipped to identify when something in participant data warrants closer attention.
Read more about working in a chronic pain clinic and what it taught me about patient data, or about why clinicians make effective clinical research coordinators. Learn more about Justin Coffeen.