Journal of veterinary medical education最新文献

The higher education community is currently experiencing a significant sense of disruption due to the emergence of Generative AI (GenAI) tools. This study sought to establish baseline data that encompass usage rates, confidence, concerns, and opinions on aligned curriculum interventions from current students studying veterinary medicine in the United Kingdom across two institutions. A survey including items aligned to a series of published curriculum domains was designed and distributed to all students in two veterinary degree programmes. A total of 285 surveys (15.5%) were completed; students with a previous degree and older students were more likely to complete the survey. Likert scale items were analysed statistically, and free text data were coded and analysed for themes. In this survey, 40% of students reported never having used GenAI tools, and the median usage across both schools was once a month or less. Greater value was placed on additional curriculum support in relation to AI with age and previous higher educational experience. Key uses of GenAI were grouped into the following: Consolidation, Clarification, and Revision; Creation (Content, Ideas, and Alternative Formats); Grammar and Editing; and Social Uses. Key concerns included Environmental Issues and Sustainability, Accuracy and Trustworthiness of Information; Data Security and Ethics; Impact on Individuals and Society; and Academic Misconduct and Cheating. This study confirms that veterinary students in the United Kingdom appear to be slower to engage with GenAI technologies compared with other higher education students. They appear particularly attuned to the environmental impact of GenAI technologies. The professional nature of the program together with the assessment frameworks that typically exist may also be influencing the degree of students' willingness to engage with the technology.

In scientific fields such as veterinary medicine (VetMed), instruction is often content-focused and lecture-based, leaving insufficient room for students to make meaningful connections to the curricula or see themselves in related careers. Inclusive pedagogies such as engaged teaching and culturally relevant pedagogy help students to make connections between their lived experiences and academic content, and are associated with deepening students' motivation and interests. During the summer of 2024, Education and VetMed faculty from a large, research-intensive university collaborated to create a culturally relevant, engaged curriculum for a veterinary summer engagement program. This program was geared toward middle and high school students from racial-ethnic groups historically underrepresented in veterinary medicine. In this teaching tip, we highlight the ways VetMed faculty adapted their activities after collaborating with the Education faculty. Overall, the VetMed faculty focused on revising their activities around three core principles: connection, interaction, and relevance. The findings of this article showcase the ways in which these principles were enacted within the activities of the summer program, and the reactions the students had from participating in these activities. This pilot program exemplifies curricular ideas that veterinary medicine faculty can implement to create meaningful learning experiences in both K-12 pipeline programs and in higher education settings. Through supporting interdisciplinary collaborations, particularly between VetMed and Education faculty, we can foster learning environments that increase access and engagement to VetMed for youth from historically underrepresented groups.

Competency frameworks in medical and veterinary medical education highlight the importance of research within curricula to ensure a sound understanding of research and related principles of evidence-based medicine. This study describes topic themes and geographical location of projects carried out by students over a 14-year period as part of a well-embedded research element (the student research component) within a veterinary curriculum. The study explores faculty and student opinions on competences gained, aligned with the American Veterinary Medical Association and Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons core competences, and describes challenges encountered from both perspectives. A survey including items aligned to core research competences was distributed to all final-year students in a veterinary degree program. An aligned survey was distributed to project supervisors. The surveys contained a mixture of Likert scale and free-text items. Thirty-two percent of students and 46% of supervisors completed the survey. Likert scale items were analyzed statistically, and free-text data were coded and analyzed for themes. The study confirms the utility of research projects in supporting the development of core competences; students recognize their potential in highlighting awareness of their own limitations, while supervisors highlight their utility in the development of report writing and critical appraisal skills. Supervisor communication was recognized as a challenge for students, as were time management and generating project ideas. Supervisors considered that critical review and evaluation of evidence competences were developed to a greater extent than did all students in the study. Supervisors considered that students had gained all the research-based competences to a greater extent than graduate students, with the exception of improving their own awareness of their limitations. The study confirms a mismatch in faculty and student opinions on the competences gained through carrying out research projects and the value placed on these projects. Additional success factors are suggested in support of similar curriculum interventions.

Substantial expansion of enrollment in US veterinary medical educational programs is well underway. Meanwhile, important downward trends have been reported in high school and undergraduate student enrollments nationally, raising the critical question of potential concurrent downward trends in the size of the US veterinary medical applicant pool and the related applicant-to-seat ratio. This study was designed to analyze the total number of applicants to US colleges/schools of veterinary medicine longitudinally and to consider potential relationships to ongoing national undergraduate student enrollment trends. Historical data on the veterinary medical applicant pool and the number of first-year seats available were obtained from the American Association of Veterinary Medical Colleges. Undergraduate enrollment data, both historical and projected, were obtained from the US Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics. Regression analyses revealed a negative relationship between these two variables, which is counterintuitive. Based on these findings, projections of the applicant pool were performed using the simple ratio of undergraduate student enrollment to veterinary medical applicants in recent years. These projections were combined with information currently available on the expansion of veterinary medical educational programs to consider potential trends in applicant-to-seat ratios. Results suggest an upcoming softening of the applicant-to-seat ratio. This information will be useful for veterinary medical enrollment management planning-including formulation of proactive and progressive recruitment strategies-going forward.

In 2019, Bristol Veterinary School launched a 4-year Accelerated Graduate Entry Programme (AGEP) leading to Bachelor of Veterinary Science (BVSc) qualification. The new programme focuses on small-group, facilitated seven-step case-based learning (CBL). The CBL approach was built on previous experience with whole-class CBL in the existing 5-year BVSc curriculum. This article summarizes the challenges of managing a significant curriculum change with implementation of the new CBL format and describes the results of four projects: investigating design of physical and digital spaces; evaluating CBL in partnership with students; determining the support required for faculty and students to enable improved delivery of CBL; and student reflections on CBL. Communication among students was enhanced in teaching rooms by arranging furniture to enable easy visual contact and the ability to connect laptops to a large display screen. Students valued multimedia online case resources released in advance. Informal team-building sessions were suggested by students and implemented with the aim of developing cohesion within groups and overcoming some of the identified challenges of groupwork. Equitable distribution of workload was a key challenge identified by students alongside some of the difficulties with ensuring engagement when teaching was moved online unexpectedly due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Measures to assist students with workload distribution and additional training for students and faculty were implemented alongside processes for managing challenging groupwork dynamics. Working in partnership with students to evaluate CBL led to adoption of a co-creation model for subsequent curriculum development work and enabled greater insight into the student experience.

The transition from veterinary school to clinical practice is a critical and challenging phase that is marked by managing client expectations, ethical dilemmas, financial constraints, and time pressures-factors that can negatively affect well-being. Given these challenges, understanding early-career veterinarians' perspectives on their education and preparedness for clinical practice can help identify strengths and gaps in training. Therefore, the objective of this study was to explore the experiences and perceived gaps in pre-practice life and veterinary education that were described as affecting the mental well-being of early-career veterinarians as they transitioned into clinical practice. This qualitative study employed a hermeneutical phenomenological methodology to examine the lived experiences of 21 early-career veterinarians who graduated from Canadian veterinary colleges. Semi-structured interviews were analyzed using template analysis and revealed four key themes: the erosion of self-confidence, the importance of communication skills, challenges related to perfectionism and standard of care, and insufficient mental health support for the transition period. The findings highlight both strengths and gaps in veterinary training, which can inform the development of more effective educational strategies and support systems to improve the transition into clinical practice.

Global climate change negatively impacts human and animal health, a challenge that continues to grow. Veterinary students and professionals alike often care about the significant environmental impact of biomedical research and sustainability in general. However, time and appropriate resources often are lacking to drive change. Therefore, we implemented an experiential learning opportunity for students in a veterinary summer research program to equip students with the required knowledge and opportunities to promote sustainability efforts in their summer research environments. After completing an online training course introducing key principles of sustainable biomedical science, students proposed and assessed different ways to reduce their research group's environmental footprint. This program resulted in numerous benefits. First, students actively participated in improving their respective laboratory's sustainability efforts by proposing actions to their mentors and peers. Second, awareness in the broader College of Veterinary Medicine and Biochemical Sciences community spread, and senior colleagues were introduced to new ideas, leading to downstream sustainability improvements even after students concluded their research in their labs. Third, students were able to showcase their pride and engagement at conferences, in poster presentations, and on their professional resumes. As this program took relatively little effort to organize and maintain, we can only urge other veterinary colleges to pursue this opportunity.

The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the shift to online veterinary education, posing challenges for teaching practical skills. Although instructional videos have long supported medical and veterinary education, the impact of video storytelling (VST) using specific content-creation techniques for student engagement and achieving success for learning outcomes remains underexplored. Our research compared traditional lecturer-generated Brightspace videos (BSVs) with VST content to evaluate their effect on student experience and grades in a practical task. Students were assessed on their performance, and they used standardised questionnaires to evaluate their perceptions of the online material and the impact it had on practical skill acquisition. In both phases, students answered questionnaires using Likert scales. Responses were analysed using descriptive and inferential statistics. Comparison between groups for qualitative data were conducted using binomial or chi-square tests, with multiple comparisons controlled for using the Bonferroni correction method. For quantitative data, comparisons between groups were performed using the Mann-Whitney U test. In Phase 1 (2020), 106 final-year students were provided with BSV content ahead of a simulated assessment. All students in the year enrolled voluntarily in this observational study. However, 33/106 students (31.1%) did not view the content. No significant performance differences were observed between those who watched the videos and those who did not (p = 0.711). In Phase 2 (2023), 148 preclinical stage 3 students voluntarily participated in a randomised, blinded, controlled trial comparing BSV (75 students) with VST (73 students). The VST group reported significantly lower stress and anxiety levels (p = 0.002), felt better prepared for Directly Observed Practical Skill (DOPS) assessments (p < 0.001), and achieved higher practical assessment scores (p = 0.001). As online and blended learning continue to expand, veterinary programs should consider investing in high-quality VST to support student well-being, promote deeper learning, and more effectively prepare students for clinical practice.

Developing clinical skills is an essential part of veterinary education. The objective was to evaluate the clinical skills training in the veterinary curriculum at Ghent University based on a qualitative study. Semistructured interviews among 82 final-year veterinary students and 53 recent graduates were conducted by bachelor students in pedagogical sciences as part of an introductory course in pedagogical research. Veterinary students and graduates were asked to score the perceived importance of different clinical skills and comment on the reasons for higher or lower importance. They also scored their own self-efficacy in these skills and commented on what made them score high on certain skills. Finally, they were asked about the contribution of skills laboratory training, intramural clinical rotations, and extramural rotations to the development of their clinical skills. The most important skills identified by students and graduates were animal handling, clinical examination, treatments (eg, injections or bandages), and communication skills. These were seen as a basic requirement or crucial skills for the (future) job, important for use in daily clinical practice, important for clients' trust, and essential for animal and veterinarian safety. Perceived self-efficacy was high for the same skills. Although skills laboratory training was considered valuable, the main factor contributing to self-efficacy was repeated practice during intramural clinical rotations and extramural rotations along with professional experiences during the first year after graduation. Skills laboratory training can be used as a first step for teaching clinical skills, but repeated practice in a clinical setting remains crucial.

The script concordance test (SCT) is an assessment method based on script theory, which can be used to assess some components of clinical reasoning. Clinical reasoning is challenging to assess, so the SCT was evaluated as a method of assessing clinical reasoning specifically around equine colic. A SCT was written on equine colic, using an expert panel of 15 equine veterinarians to help develop the test and formulate the scoring. Preclinical veterinary students (year 3 of 5) were recruited to take the SCT, followed by participation in focus groups on clinical reasoning in equine colic and their experience of the SCT. Twenty-four students undertook the SCT, of which 15 participated in focus groups. Final marking of the SCT gave expert panel scores from 27 to 40 out of 43 (mean 34.6 and SD 3.44). The students scored 17-32 (mean 24.9 and SD 4.59). The SCT was liked by the students and they felt the test required them to use clinical reasoning skills related to acute colic.