Journal of veterinary medical education最新文献

Models and simulations are used in veterinary education to allow students to practice surgical skills in order to obtain clinical competence. Further development of models is also driven by the requirement of veterinary institutions to reduce the use of animal patients in teaching (live or cadaver). Esophagostomy tube placement is a common therapeutic procedure performed in companion animal critical care cases, and a model was developed to help teach this skill. Validity evidence was collected and analyzed to evaluate this model at the University of Surrey. Veterinarians (n = 14) provided content validity evidence on using the model, and students (n = 19) provided further construct evidence. Students were taught the skill on either a model or a cadaver. These students were then assessed on a cadaver the following week. Global rating scales were used as a measure of performance, and data were recorded on confidence ratings after both teaching and assessment. Comparisons of the global rating scales and confidence levels were evaluated for both the model and cadaver-taught groups. There were no statistical differences in the performance data or confidence levels of the two groups. Most of the veterinarians believed the model was easy to use (13/14), had realistic landmarks (11/14), and was a suitable alternative to learning the skill than in the animal patient (12/14). The esophagostomy tube model is a low-cost, easy-to-make alternative to help teach aspects of this skill before performing on an animal patient.

Veterinary public health (VPH) is a critical role of veterinarians regardless of their chosen career pathway, and it is the role of VPH academics to inspire veterinary students within this essential topic. However, the alarming shortage of veterinarians has led to a significant reduction in veterinary policy makers and epidemiologists. The engagement of new graduates in public health roles is heavily influenced by their undergraduate teaching and extramural study opportunities. Worryingly, student engagement within VPH has been well documented to be poor in comparison to other subjects. As such, this study was designed to investigate what factors impacted VPH educators' motivation. To do this, a mixed-methods survey was created and released electronically to 34 VPH academics across the UK and the Republic of Ireland. A total of 23 respondents, from nine veterinary schools spanning both countries, completed the survey. Data analysis involving both quantitative assessment and thematic analysis was undertaken. The results showed that VPH educators' intrinsic motivation was not problematic and most (n = 20) respondents felt motivated within their roles. However, all respondents had extrinsic issues that impacted their motivation, such as external stakeholders, curricula requirements, lack of student opportunity both regarding placement and as career options, as well as wider university issues. These themes led staff to feel undervalued in their roles, and as such highlight the areas that universities and external stakeholders need to act on to help fill the significant recruitment issues in this essential field. This study is, as far as the authors are aware, the first time globally that a VPH faculty have been asked to explore their motivation behind their teaching practices.

Veterinary students, interns, and residents have often been taught medical and surgical skills using cadavers or terminal surgeries. However, the number of animals used by veterinary schools, their sources, and the types of procedures taught have never been quantified. In this study, active Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee protocols in which animals were euthanized prior to, during, or following training exercises were requested from public veterinary schools in the United States and Canada between December 2022 and April 2024. Protocols were evaluated for the number and species of animals requested, animal source, and types of procedures taught. Additionally, we identified seven justifications for using animals provided by principal investigators and evaluated how closely they adhered to ethical guidelines set forth by the American Association of Veterinary Medical Colleges. A total of 26 veterinary schools provided 120 Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee protocols meeting the study criteria. Equines (24/26 schools), cows (20/26), and small ruminants (19/26) were the most commonly requested species by schools, although poultry were requested in the highest numbers (8,558). Sources included client donations, commercial vendors, and university-owned animals. The most common justifications for using animals in teaching were that alternatives do not provide an equal learning experience (87/120 protocols) and that live animals are needed for students to learn nonsurgical (71/120) and surgical (65/120) procedures. There was considerable variation in how closely aligned animal use practices were to AAVMC recommendations. Limitations include probable undercounting of cadavers and the inability to verify the numbers of animals used versus requested for use.

It can be challenging for veterinary schools in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) to teach the 11 competencies identified by the World Organisation for Animal Health (WOAH) due to inadequate faculty and teaching resources. This article discusses the evaluation of web-based educational resources to support teaching in the Veterinary Faculty at the Royal University of Agriculture in Cambodia. Content- and pedagogy-based materials addressing herd health and epidemiology/disease investigation, their most urgent needs, were developed via a collaboration between Iowa State University, Ohio State University, and Massey University (New Zealand). Content-based resources were developed as a Moodle-based, server-mounted series of PowerPoint presentations, supported by a wide range of learning and assessment activities that the faculty could draw on in their teaching. Pedagogical resources were directed at strategic alignment between intended learning outcomes, teaching methods, and assessment. The use of these resources at the Royal University of Agriculture was evaluated by questionnaires, focus group discussions, and classroom observations. Results showed that the resources had been well received by the faculty, who drew on them to augment their own (Khmer-language) teaching materials, and to maintain teaching quality, especially during COVID-19 lockdowns. To a lesser degree, the faculty used the pedagogical materials and made modest shifts toward student-centered methods, which were observed to promote student engagement in their learning. The general agreement among the faculty on the overall benefits gained supports the development of future digital content and pedagogical materials to address the remaining nine competencies.

Incorporating curriculum to effectively help veterinary students learn how to provide accessible quality care to all pet owners is needed. The primary aims of this study are to explore how a 2-week rotation at a veterinary medical service-learning clinic (Wisconsin Companion Animal Resources, Education, and Social Services [WisCARES]) improves (a) comfort in working with clients from diverse race and low socioeconomic (SES) backgrounds and (2) confidence in leading cases, communication skills, and providing a spectrum of care options. Students were surveyed at five time points pre-rotation: mid-week 1, mid-week 2, end of rotation, and 1 month post. A total of 115 survey series were at least partially completed. Of the 97 responses that included background information, 68 (70%) students reported having "no to a few weeks" of experience working with diverse or low SES populations. When comparing themselves to before starting the rotation, student responses indicated increased comfort (mean = 4.54, standard deviation [SD] = 0.54) and compassion (mean = 4.42, SD = 0.78) working with low-income or homeless populations, more comfort interacting with members of different race or ethnicity groups (mean = 4.21, SD = 0.82), and more appreciation for the human-animal bond (mean = 4.42, median = 5). Students also reported that spending time at WisCARES positively impacted their confidence in a clinical setting, managing and communicating about financial decisions, and approaching cases creatively. Giving students an opportunity to lead cases with clients from diverse races and low SES backgrounds can enhance levels of comfort with practice and improve confidence.

Curriculum review is a required and essential part of the continuous improvement process to ensure that all elements of the curriculum are integrated to help students achieve intended outcomes. It is also an effective way of avoiding a disparity between the knowledge and skills students gain throughout their education and the knowledge and skills required in practice. One commonly used curriculum analysis approach is curriculum mapping, which requires extensive labor and time commitment. This best practice paper describes the development of a curriculum search and analysis tool that utilizes novel computational analysis techniques from data science and artificial intelligence approaches to enhance the quality of curriculum maps by increasing the effectiveness and efficiency of the curriculum analysis and mapping process.

Ethical competence, the ability to recognize and respond to the ethical dimensions embedded in everyday decision making, is vital for veterinarians' professional integrity and to ensure the public's trust. This study investigated current veterinary ethics education in South Korea, focusing on curriculum quality and its perceived outcomes. An online survey was conducted with a total of 374 respondents, 192 veterinarians and 182 students (3.7% response rate), to assess their educational experience and self-assessed competencies in veterinary ethics. Although 60% of them had received ethics education, primarily through formal courses, over half of them reported dissatisfaction with instructor expertise and course effectiveness. Only 22% of those surveyed believed that ethics was integrated sufficiently into their curriculum. They expressed a lack of confidence in applying ethical tools and legal knowledge, highlighting the need for required courses, competent instructors, and the integration of ethics with related subjects such as animal welfare, bioethics, veterinary law, and professionalism. Despite these concerns, individuals who completed the ethics coursework reported significantly higher levels of self-assessed ethical competence compared to those who did not receive such training (3.31 vs. 2.96, p < .001), which underscores the necessity and effectiveness of integrating ethics education into veterinary curricula. These results demonstrate the significance of sustained efforts to strengthen ethics education across all stages of veterinary training.

Distributed or community-based models for delivering clinical teaching to final-year veterinary students are becoming increasingly common. Managing real clinical problems in an authentic clinical environment drives students' intrinsic motivation and should prepare them more effectively for work in practice at graduation. These models do, however, present challenges, particularly around consistency of delivery and quality assurance management. The community-based model developed and refined at the University of Nottingham School of Veterinary Medicine and Science is different from those used elsewhere. Small groups of students spend 2-week blocks in the premises owned by third parties in which they complete their clinical training. In all core clinical teaching sites, the school places approximately one member of the clinical staff per group of students, but students are taught by both school staff and non-school staff employed by the third party. Over the first 13 years of delivering clinical teaching in this model, a process of "active rotation management" has evolved to ensure consistency of the student experience across all the sites used. The challenges and issues presented by this model has led to the development of a series of "dos" and "don'ts" that inform the success of the model. Based on surveys of how well the students and employers feel rotations have prepared them for practice, this model seems to represent an effective method of delivering appropriate clinical teaching.

Health literacy, the ability of patients to understand and make informed decisions regarding health care, is an integral determinant of compliance and satisfaction with care. Readability of patient-oriented materials is a major factor affecting health literacy. As a result, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the American Medical Association (AMA) have published recommendations that public-oriented health education materials be written at a maximum of a sixth-grade equivalent reading level. Animal caregivers' health literacy likely has a similarly significant impact on animal care and welfare. Current literature, however, shows that many veterinary education materials are written at higher than recommended levels. Educating veterinary students in the utility and methodology of creating readable medical discharge documents is paramount to addressing this issue. In this study, student-created discharge documents and clinical instructor edits were collected from medical record software at the beginning and conclusion of the clinical year. Discharge documents were categorized by the patient's reason for presentation (wellness, non-wellness, or procedural) as well as whether the recipient had advanced veterinary training. Using a readability calculator, the Flesch-Kincaid (F-K) readability score was reported for each document. Mean readability scores for both groups exceeded the recommended sixth-grade reading level. No significant difference was found between student and instructor scores for all document types at both time points. Wellness documents had the highest mean readability scores, and procedural documents had the lowest. Student scores collectively increased at the second time point, with non-wellness documents exhibiting the largest degree of disparity between the two time points. The recipient's degree of veterinary training did not significantly affect readability scores.

A summary report of student performance on the North American Veterinary Licensing Examination (NAVLE) is shared each year with colleges and schools of veterinary medicine accredited by the American Veterinary Medical Association Council on Education. The NAVLE summary report provides valuable outcomes assessment information that allows an institution to benchmark student clinical problem-solving ability and to monitor changes in academic performance over time. A new curriculum was fully implemented at the University of Illinois College of Veterinary Medicine for the Class of 2013. We conducted a retrospective cohort study based on annual NAVLE summary reports for 2006 to 2020 as part of a comprehensive curricular review. A One-Sample Z-test was applied to mean category-specific NAVLE scale scores or percentage correct values for each year at the University of Illinois relative to mean values for all students taking the NAVLE, with subsequent conversion of Z-score values to percentiles. P < 0.05 was considered significant. The new curriculum improved student performance on the NAVLE relative to the old curriculum, based on an increased mean yearly pass percentage (p = .011), and increased Z-score values for 3 of 7 species categories, 7 of 12 organ system categories, and two quartiles of students categorized by class rank. Findings also identified areas of weakness in student learning, which stimulated further curricular review and revision. We suggest that colleges/schools consider using the One-Sample Z-test to increase the value of NAVLE summary data as a component of quantitative curricular review and assess the effectiveness of curricular change.