Teaching Gentle Canine and Feline Handling as a Veterinary Clinical Skill.

This article was migrated. The article was marked as recommended. Gentle animal handling techniques decrease the fear, anxiety, and stress (FAS) felt by companion animals during veterinary visits. These techniques, relatively new in the veterinary field, can be taught to veterinary students in a progressive clinical skills curriculum using models and live animals. This article includes a series of comprehensive lesson plans that are simple to adopt and easy to modify to fit the needs of individual institutions teaching these skills. These laboratories, each reviewing and building on content previously presented, are meant to be accompanied with specific feedback offered by instructors overseeing student performance of skills. Students' deliberate practice of these techniques is meant to build, refine, and reinforce gentle animal handling from the start of their veterinary education to prepare them to handle animals using these techniques during their clinical training and beyond.

Development and Validation of a Feline Medial Saphenous Venipuncture Model and Rubric.

Cats are extremely popular pets with the reputation of being uncooperative for even common procedures, such as venipuncture. In this study, we sought to create and validate a cat medial saphenous venipuncture model and rubric for use in veterinary training. The validation framework consisted of content evidence, internal structure evidence, and relationship with other variables. Eleven veterinarians and veterinary technicians who were experienced with the procedure evaluated the model by means of a survey. These experienced participants, along with 25 veterinary students who were novices at the skill, performed venipuncture on the model while being digitally recorded. One hundred percent of the experienced participants and 88% of the novices reported that the model was helpful for teaching feline medial saphenous venipuncture. They identified a few areas for continued improvement, including increasing the blood flow rate and decreasing the vessel wall rigidity. Experienced users' rubric scores were significantly higher than novice students' (experienced, M = 13.4; novice M = 16.5; p = .05), suggesting that the model's features were adequate to differentiate the performances of various users. Internal consistency of the eight-item rubric was acceptable at .74. These results supported validation of the cat medial saphenous model and rubric for use in veterinary education.

A Randomized Trial Comparing Freely Moving and Zonal Instruction of Veterinary Surgical Skills Using Ovariohysterectomy Models.

Timely, specific feedback is the most important feature of simulation-based training, but providing adequate instructor supervision is challenging. Students' (n = 76) surgical skills were assessed after training using either the traditional (T) method of large-group teaching by multiple instructors or the alternative method of one instructor assigned (A) to a defined group of students. Instructors rotated to a different group of students for each laboratory session. The instructor-to-student ratio and environment remained identical. No differences were found in raw assessment scores or the number of students requiring remediation, suggesting that students learned in this environment whether they received feedback from one instructor or multiple. Students had no preference between the methods, though 88% of the instructors preferred the assigned method, because they perceived an increased ability to teach and observe individual students. There was no difference in the number of students identified as at-risk of remediation between groups. When both groups were considered together, students identified as at-risk were more likely (40% vs. 10%) to require post-assessment remediation. However, only 22% of students requiring remediation had been identified as at-risk, and A-group instructors were more accurate than T-group instructors at identifying at-risk students. These results suggest that students accept either instructional method, but most instructors prefer to be assigned to a small group of students. Surgical skills were learned similarly well by students in both groups, although assigned instructors were more accurate at identifying at-risk students, which could prove beneficial if early intervention measures can be offered.