With the news of a new vet school opening I feel it’s time to talk about the elephant in the room with veterinary education. By ”veterinary education” I mean education for vets and vet nurses, as this issue affects us all. By “issue”, I mean academic snobbery.
Yes, you know who you are – out there judging away that degree nurses are inherently better than diploma nurses or that non-Russell Group universities can’t teach vet students.
I’ll admit, in many ways I am an academic snob. I only have higher education qualifications from Russell Group universities and appraised the academic quality of some of these establishments by their fine architecture – which is wrong, very wrong. But I don’t let the fact I like to pretend I was at university at Hogwarts (the University of Glasgow is so beautiful) cloud my judgement of those who provide current or future veterinary education courses.
The reason I’m writing this for you is not because of my MA or my PgCert, but because of my good old NVQ level 2 and 3 in Veterinary Nursing: possibly the academic achievement I’m most proud of and in no way an easier qualification to achieve than a degree.
Meeting the requirements
All education courses have to meet the demands of several different bodies to be approved to award the course, as well as university requirements. The Quality Assurance Agency, the RCVS, the AVMA and the European Association of Establishments for Veterinary Education are involved in ensuring academic standards are met.
In fact, educational establishments that run more than just veterinary courses often have to ensure they meet their internal criteria set for other health care courses they provide. In my experience with vet nurses, this has sometimes meant higher standards than is required by the RCVS to meet internal university regulations.
Why do we need new schools?
There is a simple equation of supply and demand, and we need more vets and vet nurses. While existing schools try to increase cohort sizes, which has natural limitations.
Therefore, new schools are inevitable and will be scrutinised by the appropriate bodies mentioned above. This includes checking the syllabus, the experience of teaching staff and the ability to provide work-based learning opportunities. We’re now at the other elephant in the room – the provision of EMS and work-based learning.
Having worked with a few large land-based education providers I can say great vets and vet nurses are out there educating people in courses that need vet input and non-vets who are teaching parts of courses that would fit well into a vet or vet nurse degree.
The best educational experiences are not just in the existing vet schools, and perhaps establishments that already provide excellent education for para-professionals and related subjects are well placed to help veterinary education.
It’s not just lectures
At this point, it’s probably best to point out academic snobbery exists everywhere, not just in our world. I recall at university the horror some students displayed when classmates had arrived at university from a BTEC or HND background and not straight from school or gap year via traditional highers (I am Scottish) or A-levels. That people had entered education with “practical” qualifications seemed very lowly. Yet, are vet and vet nurse education programmes not a practical qualification?
In veterinary education we see a mix of higher education (HE) level theory teaching as well as the essential placements, EMS and training practice (TP) schemes that make up the “practical” work-based learning aspect of the courses.
Does this mean vet education can learn from the dreaded “technical education” world? As both vet and vet nurse courses comprise factors not seen in many HE courses, such as work-based learning, and using employers to teach and assess critical aspects of the course, could establishments that already provide courses with work-based learning aspects be useful in helping provide valid and worthwhile placements?
The EMS and TP schemes are groaning under individual issues that seem peculiar to the veterinary industry, but really aren’t. Quite possibly, learning from other HE providers that provide work-based learning in other sectors would be beneficial?
Importance of the educational establishment
I’ve written on this before, but for another blog provider (I’m going to go late ’80s Smash Hits writer and say “Soz Ed”) and it was their most popular blog of the year – beating some pretty great work – so this is obviously a topic people are interested in.
I’ll not go into it in detail because you can probably guess my stance by now, but I’ll summarise the other blog:
I have had the pleasure of teaching, coaching and working with a huge number of degree and diploma nurses over my career. A VN’s relative skills and knowledge on graduation has much more to do with their support during work-based learning, exposure to cases and their own work ethic, rather than what where their course has delivered.
I believe the same to be true for veterinary students and you can not and should not pigeon hole them because of their educational route as you may be negating the very thing that makes them a great colleague.
Educational establishments are clearly an important factor in a students educational journey, but individual skills, work-based learning and cases seen are equally as important in my opinion.
Keys to successful veterinary education
In my experience, the keys to successful veterinary education are creating a positive learning community among students and providing supportive, practical experiences in work-based learning.
New vet schools seem to have no hurdles in creating either of these with the current EMS system, while work-based learning opportunities for vet nursing continue to grow slowly via the TP scheme.
Both schemes have positives and negatives and, let’s face it, the biggest issue facing veterinary education today is not the approval of new schools, it’s the provision of work-based learning via EMS and the VN TP scheme. But that, my friends, is for another day.
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