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Assessing the Impact of a Virtual Shelter Medicine Rotation on Veterinary Students' Knowledge, Skills, and Attitudes Regarding Access to Veterinary Care
Strong bonds commonly form between companion animals and people of all socio-demographic backgrounds, yet many pet owners face numerous barriers to accessing veterinary care for their companion animals. For example, they may have difficulties paying for care; they may lack veterinary practices in th...
Autores principales: | , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Frontiers Media S.A.
2021
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8716626/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34977216 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fvets.2021.783233 |
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author | Hoffman, Christy L. Spencer, Terry G. Makolinski, Kathleen V. |
author_facet | Hoffman, Christy L. Spencer, Terry G. Makolinski, Kathleen V. |
author_sort | Hoffman, Christy L. |
collection | PubMed |
description | Strong bonds commonly form between companion animals and people of all socio-demographic backgrounds, yet many pet owners face numerous barriers to accessing veterinary care for their companion animals. For example, they may have difficulties paying for care; they may lack veterinary practices in their community; and they may experience language barriers that impede their ability to utilize veterinary services. Various strategies exist that can help veterinarians address the diverse needs of pet owners in their communities, but these techniques are not commonly covered in the veterinary school curriculum. This study explored how including in-depth, purposefully curated information about access to veterinary care issues within a required shelter medicine rotation impacted fourth-year veterinary students' knowledge, skills, and attitudes regarding the problems clients commonly face when seeking access to veterinary care. Students participated either in a control group of a virtual, four-week rotation delivered via Zoom meetings and self-study, or in an experimental group that additionally completed an interactive online learning module. The online module heavily featured issues surrounding access to veterinary care. Irrespective of which version of the rotation students enrolled, their opinions grew more favorable from pretest to post-test regarding the role of not-for-profit veterinary clinics in communities, as did their expectations that veterinarians should provide affordable treatment options. Additionally, students in the experimental group demonstrated from pretest to post-test increased awareness of the potential for implicit bias toward pet owners within veterinary practice and showed a reduction in their tendency to be judgmental of veterinary clients. By the end of the study, students in the experimental group also expressed greater confidence in their ability to offer incremental care treatment options to veterinary clients. These findings suggest that providing content that focuses on increasing access to veterinary care enhances students' awareness of the need to offer a variety of treatment and payment options to clients. Findings from this study can inform curriculum design in veterinary schools and continuing education programs for veterinary professionals. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-8716626 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2021 |
publisher | Frontiers Media S.A. |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-87166262021-12-31 Assessing the Impact of a Virtual Shelter Medicine Rotation on Veterinary Students' Knowledge, Skills, and Attitudes Regarding Access to Veterinary Care Hoffman, Christy L. Spencer, Terry G. Makolinski, Kathleen V. Front Vet Sci Veterinary Science Strong bonds commonly form between companion animals and people of all socio-demographic backgrounds, yet many pet owners face numerous barriers to accessing veterinary care for their companion animals. For example, they may have difficulties paying for care; they may lack veterinary practices in their community; and they may experience language barriers that impede their ability to utilize veterinary services. Various strategies exist that can help veterinarians address the diverse needs of pet owners in their communities, but these techniques are not commonly covered in the veterinary school curriculum. This study explored how including in-depth, purposefully curated information about access to veterinary care issues within a required shelter medicine rotation impacted fourth-year veterinary students' knowledge, skills, and attitudes regarding the problems clients commonly face when seeking access to veterinary care. Students participated either in a control group of a virtual, four-week rotation delivered via Zoom meetings and self-study, or in an experimental group that additionally completed an interactive online learning module. The online module heavily featured issues surrounding access to veterinary care. Irrespective of which version of the rotation students enrolled, their opinions grew more favorable from pretest to post-test regarding the role of not-for-profit veterinary clinics in communities, as did their expectations that veterinarians should provide affordable treatment options. Additionally, students in the experimental group demonstrated from pretest to post-test increased awareness of the potential for implicit bias toward pet owners within veterinary practice and showed a reduction in their tendency to be judgmental of veterinary clients. By the end of the study, students in the experimental group also expressed greater confidence in their ability to offer incremental care treatment options to veterinary clients. These findings suggest that providing content that focuses on increasing access to veterinary care enhances students' awareness of the need to offer a variety of treatment and payment options to clients. Findings from this study can inform curriculum design in veterinary schools and continuing education programs for veterinary professionals. Frontiers Media S.A. 2021-12-16 /pmc/articles/PMC8716626/ /pubmed/34977216 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fvets.2021.783233 Text en Copyright © 2021 Hoffman, Spencer and Makolinski. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms. |
spellingShingle | Veterinary Science Hoffman, Christy L. Spencer, Terry G. Makolinski, Kathleen V. Assessing the Impact of a Virtual Shelter Medicine Rotation on Veterinary Students' Knowledge, Skills, and Attitudes Regarding Access to Veterinary Care |
title | Assessing the Impact of a Virtual Shelter Medicine Rotation on Veterinary Students' Knowledge, Skills, and Attitudes Regarding Access to Veterinary Care |
title_full | Assessing the Impact of a Virtual Shelter Medicine Rotation on Veterinary Students' Knowledge, Skills, and Attitudes Regarding Access to Veterinary Care |
title_fullStr | Assessing the Impact of a Virtual Shelter Medicine Rotation on Veterinary Students' Knowledge, Skills, and Attitudes Regarding Access to Veterinary Care |
title_full_unstemmed | Assessing the Impact of a Virtual Shelter Medicine Rotation on Veterinary Students' Knowledge, Skills, and Attitudes Regarding Access to Veterinary Care |
title_short | Assessing the Impact of a Virtual Shelter Medicine Rotation on Veterinary Students' Knowledge, Skills, and Attitudes Regarding Access to Veterinary Care |
title_sort | assessing the impact of a virtual shelter medicine rotation on veterinary students' knowledge, skills, and attitudes regarding access to veterinary care |
topic | Veterinary Science |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8716626/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34977216 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fvets.2021.783233 |
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