(Simone Maher) Welcome to the CVE's podcast series created specifically for you, our Partners in Veterinary Education hospitals. Through conversations with invited guests, we explore some of the challenges based on your input that can arise when hosting final year DVM students. Over these episodes, we take a look at teaching practical skills, providing feedback, the basics of clinical communication and a range of other topics. Our hope is that this series will offer you a tip or two that will help make clinical placements a more enjoyable and successful experience for you, your team and our students. Well, Hello everyone. I'm Dr. Simone Maher, Director of the Centre for Veterinary Education at the University of Sydney. Welcome to this very first episode of our podcast series designed specifically for our wonderful Partners in Veterinary Education, our PiVE clinics, who do such an amazing job and have such an important role in taking our final year students and exposing them to all of the variations of practice, which is an experience that they just can't get within the university hospitals. And you would know that DVM4 is really the most important year of the degree program. And that is why your contribution is so critical to essentially the future of our veterinary profession. Now, in this first podcast, I'm actually speaking with Dr. Lara Boland, and Lara is the unit of study coordinator for the extramural student placement programs. And we're just going to have a bit of a chat about the basics of the program. And this whole podcast series is really designed to help both clinics and students get the most out of their placements. And we'll be talking about some of the challenges that people encounter, as well as sharing some of the success stories for what makes a really fantastic placement for everyone involved. Welcome, Lara. (Lara Boland) Thanks, Simone, and hello to everyone listening to this podcast. The EMS clinical placements for our students are, as you've mentioned, really important for the clinical training of our students, and also just to mention that students really, really love visiting practices. They love learning clinical skills and they love getting out of lecture theatres and tutorials and practicals and just getting into the nitty gritty of clinical work. (SM) You're so right, Lara. I remember my own clinical placements so clearly, and it was really quite a revelation, finally being exposed to practice in this way. So I guess the first question is what are some of the fundamental things that students are told from the university perspective before they actually commence on this final year program? (LB) Yeah. So some of the things that we discuss with students before they visit external sites is that the learning that occurs when they're on clinical placements is very, very different to the learning that they experience when they're in formal lectures and tutorials and practicals. And the main difference is that they have to take charge of their own learning and identify their own learning goals and gaps in their knowledge as well. So we remind students about how valuable this experience is and what they can learn when they're visiting external sites, and we just ask them to be respectful as well of the opportunity that they're being given when they visit external sites, and we ask them to remember that when they're entering clinical practice, we're expecting them to behave as veterinary professionals. So as you would expect of any staff member, we ask students to be punctual. We want them to be reliable, professional in their behaviour, polite in their interactions with staff at external sites and clients as well, and we let them know that every site that they visit will be different and they'll vary in size or vary in caseload and vary in terms of what sorts of practical experiences they can offer students as well. So we just impress upon them that the learning opportunities will be different and that they should just take advantage of those learning opportunities and make the most of them as they can at each site. (SM) I think you raise a really important point, Lara, that there is so much variation in the experience that these students will get even within the same clinic at different times of year. They're going to see different caseloads, and I know having hosted many, many, many final year students myself, it can be hard getting a read, I guess, on their level of experience and understanding where they're up to. Do you have any suggestions for the best way initially for integrating a student into the practice team? (LB) Yeah, that's a really good point that they'll vary in their knowledge level and clinical skill level. And sometimes that depends on their background experience working within the profession. So sometimes we'll have students that have been veterinary nurses for many years and feel really comfortable working in a clinical setting, whereas we'll have other students that have much less experience and may feel very nervous entering clinical practice really for the first time, and sometimes those students will be a bit shyer, find it more difficult to know what they should be doing or how they can engage and assist. So I think integrating those students in particular into a practice team can be a bit more challenging and is really important so that they can feel comfortable getting involved and learn at the site. So I think probably the most important first thing to do when students visit a site is to make sure that the site supervisor or another staff member, if they're not available, has a Day One meeting with the student, not just to show them around and introduce them to people, but also to explain to the student what your expectations of them are, how you would expect them to get involved, what sort of teaching and learning experiences they're likely to have at your practice and which staff they may work with on a day to day basis. And then also on a day to day basis, as the placement progresses, sometimes students will tell us that they just feel a bit lost, they feel like they're a bit in the way and they're not sure how to get involved. So I think it's important each day as well to have a staff member who speaks to the student and just assigns tasks to them and explains what's happening that day and how they can best get involved so that they don't get forgotten. Because we all know that clinical practice is super busy and sometimes it's easy to just focus on the work that you need to get done that day and maybe sometimes forget, oh, actually there's a student there that I need to get involved and teach as well today. (SM) So yeah, that Day One's really about the orientation and giving them a bit of a toolkit, I guess, and a bit of an overall understanding of how the clinic runs and who the go-to people are and giving them a bit of an anchor. (LB) Exactly. Who they should speak to if they are feeling lost and just to understand how your practice runs. (SM) Great. So I remember, and I don't know if it's still the same, it's been three or four years since I have been responsible for placements, but I remember that every student came with this big pile of paper that I rarely got to read through start to finish. Can you give us any cheat notes on what is contained within that extensive volume of literature in terms of what tasks are students actually expected to complete during their placement? (LB) Yeah, that's a good question, and when students visit sites, we want them to get involved in day to day clinical tasks and the main focus is practical skills. But we do need a way of checking - What are they actually doing? What are they learning? And are they developing into veterinary professionals and taking charge of their own learning? So for that reason, we do have some assignment tasks for them and both the preparatory practice students - so they would be DVM2 students who visit practices for two weeks at a time - and DVM4 extramural studies students, who visit practices for 18 days at a time, both of those groups are asked to send introduction letters to sites about a month prior to visiting just to introduce themselves properly to the practice in a more formal way and to also outline and articulate what their learning goals are for the placement so that you've got something to start talking to them about on day one. And they submit those introduction letters to us online and they get assessed. And if they're not appropriate, we ask them to redo them. And the aim of that introduction letter task is to make sure that they have introduced themselves properly to you, that they do have learning goals. But also it's similar to writing a letter for a CV if you're applying for a job as well. So it's part of their professional development from that perspective as well. And then we also ask the students to plan with their site supervisor early on in their placement a communication task, and that's a task that the supervisor marks and either assesses as satisfactory or unsatisfactory. And if it's unsatisfactory, you can ask the students to resubmit that for repeat marking. And that communication task can be anything that suits you and the students. So we ask them to negotiate that with their site supervisor. An example might be a short PowerPoint presentation, maybe just a 10, 15 to 20 minute presentation. It could be something like a Facebook post about a case or a patient from your practice that you could use on social media. It could be anything of that nature. Even sometimes people will ask students to write just a short report on a topic of interest to the student and to the practice. And then students are also asked to keep a log of cases that they've seen during the placement as well. So we ask them to log a minimum of 20 cases and they have a template, Excel template that they enter those cases into. And that's not just a bit of busy work for the students because we also ask them importantly to reflect on those cases. So what have they learnt? What did they discover that was new from that patient that they saw at the site? What could have been done differently? What might have gone wrong with that particular case? How can they use those learnings for future patients that they may see themselves as a vet? (SM) Terrific. Now, this one can be a tricky one, Lara, because as we've just said, there can be an enormous variation in the skill levels, the personalities, the life stage and situations of the students and some placements I think go more smoothly than others. So, feedback. It's an important part of this whole experience for the students. When you have a really positive experience, it can be an absolute breeze and a pleasure, but that's not always the case. So how do you recommend sites should go about giving feedback to students on the progress of their placement? (LB) Yeah, that is super important for the students development during the year. If they don't understand how they're progressing or what they need to work on and don't have feedback from other people, then sometimes we find that they just really struggle and they keep repeating the same mistakes as the year progresses. And you're absolutely right, sometimes that's an uncomfortable conversation if you're giving feedback which may not be positive. Sometimes it's easy if a very strong student visits your site. But regardless, it's really important to do and to make a little bit of time to do that. And importantly, when we give students feedback, the idea is to give them feedback in a timely manner so that they can improve during the placement and understand what they may need to work on and improve on as time progresses. So what we actually ask the students to do is to lead that and to speak on day one to their site supervisor and organise a day and a time to have halfway feedback and then feedback either on their last day or their second last day, so close to the end. And probably the halfway feedback there is the most important because that's where you can let the student know what they need to improve on and suggest to them how they can improve and give them time during the rest of their placement to work on their knowledge and practical skills or interactions with staff or whatever it might be. So that's really important and it's also a good opportunity to let the students speak to you and let you know if they're struggling with something because often they will be a little bit shy, sometimes they'll feel a bit uncomfortable speaking up if there's something that they were hoping to learn and haven't had an opportunity to or if there's something in particular that they're struggling with. And that may be basic things like knowing what's expected of them or are they doing the right things on a day to day basis. (SM) Great. It's such a good point that if this feedback isn't given in a timely manner, then it does leave the student, if they are a little bit unaware, it does leave them in a position of potentially repeating those same mistakes as you said. So this is so critical, isn't it? (LB) That's absolutely true. And I'd probably say probably most students do spend a lot of time self reflecting and are aware of what they need to work on. But there's always some that just don't know, maybe just haven't had enough clinical practice exposure yet. So that feedback is really valuable and can really help them. (SM) And I will point out that we are planning a whole episode just on feedback. So we will let you know once we've once we've got that ready. Now, Lara, some students have academic plans, which they might mention to their supervisor when they first come into a clinic. What exactly is an academic plan? (LB) It's a good question, because it doesn't really the name of an academic plan doesn't really explain what on earth it is. And you're right, sometimes students will just mention that in an introduction letter and the site supervisors will be left wondering what on earth is that. But what it is, is that our disability services here at the University of Sydney for students who maybe have an illness, and that could be a short term illness or an ongoing health issue, or that have a disability, they might require some adjustments to allow them to fully engage in their studies and complete everything that they need to for their degree program. So those students will choose voluntarily to speak to disability support services and those staff members will assist the students to come up with an academic plan. So that's a formal document just outlining what adjustments that student may need. So examples of the sorts of illnesses or disabilities that students might have, it could be anything from deafness, so hearing impairment, could be a student that has ongoing diabetes, could be a student that has anxiety that they're seeking medical assistance for. So just depending on what the specific health issue is, the disability support staff will speak to them and figure out what adjustments they need. And that could be things like, for instance, being allowed to have extra break times during the day. Sometimes occasionally we'll have students that need to have shorter total work days. So they may then instead of doing an 18 day placement, we may have to extend that and they have a shorter work day. They may need access to seating. So if they've got a health problem, that means that they fatigue, they might need to sit down sometimes and have access to that. Sometimes they may just need an extension on an assignment. So these academic plans, they are confidential. So that's why we don't email them out to practices in advance of students visiting. But what we discuss with students is to ask them to discuss what's in that academic plan with their site supervisor, if it's relevant and is appropriate to a clinical placement. (SM) Lara, thank you so much. There was so many important points covered there. As I said, this whole podcast series is really designed to help ensure that both practices and students get the most out of their placement experience. And this is the first in our series specifically designed for our Partners in Veterinary Education placement clinics. So we look forward to coming to you soon with more information. Take care. Thank you.