Veterinary Clinical Sciences - Research Publications
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ItemRanking of Production Animal Welfare and Ethics Issues in Australia and New Zealand by Veterinary Students(MDPI, 2018-09)The importance of animal welfare and ethics (AWE) within the veterinary education should reflect community concerns and expectations about AWE, and the professional demands of veterinary accreditation on the first day of practice (or 'Day One' competences). Currently, much interest and debate surrounds the treatment of production animals, particularly around live export. To explore the attitudes to AWE of veterinary students in Australia and New Zealand, a survey was undertaken to (i) understand what students consider important AWE topics for initial production animal competence; and (ii) ascertain how these priorities correlated with gender, area of intended practice and stage-of-study. The results from 575 veterinary students showed that all students ranked strategies to address painful husbandry procedures as the most important issues on their first day in production animal practice. Additionally, it was found that the importance students assigned to an understanding of human⁻animal interactions declined as they progressed through the veterinary course. In contrast, the importance of an understanding of euthanasia issues for production animals increased for male students as they progressed through the course, and remained consistently high in females. Females also gave higher ranking to the importance of understanding production animal stress associated with transport, and ranked strategies to address painful husbandry procedures more important than did males. These findings should help the development of AWE teaching resources that address students' attitudes and competence and that can be delivered when students are most receptive.
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ItemImportance of Welfare and Ethics Competence Regarding Animals Kept for Scientific Purposes to Veterinary Students in Australia and New Zealand(MDPI, 2018-09)Veterinarians are in a strong position of social influence on animal-related issues. Hence, veterinary schools have an opportunity to raise animal health and welfare standards by improving veterinary students' animal welfare and ethics (AWE) education, including that related to animals used for scientific purposes. A survey of 851 students in the early, mid, and senior stages of their courses at all eight veterinary schools across Australia and New Zealand was undertaken on their first day of practice (or Day One Competences) to explore how veterinary students viewed the importance of their competence in the management of welfare and ethical decision-making relating to animals kept for scientific purposes. From highest to lowest, the rankings they assigned were: Animal Ethics Committee (AEC) Procedures or Requirements; 3Rs (Replacement, Refinement and Reduction); Humane Endpoints; Euthanasia; "What Is a Research Animal?"; and Conscientious Objections. Female students rated Conscientious Objections, Humane Endpoints, and Euthanasia significantly higher than male students did across the three stages of study. The score patterns for these three variates showed a trend for the male students to be more likely to score these topics as extremely important as they advanced through the course, but female students' scores tended to decline slightly or stay relatively stable. No gender differences emerged for the three variates: 3Rs (Replacement, Refinement and Reduction); AEC Procedures or Requirements; and "What Is a Research Animal?". This study demonstrates that understandings of the regulatory and normative frameworks are considered most important in animal welfare and ethics competence in veterinary students. To the authors' knowledge, this is the first study to investigate what importance veterinary students place on their competence regarding animals kept for scientific purposes.
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ItemThe First Shared Online Curriculum Resources for Veterinary Undergraduate Learning and Teaching in Animal Welfare and Ethics in Australia and New Zealand(MDPI AG, 2015-06)The need for undergraduate teaching of Animal Welfare and Ethics (AWE) in Australian and New Zealand veterinary courses reflects increasing community concerns and expectations about AWE; global pressures regarding food security and sustainability; the demands of veterinary accreditation; and fears that, unless students encounter AWE as part of their formal education, as veterinarians they will be relatively unaware of the discipline of animal welfare science. To address this need we are developing online resources to ensure Australian and New Zealand veterinary graduates have the knowledge, and the research, communication and critical reasoning skills, to fulfill the AWE role demanded of them by contemporary society. To prioritize development of these resources we assembled leaders in the field of AWE education from the eight veterinary schools in Australia and New Zealand and used modified deliberative polling. This paper describes the role of the poll in developing the first shared online curriculum resource for veterinary undergraduate learning and teaching in AWE in Australia and New Zealand. The learning and teaching strategies that ranked highest in the exercise were: scenario-based learning; a quality of animal life assessment tool; the so-called 'Human Continuum' discussion platform; and a negotiated curriculum.
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ItemThe welfare of cows in large dairy herds(Australian vet, 2015)