Veterinary Medicine and Science (Jul 2024)

Towards a flexible and personalised development of veterinarians and veterinary nurses working in a companion animal referral care setting

  • Robert Favier,
  • Joachim Proot,
  • Matt Matiasovic,
  • Arno Roos,
  • Frans Knaake,
  • Annette van derLee,
  • Marjolein den Toom,
  • Geert Paes,
  • Hugo vanOostrom,
  • Frank Verstappen,
  • Martijn Beukers,
  • Theo vanden Herik,
  • Niklas Bergknut

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1002/vms3.1518
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 10, no. 4
pp. n/a – n/a

Abstract

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Abstract In the Netherlands, the demand for veterinarians and veterinary nurses (VNs) working within referral care is rapidly growing and currently exceeds the amount of available board‐certified specialists. Simultaneously, a transparent structure to guide training and development and to assess quality of non‐specialist veterinarians and VNs working in a referral setting is lacking. In response, we developed learning pathways guided by an entrustable professional activity (EPA) framework and programmatic assessment to support personalised development and competence of veterinarians and VNs working in referral settings. Between 4 and 35 EPAs varying per discipline (n = 11) were developed. To date, 20 trainees across five disciplines have been entrusted. Trainees from these learning pathways have proceeded to acquire new EPAs in addition to their already entrusted set of EPAs or progressed to specialist training during (n = 3) or after successfully completing (n = 1) the learning pathway. Due to their outcome‐based approach, the learning pathways support flexible ways of development.

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