VETM815A

042026

The Advanced Professional Skills coursework (VETM 815A and 815B) represents two consecutive semesters of scaffolded learning that builds upon an introductory longitudinal series (VETM 802A, 802B, 802C, and 802D) to prepare students for their final clinical (clerkship) year. Students will be provided with the next layer of communication skills as they further their journey towards:

- professional growth
- inquisitive and lifelong learning
- perspective-taking and seeking
- interactive processing of information
- engagement in dialogue
- evidence-based decision-making
- delivery and receipt of feedback
- individual and collective reflection

VETM 815A has been designed to introduce content within the context of other material that is being presented simultaneously throughout the rest of the curriculum. This course runs concurrent with VETM 813 (Companion Animal: Advanced Clinical Management), VETM 816 (Large Animal: Advanced Clinical Management), and VETM 814A (Anesthesia and Surgery). This integration with other curricular content is intended to reinforce key themes that students will be asked to consider (and reconsider!) throughout their veterinary careers.

This class meets in-person, on-site to allow for face-to-face sharing of thoughts and perspectives within a safe and supportive environment. Students will be tasked with building upon the following thematic content from previous semesters as they continue to explore the profession that they are entering:

- how they see themselves and each other
- how they establish and build onto their evolving professional identities
- how they define their roles in the profession as individuals and as colleagues
- how they communicate as team-members and as clinicians
- how they bolster connectivity within the veterinary team and practice relationship-centered care


VETM 815A will require students to actively engage in dialogue about:
- Case management
- Suboptimal patient outcomes
- Client-centered goal setting: what would the client like to achieve and is that realistic?

- Unanticipated diagnoses and prognoses
- Chronic illness
- Terminal disease
- End-of-life: the medical aspects of euthanasia
- Anticipatory grief and the interpersonal aspects of euthanasia
- Euthanizing patients with treatable conditions
- Economic euthanasia
- Death notification
- Unmet expectations for care
- Boundary setting

Emphasis will be placed on challenging conversations in clinical practice as students discover their voice as clinicians. With that voice comes the ability to make choices and to explain those choices to other members of the veterinary team. Not all cases have positive patient outcomes; not all cases are curable. This semester revisit case management from the perspective of suboptimal patient outcomes and encourages students to consider their interactions with clients as they engage in bad news delivery about patient diagnosis or prognosis, chronic illness, and terminal disease. We will discuss what happens when there are unmet expectations for care and how to manage conflict within the veterinary team. This will open the door to entry-level discussions about how and when to set boundaries and how to reset ourselves as we reinvest in healthcare delivery in support of the human-animal bond.

PNP - Pass/Fail

Veterinary Medicine