News Release

MADISON, WI, MARCH 09, 2010 -- The public expects veterinarians to be competent in surgery upon graduation, and veterinary educators shoulder the responsibility of training students to meet that expectation. Teaching surgery skills to veterinary students has improved over the years, but assessing their skills remains a challenge. Determining student competence requires more than a traditional letter grade administered by a variety of instructors.

Researchers at the University of Missouri Veterinary Medical Teaching Hospital developed a pass/fail process to grade veterinary surgery students. The new grading system incorporated prompt feedback and attempted to minimize grader variability. The results are published online in the 2010 Journal of Natural Resources and Life Sciences Education.

 

According to Dr. F.A. Mann, the leader of the study, “While it is difficult to be consistent in assigning subjective grades when there are several instructors and many students involved, the ultimate goal in a didactic veterinary surgery laboratory is to make sure the student develops competent skills to operate on patients without inexcusable untoward effects.”

 

The study consisted of seven laboratory sessions, with six students per instructor. Each instructor assessed eleven categories according to standards of very good, acceptable, and unacceptable, and each category contained multiple questions to guide the instructor in grading. Any unacceptable grade required written comments posted the next day, to allow students to analyze and improve their performance. Only the grades for final two labs applied to the final grade, and the first five labs allowed the students to develop competent surgical skills and techniques so that no major errors would be made when called upon to operate on an actual clinical patient.

 

In the analysis of the program, the researchers found favorable acceptance among students based on their evaluations. There was little difference in assigned grades between faculty and residents, but some individual instructors seemingly graded more strictly than others. Student grades improved as the course progressed during each year.

 

“The results of our study make us confident that we have duly assessed our students and can allow them to move on to training in clinical surgery,” says Mann. “We hope that our research will stimulate others to emphasize the assessment component of laboratory instruction so that competence is demonstrated and not just assumed.”