Human Behaviour in Veterinary Care

The human in veterinary practice is an oft-neglected component of both human and animal welfare. Those in vet practice, including veterinarians, vet nurses, technical staff, and front-of-house staff all have a role to play in ensuring that animals receive the best possible care. How should clinicians approach the cognitive load of decision making in stressful situations, recognise the biases in their decision making, and balance non-technical skills alongside highly specialised clinical skills to support animal health? Veterinary work requires effective communication across diverse teams in stressful situations, and good animal care necessitates an understanding of human factors in the veterinary practice. Even after care has concluded, veterinarians need to recognise the impact that human behaviour has on supporting animal welfare. We describe how human behaviour impacts veterinary care, and how veterinarians can utilise up-to-date research on human behaviour such as the Knowledge Deficit Model of communication, the Theory of Planned Behaviour, and 5As Behavioural Change model to improve animal welfar

Preliminary evidence supporting the use of equine science podcasts to bridge the gap between scientists and horse enthusiasts to improve horse welfare.:Preliminary evidence of podcast impacts on equine welfare

SummaryBackground Podcasts have become a popular digital forum for discussing scientific information with peers, as well as with the non-scientific community, often referred to as ‘edutainment’. It is unclear how science-based podcasts can support the veterinary industry through, for example, supporting good husbandry practices.ObjectivesTo understand the influence of ‘edutainment’ on equine owners’ husbandry decisionsStudy DesignThe sample population was listeners of the Conversations in Equine Science (CES) podcast recruited to complete an online survey via a link promoted by the CES hosts. The survey contained Likert-like questions assessing how listeners rated the importance of different forms of evidence when making husbandry decisions and questions relating to husbandry changes made. MethodsA mixed methods approach was used to analyse the data. The Likert package for R was used to explore importance ratings. Free text questions were analysed via a content analysis with a constructionist epistemological position. Results The experience of veterinarians and scientific evidence was considered the most important forms of evidence that owners used when making decisions about their horse’s management (93% agreed and 91% agreed they were important respectively). Additionally, 74% of respondents had made a change to the management or training principles prompted by an episode of CES, suggesting edutainment can be a prompt to management change. Of these, the majority (55%) had done so based on a joint discussion of the podcast and their own reading of the evidence.Main LimitationsThis was an opportunistic sample of those already invested in the edutainment format, and may not represent those owners with no interest in scientific evidence. Conclusions Podcasts are an easy-access, low-cost medium to convey research and current trends in the equine/equitation science genre. They may be a valuable tool for the veterinary industry to employ to support horse welfare. <br/

Lecture rapture: The place and case for lectures in the new normal

Following the pivot to online teaching as a result of COVID-19, a longstanding debate as to whether higher education should abandon traditional face-to-face lectures has reignited. In this paper, we set out our reflection on this issue based on the evidence available. We conclude that traditional on-campus lectures, and the recordings of those lectures have a place in higher education and the suggestion that they should be abandoned is as unhelpful as the suggestion that they should be the default mode of teaching. When lectures are deliberately chosen as the most appropriate method of teaching and when the same pedagogical care and attention is given as to other modes of delivery, they provide an effective, pragmatic solution, particularly for large classes