Article 2025

The importance of student preparedness factors for clinical training: comparing the opinions of faculty veterinary academics and practice-based preceptors in three veterinary schools with workplace-based remote distributed models of clinical training

Research in Veterinary Science
Journal · Vol. 197 · Art. 105937
Abstract

Clinical training preparedness is defined as the degree of competency of a veterinary student to work and learn at an expected level. The aim of this study was to quantitatively investigate the level of importance and agreement attached to each of 91 clinical training preparedness factors by practice-based clinical supervisors and faculty veterinary academics in three veterinary programmes with remote distributed models of workplace-based clinical training. The data was collected using an online questionnaire from academics and preceptors at the School of Veterinary Medicine, University of Surrey; the College of Veterinary Medicine, University of Arizona; and the College of Veterinary Medicine, Western University of Health Sciences. The participants were requested to rate each factor according to an ordinal five-point impact Likert scale. Impact was defined as how much effect a factor would have on a student being able to learn and participate. There were 115 preceptor and 44 academic responders. There was a high level of agreement between the preceptors and academics within, between and across each of the three schools for the factor rating mean, median and mode values. The impact on learning and engagement were all rated moderate or higher. The outcomes of this quantitative survey provide strong evidence that the student preparedness factors investigated were considered important by the preceptors and the academics. When adopting the preparedness framework within the curriculum it is important that academics, preceptors and students share a common understanding of what preparedness for clinical training means. © 2025 Elsevier Ltd

Keywords

Author Keywords

Academics Clinical training Distributed Preceptors Preparedness Veterinary students Workplace-based

Index Keywords

learning training clinical competence female human male procedures psychology questionnaire Humans Surveys and Questionnaires Article workplace Students curriculum student Likert scale university comparative study school Arizona online questionnaire prevention veterinary medicine veterinary student preceptorship veterinary education Education, Veterinary Faculty Schools, Veterinary
Author Affiliations
Veterinary School Main Building, University of Surrey, Guildford, Surrey, United Kingdom
College of Veterinary Medicine, The University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, United States
Western University of Health Sciences, Pomona, CA, United States
Funding & Acknowledgements
No funding information
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