Building Veterinary Graduate Employability: VETSET2GO! Susan Rhind, Liz Mossop, Kirsty Hughes, Kate Cobb, Martin Cake

Overview The veterinary education/ profession context Vetset2Go Project overview Sub-Project Focus – client expectations Draft Employability Framework Next Steps

Confident, resilient, healthy and well-supported Brief Context: Veterinary Education/ Veterinary Profession Confident, resilient, healthy and well-supported

Project Overview ‘VetSet2Go is a collaborative project to define the capabilities most important for employability and success in the veterinary profession, and create assessment tools and resources to build these capabilities’

Employability: Definition for this project “A set of personal and professional capabilities that enable a veterinarian to gain employment, and develop a professional pathway that achieves satisfaction and success”.

Why Employability? Competence-focussed frameworks have rightly become the backbone of veterinary education Default overarching objective is just that – competence at graduation. Threshold graduate competencies do not necessarily predict the future success and satisfaction of a veterinarian in their chosen career path. Employability provides a broader focus, by stretching the endpoint, scope and scale of educational outcomes into and beyond the crucial transition to practice period

BEME systematic review Conclusions: This review has highlighted the comparatively weak body of evidence supporting the importance of professional competencies for veterinary graduate success, with the exception of communication skills. However we stress this is more indicative of the scarcity of high-quality veterinary-based education research in the field, than of the true priority of these competencies.

Phase 1: client focus groups and interviews Client relationships Professionalism Communication skills Decision making and problem solving Commitment to animal welfare Commitment to quality and the profession 14 in total (8 focus groups, 6 individual interviews) Small animal, equine and farm animal clients - Edinburgh and Nottingham Thematic analysis by an independent consultant (Work Psychology Group) Framework of 6 capabilities and associated behavioural descriptors

Phase 2: online validation questionnaire

Phase 2: online validation questionnaire Each behaviour or characteristic rated on a 5 point Likert scale Clients asked how important this behaviour or characteristic was to their satisfaction as a veterinary client. Open from 22.11.16 – 31.12.16 to veterinary clients in UK, Australia, USA, Canada and New Zealand. [social media and on-line forums, ‘Farmers Weekly’, ‘Horse and Hound’] 1275 completed surveys were received.

Most important capabilities Clients were asked to indicate which of the six veterinary skill areas are most important Clients most frequently selected: Client relationships Commitment to animal welfare Commitment to quality and the profession Farm and equine owners selected: Decision making and problem solving Small animal owners were consistent with the overall rating

Resilience Sub-project (Adelaide/ Washington State) Preliminary results indicate that the factors contributing to resilience in early-career veterinarians are less well studied than those contributing to mental ill-health, but some factors identified so far include self-compassion, mindfulness, social support.

Draft Employability Framework

Now on to Phase 2! Phase 2 will validate a multisource assessment approach that embeds and scaffolds these employability capabilities within formative feedback and assessment, particularly in work­‐integrated learning (WiL). The VetSet2Go assessment tools and resources will be made available via the website.

Innovation and Development Grant susan.rhind@ed.ac.uk