Active Rotation Management: Managing Clinical Veterinary Students in a Community-Based Teaching Model

Distributed or community-based models for delivering clinical teaching to final-year veterinary students are becoming increasingly common. Managing real clinical problems in an authentic clinical environment drives students' intrinsic motivation and should prepare them more effectively for work in practice at graduation. These models do, however, present challenges, particularly around consistency of delivery and quality assurance management. The community-based model developed and refined at the University of Nottingham School of Veterinary Medicine and Science is different from those used elsewhere. Small groups of students spend 2-week blocks in the premises owned by third parties in which they complete their clinical training. In all core clinical teaching sites, the school places approximately one member of the clinical staff per group of students, but students are taught by both school staff and non-school staff employed by the third party. Over the first 13 years of delivering clinical teaching in this model, a process of "active rotation management" has evolved to ensure consistency of the student experience across all the sites used. The challenges and issues presented by this model has led to the development of a series of "dos" and "don'ts" that inform the success of the model. Based on surveys of how well the students and employers feel rotations have prepared them for practice, this model seems to represent an effective method of delivering appropriate clinical teaching.