VET352 Professional Studies

The professional studies thread consists of three parts. The thread is continuous in the study and runs from the first to the last semester in the study, with three main parts:

1. Veterinary Public Health and the Veterinary Regulations where students will learn about the legal frameworks for veterinary professional practice, professional ethical considerations, and the veterinary social responsibility in important societal areas such as food production, disease control, animal welfare, environment, and sustainability. The teaching starts with the theoretical basis for VSM in the 1st, and 2nd semesters. The 3rd semester emphasizes overarching perspectives such as sustainability and One Health. The 6th semester focuses on veterinary tasks in society, such as official veterinarian, environmental health protection, and disease control. Practical meat inspection comes in the 9th semester. VSM concludes with a thorough introduction to the veterinary regulations in the 11/12th semester.
2. Epidemiology, statistics, and research methodology (Method) where students will be able to read, understand, extract and critically assess information from scientific articles as well as learn important techniques in statistics and epidemiology. The module starts with an introduction to scientific literature in the 1st semester and goes via introductory statistics and epidemiology in the 2nd and 3rd semesters and the main part of statistics/epidemiology in the 6th semester. The last part consists of the literature study starting in the 6th semester, preparatory course in the 7th semester, and delivery in the 8th semester.
3. Communication starts with a focus on communication and interaction in learning student groups in the 1st semester. As the clinic approaches, the focus moves on to communication with colleagues and clients in the clinical setting in the 8th semester, along with special topics such as self-care and mental health in the 6th semester.

Knowledge

After completing the course, the student should:

Veterinary Public Health and the veterinary regulations

Regulations governing veterinary activities

• Know the basic features of the regulations that define veterinary activities, including the Food Act and key regulations in the so-called hygiene package and the Act on Animal Health Personnel and Animal Welfare Act.
• Know the national regulations that set the framework for controlling infectious diseases in animals and zoonotic infections, including import regulations.
• Know the emergency procedures, reporting requirements and principles for dealing with severe / exotic infections in livestock and farmed fish.
• Know about the Food Safety Authority and its organization, as well as the cooperation with the Scientific Committee for Foods and the Environment and the use of risk assessments

Veterinary Public Health

• Have a basic understanding of the veterinarian's professional role and our responsibilities concerning society as well as the relationships to other disciplines and professions
• Be able to reflect on this in food safety, environmental protection, infection control, terrestrial and marine bioproduction and sports and family animal medicine.
• Know central parts of veterinary professional history
• Know professional, ethical principles and ethical guidelines for the veterinary profession
• Be able to put the veterinary profession into a One Health context
• Know the signs of damage to animals, and have knowledge of various forms of neglect of animals.
• Understand the connections between violence against animals and violence against humans.
• Understand the importance of the subject in development towards sustainable bio-production, focusing primarily on the Norwegian animal-based food chains.
• Know critical elements of animal welfare at slaughterhouses and the role of meat control in disease monitoring and control
• Be able to describe the most relevant control strategies for our conditions, and account for the knowledge elements that are essential for choosing strategies for disease control and zoonosis control.
• Have theoretical knowledge about the inspection/audit of food companies and the quality system of slaughterhouses and other food companies.
• Know the structure and function of essential surveillance programs under the auspices of the Food Safety Authority and the livestock industry.

Epidemiology, statistics and research methodology

• Be able to evaluate the strength of evidence from various sources, explain different types of study design and understand the importance of study design for how we assess and interpret the results of scientific studies.
• Know the structure of scientific articles and important elements for critical appraisal.
• Know the main principles of evidence-based veterinary medicine
• Understand the principles of causality.
• Understand the principles of population and sampling, different ways of making samples, and the implications for interpreting study results.
• Understand and explain key concepts and terminology used in veterinary epidemiology, including measures of association and disease frequency.
• Understand and explain key concepts and terminology used in statistics.
• Understand and explain the assumptions behind and use of common statistical methods used to make inference about populations based on a random sample.
• Know the main sources of bias and evaluate possible bias in scientific publications.
• Know the main principles of descriptive statistics and simple statistical analysis used for inference on populations based on a random sample.
• Know the main principles for the interpretation and evaluation of diagnostic tests.
• Know the basic principles used in infectious disease epidemiology and its use in disease control.

Communication

• Understand how group interaction contributes to the learning of a complex subject such as veterinary medicine
• Know the principles of good communication with pet owners as an important part of good clinical practice
• Know the importance of communication and interaction with veterinarians, veterinarians and administrative staff in the clinic.
• Know the important challenges when it comes to mental health for the veterinary profession.

Skills

After completing the course, the student should be able to:

Veterinary Public health and the veterinary regulations

• Assess the use of relevant regulations in connection with cases that are under the veterinarian's professional responsibility
• Review and evaluate established disease control and monitoring programs and propose specific strategies for controlling infections in animals and zoonoses
• Carry out ante- and post-mortem control, including emergency slaughter
• Make relevant professional assessments when it comes to meat control assessment of slaughter
• Present a simple assessment of slaughter hygiene and animal welfare in slaughterhouses
• Have the ability to reflect on complex situations that veterinarians have to deal with, where intersecting societal interests meet

Epidemiology, statistics and research methodology

• Formulate a research question and create a simple causal diagram.
• Present descriptive statistics for simple data sets and interpret results from certain types of statistical analysis.
• Calculate, present and explain measures of association and measures of disease frequency from relevant data material.
• Conduct and describe a systematic literature search in relevant databases in veterinary medicine.
• Critically appraise and extract relevant information from various sources with emphasis on scientific literature.
• Use scientific literature as a basis for decisions in veterinary medicine, both for clinical questions and research questions.
• Evaluate results from diagnostic tests using knowledge of the diagnostic properties and other important factors for the application of test results.
• Do basic assessments related to infectious disease epidemiology.
• Write a literature study and present a summary of this.

Communication

• Work well in regular colloquium groups and other group-based teaching
• Communicate with the pet owner in a respectful and good way
• Establish good relationships with other veterinarians, veterinary nurses and other staff in a clinical situation

General competence

• Reflect on own level of knowledge and skill level in relation to the learning outcome.
• Self-evaluate and identify own professional strengths and weaknesses within the subject area.