Influence of demographic variables on the frequency of use of various procedures, skills, and areas of knowledge among veterinarians in private small animal exclusive or predominant practice and proficiency expected of new veterinary school graduates

摘要

Approximately half of all new veterinary school graduates enter private small animal exclusive or small animal predominant practices. Of these, 76% to 81% will treat exclusively small animal patients and 19% to 24% will treat predominantly small animal patients. The frequency with which certain procedures, skills, and areas of knowledge are used in private small animal exclusive and predominant practices and the proficiency expected of new graduates in these types of practices have recently been reported. A need-to-know classification was assigned to particular procedures, skills, and areas of knowledge on the basis of mean scores for frequency of use and proficiency expected of new graduates assigned by responding veterinarians. In totaf, 110 procedures, skills, and areas of knowledge were assigned to this need-to-know category on the basis of frequency of use in the surveyed practices and 108 were assigned on the basis of proficiency expected for new graduates.Nine additional items were added tothe need-to-know category by virtue of having been written in by >= 5% of respondents to an open-ended question on the survey. Results suggested that all procedures, skills, and areas of knowledge in the need-to-know category should be taught in the core veterinary curriculum to allow new graduates to develop at least a minimum level of competency prior to graduation.