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A new project to help vet school graduates make the transition into professional practice and a lifelong successful career has been launched by an international group of pioneering vet schools.
VetSet2Go is an online collaboration involving veterinary education experts from The University of Nottingham and University of Edinburgh, with a group of vet schools in Australia and the USA.
The partnership aims to bridge a gap between undergraduate veterinary courses and employer, client and graduate expectations by collecting new information to produce a list of employability factors – a ‘Veterinary Set of Graduate Outcomes’.
VetSet2Go defines ‘employability’ as a set of personal and professional capabilities that enable a vet to gain employment, and develop a professional pathway that achieves satisfaction and success.
Over the next two years, participating vet schools will be consulting with students, new graduates, veterinary educators, employers and clients to develop an evidence-based employability framework and associated teaching methods. Key goals are to promote wellbeing and resilience among new vets, smooth transition to professional practice and the development of transferable or ‘soft’ skills essential to success in the veterinary marketplace.
Dr Liz Mossop and Dr Kate Cobb from the Nottingham Vet School are working with Professor Susan Rhind and Dr Kirsty Hughes at the Royal (Dick) School of Veterinary Studies, Edinburgh to deliver the client expectations part of the study, interviewing veterinary clients from a range of backgrounds about their perceptions of the skills that make an excellent vet.
Dr Mossop said: “We are very excited to be a part of this significant project, working with an international group of vet schools on the important topic of employability. At Nottingham, and other schools, the curricula already have a huge emphasis on personal and professional skills, and the outcomes of this project will allow us to develop this aspect further and produce even better graduates for the profession.”
“The timing could not be better with the recent RCVS/BVA Vet Futures report emphasising the importance of veterinary education in delivering key professional skills as well as knowledge and clinical skills, and we are delighted to be able to play a part in addressing these challenges through the VetSet2Go collaboration."
VetSet2Go is being led by Murdoch University in Australia, with Nottingham and Edinburgh University as UK partners. The project also involves researchers at the Universities of Queensland, Adelaide, Sydney and Washington State University in the USA.
For more information or to register an interest in participating in the project, please visit the project website (www.vetset2go.edu.au) and follow on Twitter @VetSet2Go.
Support for this project has been provided by the Australian Government Office for Learning and Teaching. The views in this project do not necessarily reflect the views of the Australian Government Office for Learning and Teaching.
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Notes to editors: The University of Nottingham has 43,000 students and is ‘the nearest Britain has to a truly global university, with a “distinct” approach to internationalisation, which rests on those full-scale campuses in China and Malaysia, as well as a large presence in its home city.’ (Times Good University Guide 2016). It is also one of the most popular universities in the UK among graduate employers and the winner of ‘Outstanding Support for Early Career Researchers’ at the Times Higher Education Awards 2015. It is ranked in the world’s top 75 by the QS World University Rankings 2015/16, and 8th in the UK by research power according to the Research Excellence Framework 2014. It has been voted the world’s greenest campus for three years running, according to Greenmetrics Ranking of World Universities.
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