8 Apr 2020
Staff at University of Surrey School of Veterinary Medicine "blown away" by final-year students' reaction to pandemic disruption – and remain confident it won't stop them graduating.
James Westgate
Job Title
The University of Surrey School of Veterinary Medicine is confident the mass disruption caused by the coronavirus pandemic will not stop its final-year students graduating with flying colours.
Hundreds of fifth-year veterinary students across the country have been hit by strict lockdown and social distancing rules that have threatened to derail the completion of their degrees.
Three weeks ago, Surrey was forced to pull all its final-year students from clinical placements, despite them being weeks away from completing their courses.
Around 100 students are now finishing their degrees remotely and are being mentored by virtual teaching fellows, but the system is working, according to director of clinical education Mike Cathcart.
Dr Cathcart said: “Two weeks ago we withdrew all of our students across our entire network of practices.
“Our model of final-year teaching is our students arrive in our partner network of practices and they’re supported by a team of 12 academics that go out to see the students on a regular basis. We made the decision to just pull them entirely out of that and send them home, but we haven’t cancelled anything.”
He added: “Our absolute priority focus is making sure that these students meet the requirements of the royal college and we’re still confident they’ll be able to meet all of their competencies.”
Working through Microsoft Teams, students have been set up in small tutor groups with sessions facilitated by a team of veterinary clinical teaching fellows.
The fellows would usually be visiting final-year students in practice, but are instead making twice-daily contact with their tutor groups to ensure all objectives are being met.
The UK’s youngest vet school already used a partner network of 65 practices for intramural rotation (IMR) placements and a team of academics supports final-year teaching.
Dr Cathcart added: “We’ve had to move to a virtual presence, but we can only do that because we’ve got this dedicated team of 12 academics who support the final-year teaching.
“If we didn’t have them in place, this wouldn’t work. We wouldn’t be able to maintain our regular contact with the students, and give them some structured and facilitated learning.
One of the teaching fellows is Neerja Muncaster, who has spent the past few weeks working with students who have found their lives thrown up in the air, seemingly overnight.
She said: “I’ve just been really, really impressed with how the students have all coped with it. We’ve had no moaning and no complaining about anything. They’ve taken it in their stride – we were completely blown away.
“We’re all doing slightly longer hours to get it up and running, but the support we’ve had from within the team, and then from within the department and the school, has been great – everyone is really behind us.”
Holly Sutton is a fifth-year student studying to complete five years of hard study while living in lockdown. She said: “Video conferencing has been a saviour as the fact we have been engaging in group meetings, rather than completely self-directed like I had feared, has kept me sane.
“And I’m sure my peers are saying the same, too – in group meetings we’ve been incredibly productive and have been having laughs along the way to keep spirits up.
“The amazing teaching team created ‘Virtual IMR’ in the space of three days and the overall vibe has been incredibly positive. We have had a wide variation in content and its delivery, including working through cases as groups, teaching peers and researching our own personal objectives.”
The class of 2020 may well have to miss the fanfare of graduation due to ongoing social distancing measures, but Dr Cathcart believes their experiences during the pandemic will only serve to make them better vets.
He added: “This will only go to strengthen their adaptability and their resilience. I think it will give them an experience and exposure that a lot of cohorts won’t have – and I’d be confident us and every other school will still be able to say their graduates are absolutely beyond competent.”
