22 Nov 2023
Richard Patton said vet schools should screen their students for condition, which is the inability to visualise, as he nearly failed part of his own degree because of it.
Allister Webb
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Image: © AimPix / Adobe Stock
A Derbyshire vet has spoken out to raise awareness of a condition that he thinks affected him both as a student and as a clinician.
Richard Patton said vet schools should screen their students for aphantasia, which is the inability to visualise, and believes he nearly failed part of his own degree because of it.
But he has also praised a Cumbrian firm that helped him understand the impact of a road crash he feels lucky to have survived by modelling the injuries he sustained.
Although aphantasia is not widely known, some estimates have suggested that as many as 5% of people are affected by it.
Mr Patton said the condition means he can only tell what his wife or children look like through words he has remembered.
But he only began to realise he might be among them in recent years after a friend, who is also aphantasic, mentioned it to him.
He said: “I knew that I struggled with things. I found it very hard to take verbal descriptions into activities.
“I know I almost failed a third year viva because part of that was to describe a behaviour of a pup. If they showed me a video of the behaviour of the pup, I could have told you without a doubt what was going on, but I couldn’t take that information.
“I knew I found that hard, but I had no idea other people do things differently.”
Although he stressed that the condition had not stopped him from working as a vet, and technological advances such as camera phones have helped him in the intervening years, Mr Patton said tests for it can be completed in as little as 10 minutes and earlier knowledge would have enabled him to approach difficult situations differently.
He said: “Thinking about that viva, I was put under a huge amount of pressure, but I had no concept of why it was difficult.
“Those things leave a mark on you and I don’t want other people to go through that. It’s not a crime to be aphantasic. It just needs to be understood.”
The Veterinary Schools Council said its members would consider aphantasia as part of their own individual occupational health and reasonable adjustments processes if it was “raised by any of their students as a condition they needed support with”.
A spokesperson added that the council would not know the nature of the responses to individual cases on confidentiality grounds. But Mr Patton believes a more uniform approach to the issue is now needed.
He said: “It’s incredibly easy to screen for and the vet schools should screen for it.”
The impact of aphantasia on Mr Patton’s life was particularly apparent as he reflected on what happened to him when he was struck by a car while out cycling in the Peak District in September 2016.
He said he was “extremely lucky to be alive” having suffered more than 40 separate injuries in the incident, which left him in intensive care at Sheffield’s Northern General Hospital for seven weeks.
But, although he saw copies of his CT scans to help understand the trauma of what he had been through, he could not retain the images until Kendal-based firm Vet3D got involved.
They used new and larger 3D printing technology, together with updated software, to create a full-sized human model of him and the injuries he sustained.
The model, which took four years to develop and uses hidden magnets to keep the bones in their correct positions, has already been to the Northern General and Mr Patton hopes it can help other people.
He said: “It’s explained things to me that didn’t quite make sense before. The level of detail in this is phenomenal.”
Vet3D founder Bill Oxley admitted there had been moments where his team were not sure they would be able to complete the project.
But he added: “We’re so happy the model has played a small part in Richard’s recovery and will hopefully help spread awareness of aphantasia in our profession.”
