Veterinary students provide primary-care services for Guelph-area pet owners
BY ANDREW VOWLES
Think of it as preventive medicine for your dog or cat — plus a teaching aid for veterinary students looking to hone their client communication skills before entering practice.
That's the dual purpose of the Community Wellness Clinic at the Ontario Veterinary College, which for the past four years has enlisted final-year students as “the vet” for dog and cat owners in the Guelph area.
As with any other neighbourhood veterinary clinic, clients book appointments for primary-care services, including regular checkups, vaccinations, dental care and consultations on topics from nutrition to parasite control. The clinic logs about 750 cases each year.
What's different about the service at OVC is that pet owners — at least those visiting during the academic year — will find that their primary clinician is probably a fourth-year veterinary student taking part in a mandatory rotation designed to impart clinical and communication smarts.
The service runs year-round, with about 110 students taking part in rotations during the school year, Thursdays through Saturdays. Two clinicians currently work at the clinic, and there are plans to hire a third. Each week, animal behaviourist and OVC graduate Susan Simmons commutes from her Mississauga practice to see clients and teach students.
“We focus on communication and client relationship skills,” says Lorna Wojcicki, an instructor in the Department of Population Medicine whose position as community medicine co-ordinator was created three years ago.
Glancing through a two-way mirror into an adjoining examining room in the Small-Animal Clinic of the Veterinary Teaching Hospital, Wojcicki says the setup allows clinicians and instructors to watch students in action and critique their performance.
She recalls one appointment during which a student provided incorrect information to a client. “Backstage” in the observation room, the clinician was able to correct the student, who then returned and enlightened the client.
Far from being upset with the conflicting messages, says Wojcicki, “the client said how important and valuable that was — that the student was willing to put aside ego to make sure the client got the right information.”
She says the primary-care clinic sees no emergency cases, but student vets have identified animals with medical problems such as hyperthyroidism and diabetes that pet owners hadn't recognized.
Says Wojcicki: “An older client commented that his two dogs received a better physical exam than he had ever had himself.”
Jane Shaw, an OVC graduate who studied client communication for her PhD, remembers the woman who brought her dog and cat for their first annual wellness visit. A friend who had accompanied her to the clinic appointment was “so impressed that she ended up bringing her cat the following week.”
It was Shaw who, on arriving at Guelph five years ago, suggested first expanding the existing wellness clinic, then introducing a required primary-care clinical rotation for all fourth-year students. (A clinic had been running before that, but Shaw says interns had to fit it into their regular busy schedules.)
Earlier, she had served as clinician on a student-focused community practice at Cornell University. She liked the idea of giving students an opportunity to practise their primary-care skills in a safe, supervised environment.
“It's what mostly resembles the general practitioner environment most of our students will be working in when they graduate,” says Shaw, now a veterinary epidemiologist at Western University of Health Sciences.
Working in the wellness clinic sparked DVM student Jason Coe's current studies of interactions among veterinarians, clients and patients.
“Understanding veterinary clients' needs and expectations will provide valuable insight to both veterinary students and veterinary practitioners and help them better prepare for dealing with those needs and expectations,” says Coe, who hopes to explore outcomes such as client recall, understanding, compliance, satisfaction and overall patient health.
