IMPROVING CASE–BASED LEARNING IN VETERINARY HEALTH
SCIENCES EDUCATION: PRELIMINARY RESULTS FROM THE VET-HIN
APPROACH
Oscar Tamburis (1)(2), Fabrizio L. Ricci (2), Fabrizio Consorti (3), Fabrizio Pecoraro (2), Giovanni Della Valle (1), Manuela Gizzarelli (1), Brunella Restucci (1)
(1) Università degli Studi di Napoli "Federico II", Dipartimento di Medicina Veterinaria e Produzioni Animali. (2) Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Istituto per la Ricerca sulle Popolazioni e Politiche Sociali (CNR - IRPPS). (3)
Università "Sapienza" di Roma, Dipartimento di Scienze Chirurgiche.
Veterinary medicine students, called to achieve a difficult balance between owner-related factors and animal welfare, need to develop strong critical thinking skills [1]. The implementation of Case-Based Learning (CBL) as major educational method allows linking theory to practice through the application of theoretical knowledge to real cases and encourages the use of methods of inquiry-based learning [2]. In such scenario, Health Issue Network (HIN, originally developed by the National Research Council of Italy and the Italian Society for Medical Education) is presented as a CBL-based approach that introduces formalisms to represent how Health Issues (HIs) show up and evolve over time. This allows reconstructing the implicit knowledge that lies behind the doctor’s way of thinking, turning it into an explicit knowledge. HIN is based on Petri Nets (PNs), but in an educational environment a lighter version, named f-HIN (friendly HIN), is implemented based on the same mathematical properties as PNs–based HIN for a generic patient [3]. A first attempt to decline HIN for veterinary medicine education (vet-HIN) is being conducted at the Veterinary Teaching Hospital (OVUD) of the Department of Veterinary Medicine and Animal Production (DMVPA) in Naples. Five cases were selected from OVUD database and proposed to five interns, each one of which had to translate own case into f-HIN and show it to their colleagues. To evaluate the level of perception and comprehension of vet-HIN a questionnaire was administrated to the interns. ANOVA tests were run to analyse the rating score of the questionnaires. The limited sample dimension led to not statistically significant results, nonetheless the novelty and usefulness of the approach were recognized by the all the interns. Such preliminary results, as well as the need of a larger study sample, suggest the deployment of vet-HIN as routine form of education for III, IV and V year’s veterinary students. Vet-HIN stands then as an innovative way to “guide future veterinarians to become veterinarians” [1], as it makes possible to guide the students in the analysis of the evolution dynamics of a real/realistic clinical case for educational and decision-making skills development purposes, also setting the method within a unique “One Health” perspective in its overall. The next research steps will focus on the creation of specific software as formal tool to be connected to a veterinary EHR’s database (overcoming the current semi-automatic process), in order to extract clinical data to figure out case studies to be used for veterinary health sciences education.
[1] May S.A. Clinical reasoning and case-based decision-making: the fundamental challenge to veterinary educators, Journal of Veterinary Medical Education, 40: 200-209, 2013.
[2] McLean S.F. Case-Based Learning and its Application in Medical and Health-Care Fields: A Review of Worldwide Literature, Journal of Medical Education and Curricular Development 3: 39-49, 2016.
[3] Ricci F.L. et al. HIN–Health Issue Network as Means to Improve Case–Based Learning in Health Sciences Education, proceedings of the 2018 STC EFMI Conference, 15-17/10/2018, Zagreb, Croatia.
