The Veterinary Nursing team is headed by Robin Farrell who has been the programme director since 2018. Robin’s research interests are in competency-based veterinary medical and nursing education, with a focus on clinical and professional skills. 

Robin and colleagues, Andrea Dineen, assistant professor of Veterinary Nursing, UCD and Emma O’Neill, associate professor of small Animal Veterinary Medicine, UCD, recently joined a collaboration of health care educators. This collaboration resulted in the creation of a framework to support curriculum development and teaching in evidence based practice (EBP).

Evidence based practice is the integration of best research evidence with clinical expertise and patient values. While EBP is considered a core competency for all health professions, its effective integration into health professional education programmes remains a challenge.

The framework comprises a series of EBP-related learning outcomes and learning activities that can be tailored to fit any health professional education programme. The team of researchers used a co-design approach to develop their framework, bringing together students, practitioners, and educators from seven different health professions.  Using this process, they developed learning outcomes ranked in order of progressive complexity and identified learning activities for students to complete to gain skills and achieve these outcomes. The students and graduates identified challenges they had experienced when learning EBP and made suggestions as to learning activities that they felt would be engaging and help address the challenges. The project has been presented internationally at several health professional education conferences and is showcased on the UCD teaching and learning website.

For more information about this project, please refer to the Padlet site: bit.ly/EVIBEC-Framework or check out the animation: bit.ly/EVIBECanimation. 

Equine-related research

Kate Acton is an assistant professor with the Veterinary Nursing section since 2020. Kate has extensive experience teaching and assessing veterinary nursing knowledge and skills and supporting students on placements. Having graduated with a Master of Science (MSc) from the University of Edinburgh in 2019, Kate's research interests to date have been in the equine field with a focus on equine veterinary practitioner's engagement, medical education, cognitive learning, and equine science.

Her first publication explored employee engagement of equine veterinary professionals in the UK, USA and the Netherlands. Link to paper: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fvets.2023.1036388/full. Her current project is focused on a listener analysis of an equine science-based podcast that Kate co-hosts with Nancy McLean (USA). The podcast “Conversations in Equine Science” aims to bridge the gap between scientists and horse enthusiasts for knowledge transfer and improved horse welfare. Kate Acton also hosts the UCD Veterinary Nursing podcast, with the aim of disseminating information on the role of the veterinary nurse to both the public and to veterinary nurses and students in the industry, as well as highlighting the veterinary nurse’s role and pathways within veterinary nursing that students may not have been aware of.  Link to UCD podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/22KagSJ1mD5b8Cjkun3Xox?si=3ede304b7eb140ba

Veterinary simulation in teaching

Tracey Murphy is a senior laboratory attendant with the Veterinary Nursing section. She has been working in UCD for the last twelve years; the first five years were in the UCD Veterinary Hospital as an animal care attendant. Her present role includes working alongside the UCD Veterinary Clinical Skills Centre director, Mark Mc Corry. This role involves model making for the clinical skills centre. Last February, both Tracey and Mark submitted an abstract for a newly designed “Naso-oesophageal feeding tube model”. It was accepted for the International Veterinary Simulation in Teaching Conference (InVeST) 2023, which was held in Grenada in the Caribbean. This conference gives people, internationally, the opportunity to showcase their research and models with like-minded people.

Their submitted “feeding tube model” was created from an IKEA toy dog.  Tracey created a real-life silicone nose which housed two silicone straws as nostrils for the insertion of the feeding tube into the thoracic cavity.  The straws had an endotracheal tube attached to them to mimic the oesophagus.   The model also contained a small barrel for a chest with sections cut out to mimic ribs as landmarks for correct tube placement. The model was tested and validated by qualified veterinary nurses and veterinary surgeons working in the UCD Veterinary Hospital as well as a cohort of final year veterinary medicine students.  Regular attendance at this conference is essential as the networking, and also the advice and ideas of others, can only help every clinical skills centre worldwide to make simulation teaching more affordable and accessible to everyone no matter what their budgets.