The distributed model of veterinary school

On this week's episode of The Vet Blast Podcast, Adam Christman, DVM, MBA, welcomes Stacy Anderson, DVM, MVSc, PhD, DACVS-LA, executive dean of the Lincoln Memorial University Richard A. Gillespie College of Veterinary Medicine, and his former veterinary school class, to the show to discuss the distributed model in veterinary education, which was pioneered by Western University of Health Sciences and brings students into private practices instead of a traditional teaching hospital.

Throughout the interview, Anderson and Christman discuss the benefits and challenges of this learning model for students, and the clinics the students are working in, what exactly the The Consortium on Workplace-Based Education and Learning is, and some common misconceptions surrounding this method of learning.

Below is a partial transcript, edited lightly for clarity.

Adam Christman, DVM, MBA: I heard this term before, and I just want the listeners to maybe understand that as well. When you hear COWBEL, C, O, W, B, E, l, one L, what does that mean?

Stacy Anderson, DVM, MVSc, PhD, DACVS-LA: So COWBEL is the Consortium on workplace-based education and learning, and that was started probably like around 2018 by a group of educators that have workplace based training. So mostly LMU, Calgary, Western, we're kind of the founding members, and now some of the other institutions have obviously joined in. But it's basically a working group that is very collaborative in developing things from best practices in distributive veterinary education, clinical education. We also talk a lot about accreditation and how we're navigating that, because it is different for a distributive program versus a traditional program.

More recently, there has been a push from particularly corporate practices to harmonize how all of these schools, especially the the number that are coming in online, are interacting with the practices so that you know what they're doing with LMU can look the same as what they're doing with University of Arizona. So we've been developing kind of like shared, it's a, you know, basically monster spreadsheet, but allows practices to share data with between institutions so that they're not having to, like, send separate things out to each institution. So I think that's one of the biggest push that we're working on right now. And fun facts, COWBEL has 22 member institutions, 17 of which are accredited by the AVMA CPE. So that's the other kind of fun fact about COWBEL is, is we've been involving more than just the traditional distributed models.

So for example, NC State is a member, Mississippi State is a member. And so as a member those programs are having access to, again, the best practices in distributed education, because there's a lot of even traditional programs that use distributive education in the clinical year.

Christman: Yeah, very Interesting. We have some colleagues that are out there that are maybe like, 'I don't know, I'm not so much of a believer' out there. So what do you say to those to help enlighten them and hopefully redirect their thinking?