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Hill L, Smeak D, Lord L, Allen LC. Expected frequency of use and proficiency of core surgical skills in entry-level veterinary practice: 2009 AVMA General Practitioner and ACVS Diplomate Core Surgical Skills survey results. Paper presented at: The Three Rs - Together it's possible. 8th World Congress on Alternatives and Animal Use in the Life Sciences; 2011 Aug 21-25; Montreal, Canada

Recent studies rank general surgical skills as the most important skill, procedure, or area of knowledge that new graduates need to know by the time of graduation. However, veterinary teaching hospitals can no longer provide consistent caseloads for students to obtain crucial hands-on surgical experience. Additionally, for ethical and financial reasons, non-survival procedural laboratories are being phased out, so overall student surgical experience is even more limited. Consequently, surgical curriculums are transitioning from a procedures-based strategy to a skills-based approach for teaching surgery. The primary goal of the skills-based approach is teaching skills fundamental to performing any surgery, rather than teaching specific procedures expected of entry-level veterinarians. Unfortunately, no definition has been provided to date regarding what constitutes these fundamental surgery skills. To help identify and define these core surgical skills, and to determine expected entry-level frequency and proficiency for these skills, the authors considered it critical to solicit broad input from the veterinary profession to assist in formulating these definitions and parameters. Pursuant to establishing this type of profession-wide consensus, and to validate and initiate production of surgical training modules aligned with current professional input and opinion, the authors conducted two national surveys, the results of which now form the structure and sequence for producing skills-oriented e-learn- ing instructional courses that we anticipate could be adapted into current surgical training curricula within veterinary institutions. This session will provide a review of the literature, survey methodology and present the results of the ACVS specialist survey, and the AVMA general practitioner survey. 

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