| The majority of veterinary communications education focuses on face-to-face interactions, leaving a deficiency in the literature about telephone communication skills. Although approximately one-third of veterinary students pursue internships after graduation, very few publications address intern or resident communications training. In fall 2016, eight small animal rotating interns matched to the Texas A&M University Veterinary Medical Teaching Hospital (VMTH) through the Veterinary Internship and Residency Matching Program (VIRMP). At this time, VMTH added referring veterinarian (RDVM) telephone communication training to the small animal rotating intern orientation by involving telephone communications training with standardized RDVMS.
Four faculty members served as facilitators during the intern orientation, and four primary care practitioners acted as RDVMs via telephone. Immediately prior to training, interns were asked to complete a confidence survey regarding their perceived abilities to communicate with RDVMs. The interns were randomly divided into pairs and assigned one faculty facilitator per pair. Interns were given time to complete two realistic telephone scenarios (RDVM misdiagnosis and RDVM micromanagement) with the standardized doctors. Interns then repeated the same confidence survey post-training.
There was a significant difference in pre-orientation and post-orientation total survey confidence scores (p = 0.002). Scores from 5 of the 14 survey items demonstrated significantly higher confidence scores from the pre-orientation to the post-orientation survey (p = 0.021 to 0.048). The findings of this pilot study supports that telephone-based communications training may expand learners’ communication-skills confidence and that standardized RDVMs may be a useful tool for developing important telephone communication skills in the referral environment.
Authors:
*Tayce, Jordan - Center for Educational Technologies, Texas A&M University, College Station, USA Coe, Jason - Department of Population Medicine, Ontario Veterinary College, Guelph, Canada Creevy, Kate - Department of Small Animal Clinical Sciences, Texas A&M University, College Station, USA |