Executive Editor’s message: Veterinary communication (Sep ’18)

Changes implemented over the past decade in veterinary curriculum in universities across North America, have reflected the need for entry-level veterinarians to have well developed communication skills as a core competency. Not surprisingly, many Doctor of Veterinary Medicine (DVM) programs incorporate some form of training within the curriculum.

I recently attended a course focused on veterinary communications that was delivered by the Institute for Healthcare Communication (IHC; healthcarecomm.org/veterinary-communication/) in New Haven, Connecticut. The educational materials for this workshop were originally developed through the generous financial support of Bayer Animal Health from 2001 to 2016 and perhaps many of you have been trained using some of these modules. Thankfully the program has continued, and I had the opportunity to attend a session intended for faculty engaged in veterinary curriculum training us how to deliver evidence-based communication modules that were specifically developed by the IHC for veterinary medicine. It was a train-the-trainer type of course.

The module examples and scenarios were strongly focused on companion-animal practice, so to be fully engaged I had to dust off some of my companion-animal communication skills and knowledge to participate. There were some food-animal production scenario examples as well and the IHC is working to develop more.

I wanted to write about this experience because I felt that the concepts behind the training, while companion-animal focused, were directly translatable to food-animal practice and food-animal veterinarians. The training covers basic communication skills such as maintaining eye contact with the person you are speaking with, using open-ended questions more frequently to encourage open dialogue, maintaining appropriate facial expressions, and body language and posture (no slouching as my Mom would say). The premise behind these basic skills is that by building a relationship through optimum communication, then we as veterinarians can improve outcomes such as the optimization of animal health. I think all swine veterinarians would agree that a major goal of our work is to improve outcomes, whether it is improving pig average daily gain or improving overall health by maximizing client compliance.

The course really challenged me to stretch outside my comfort zone. Similar to the veterinary curriculum here at my home university, we participated in client simulations with actors portraying clients. The actors were very talented and versatile and kept the scenarios real. The experience has provided me with the opportunity to develop my train-the-trainer skills and provided me with a fresh outlook on the subject. It has also motivated me to further develop this area in my swine DVM teaching. This topic seems appropriately timed in the September-October issue of the journal as veterinary students are returning to school from their summer experiences.

I hope my message encourages other educators and mentors to consider their own communication skills and how we can continue to improve how we train new swine veterinarians. I also believe that as swine veterinarians, further development and practice in communication skills can help us educate and engage our clients and their farm staff, truck drivers …. and many more in improving and maintaining swine health.

If you are unfamiliar with the IHC program or have not had the opportunity to engage in any type of communication workshop I encourage you to look it up. My experience at the IHC workshop not only reinforced my current skills, but it helped me to develop new skills, and helped me to recognize how other people, clients or students for example, can struggle with communication themselves.

Terri O’Sullivan, DVM, PhD
Executive Editor