Veterinarians self assessment on their clinical skills when getting into residency programs

Abstract

In the last decade, there was an upsurge in Veterinary Medicine undergraduate programs in Brazil. To control this expansion, it is important to evaluate the quality of teaching. This study had the goal of evaluating the clinical competence of veterinarians as they start their residency. Therefore, a self-evaluation questionnaire was applied to residents across all regions of the country. They were instructed to answer it according to the knowledge they had prior to residency. The questionnaire consisted of 90 questions, divided between clinical skills related to general procedures and practices in small and large animals. Each skill had to be classified as one of: not acquired, partially acquired or fully acquired. The average percentage of skills fully acquired was 57.4% for general procedures, 33.2% for clinical skills in small animals, 11.7% for large animals. The knowledge gap observed may be caused by insufficient training on clinical treatment. The results obtained in this study can be used as a guide for both undergraduate and residency programs, aiming to detect major areas for improvement to then apply corrective measures.