At the Department of Small Animal Clinical Sciences, Basic Surgical Skills are taught in groups of 30-35 students in the first year of the master program (4th year students). The eight day course is an example of ‘blended learning’ in which students use our e-learning-material (Step 1) to prepare for the practical part of the course (Step 2, 3 and 4).
From their home computers, students log on to the e-learning platform of Copenhagen University:
https://absalon.ku.dk
and go to the Basic Surgical Skills course, which consist of a line of chapters concerning a variety of surgical subjects. Each subject is presented in narrated PowerPoint presentations and narrated videos. This combination of text, sound and video makes it easy to present subjects that are both theoretical and practical, and the time that was previously spent on giving lectures is now available for practical sessions. Students report a widespread satisfaction with this flexible method, which permits them to observe – repeatedly - how to perform the actual clinical and surgical procedures prior to performing them in class.
The practical part of the course consists of Step 2: the Surgical Skills Lab with Dummies (two days), Step 3: Cadaver-lab (one day) and Step 4: live animal surgery (four days). The implementation of the Surgical Skills Lab as an introduction to training on real animals (cadavers and research pigs) seems to be a valuable, practical, economical and safe educational tool that is highly appreciated by students.
Since the implementation of these new teaching methods (e-learning and Skills Lab), teachers have ascertained a more satisfactory level of preparation, students that seem more focused and live-animal surgery that is conducted at a more ‘professional’ level than before. Finally, our research in this field shows that training in our Surgical Skills Lab has an anxiety-reducing effect on students before their first live animal surgical performance.