Practice-Ready or Practice-Shocked? The Reality of Veterinary Practice. Part 8: Are We Teaching the Right Things? (#615)

A Look Back at the Curriculum

There is a question that sits, often unspoken, at the heart of veterinary education:

Are we teaching what truly matters?

It is not a question of effort. Nor of intent.

Veterinary curricula are built with care, informed by science, and delivered by deeply committed educators.

But the world graduates enter is rapidly changing, in ways that are not always reflected in what we teach, how we teach, or what we value.

And so, it is worth pausing.

Not to criticize. But to reflect.

The Weight of Knowledge

Veterinary medicine is vast.

Each year, more is discovered:

New diagnostics.

New treatments.

New understandings of disease.

The curriculum responds, as it must, by expanding.

Students are asked to learn:

More detail.

More conditions.

More complexity.

The result is predictable.

The curriculum becomes dense.

Time becomes compressed.

And something subtle begins to happen.

Learning shifts:

From understanding to coverage.

From depth breadth.

This is not a failure. It is a consequence of growth.

But it raises an important question:

At what point does more become too much?

The Tyranny of the Syllabus

There is comfort in a comprehensive syllabus.

It offers:

Structure.

Accountability.

A sense of completeness.

But it also creates pressure.

To include:

Every important disease.

Every relevant technique.

Every emerging concept.

The danger is not in what is included.

The danger is in what is crowded out.

Because time, unlike knowledge, does not expand.

What Gets Less Attention

In the effort to cover scientific content, other domains often receive less emphasis.

Not because they are unimportant.

But because they are harder to define, assess, and standardize.

These include:

Clinical decision-making under uncertainty.

Communication in emotionally complex situations.

Navigating financial constraints.

Managing personal resilience and professional identity.

Ironically, these are the very areas that dominate the early years of practice.

The Assessment Problem

Assessment shapes learning.

Students, understandably, focus on what will be examined.

If assessments prioritize:

Recall.

Recognition.

Technical accuracy.

Then learning will follow that path.

But if the real world demands:

Judgment.

Communication.

Adaptability.

Then a mismatch emerges.

Not because students are unprepared intellectually.

But because they have been trained to excel in a different domain.

The Illusion of Competence

A student who performs well in examinations is often described as competent.

And in many respects, they are.

But competence in a structured environment does not always translate seamlessly to an unstructured one.

The student may:

Know the diagnostic pathway.

Recall the treatment protocol.

Understand the disease process.

And yet still hesitate when faced with:

An ambiguous presentation.

A conflicted client.

A decision that has no clear answer.

This is not a deficiency.

It is a reflection of how competence has been defined.

Faculty and the Changing Landscape

There is another layer to this discussion that is less often acknowledged.

The capacity to teach.

As veterinary schools:

Expand class sizes.

Increase clinical load.

Pursue new initiatives.

They rely on faculty to do more.

More teaching.

More service.

More clinical work.

The question then arises:

Where is the time to teach the nuanced, reflective aspects of practice?

The conversations that:

Explore uncertainty.

Examine decision-making.

Share experience.

These require time.

And time, increasingly, is scarce.

The Hidden Curriculum Revisited

In Part 3 of this series, we spoke of the hidden curriculum - the lessons learned through observation.

Here, it becomes relevant again.

When formal teaching is compressed, students turn to:

What they see.

What is modeled.

What is valued in practice.

If:

Efficiency is prioritized over reflection.

Throughput over discussion.

Technical success over communication.

Then these become the lessons absorbed.

Not intentionally.

But inevitably.

Rethinking Priorities

To ask whether we are teaching the right things is not to suggest abandoning science.

Far from it.

Scientific rigor remains the foundation of veterinary medicine.

But perhaps the question is one of balance.

Can we:

Teach less, but more deeply?

Prioritize principles over exhaustive detail?

Create space for uncertainty, rather than resolve it too quickly?

Can we prepare students not only to know, but to navigate?

What Might Change

If we were to recalibrate the curriculum, what might that look like?

Greater emphasis on decision-making frameworks.

Structured teaching of communication - not as an adjunct, but as core content.

Explicit discussion of economic realities in clinical care.

Integration of reflective practice throughout training.

Recognition of mentorship as a formal component of education.

None of these are radical.

But together, they represent a shift.

From:

Information delivery to professional formation.

A Question for the Profession

This is not solely an academic issue.

It is a professional one.

Because the graduates produced by veterinary schools enter:

Practices.

Communities.

Systems that depend on them.

If there is a gap between training and reality, it is shared.

And so, the question extends beyond the curriculum:

What kind of veterinarian do we want to prepare?

Closing Reflection

Veterinary education has achieved something remarkable.

It has built a system capable of transmitting vast, complex knowledge to successive generations.

But knowledge alone is not the endpoint.

It is the beginning.

The real world asks more:

Judgment.

Communication.

Adaptability.

Resilience.

If we are to prepare students fully, we must ensure that these are not left to chance.

Because what we choose to teach, and how we choose to teach it, shapes not only individual careers.

It shapes the profession itself.

Coming Next

In Part 9, we will turn outward to the broader forces shaping veterinary practice today, including corporate consolidation and the systems into which new graduates now enter.

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