Education Day

Expanding the Learner's Communication Toolbox

Because of the growing evidence base that communication drives patient outcomes and provider-consumer satisfaction with healthcare services, the American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA) Council on Education (COE) now requires that communication be taught and assessed by all accredited colleges of veterinary medicine. To facilitate communication training, healthcare educators have designed a variety of models that incorporate communication skills into the structure of the consultation, including, but not limited to the Calgary Cambridge Guide (CCG). Unfortunately, curricular time constraints often limit the breadth and depth of communication training. It is impossible to insert the 70+ CCG process steps into any curriculum. Rather than teach it all, educators can concentrate on foundational skills, which are fundamental and transferrable, meaning that they are carried with learners throughout their careers and can be applied to any position held. Foundational skills also serve as scaffolding upon which complimentary and/or advanced communication skills can be developed. This session will introduce key foundational skills for veterinary medical education curriculum and explore how to maximize learners’ experiences by incorporating them into peer-assisted learning exercises.

Moving from Lecturer to Coach: Encouraging student thinking through effective questioning

Please join us as a team of faculty and faculty developers model facilitation as we lead faculty on a fun and interactive workshop developing our facilitation skills together. We will approach facilitation as a process by which we coach students in their learning, supporting student thinking and extending the learning  opportunity beyond completing a prepared learning exercise. During the first hour of this workshop, participants will be asked to identify opportunities to engage in formative assessment conversations. Participants will design questions to reveal student thinking within small groups that can inform instructional decisions during class and in future content
revision. In the second hour, we will focus on effectively leading whole class discussions where students are asked to reveal their rationale, encouraging students to focus on thought processes instead of the answer.

Ryane Englar

Ryane E. Englar, DVM, DABVP (Canine and Feline Practice) graduated from Cornell University College of Veterinary Medicine in 2008. She practiced as an associate veterinarian in companion animal practice before transitioning into the educational circuit as an advocate for pre-clinical training in primary care. She debuted in academia as a Clinical Instructor of the Community Practice Service at Cornell University’s Hospital for Animals. She then transitioned into the role of Assistant Professor as founding faculty at Midwestern University College of Veterinary Medicine. She launched the Clinical Skills curriculum at Kansas State University between 2017 and 2020 before returning “home” to Tucson in February 2020 to reprise her role as founding faculty at the University of Arizona College of Veterinary Medicine. She currently serves as a dual appointment Associate Professor of Practice and the\ Executive Director of Veterinary Skills Development.

Dr. Englar is passionate about advancing education for generalists by thinking outside of the box to develop new course materials for the hands on learner. She has authored textbooks for use in veterinary medical education in the content areas of performing the companion animal physical examination, companion animal medicine, written communication (medical documentation), oral communication, clinical pathology, and spectrum of care. Her research interests involve the design, integration, validation, and assessment of simulated client encounters to train veterinary communication, as well as the design and implementation of novel clinical skills simulators. Most notably, she has partnered with a nanoprinter to create simulated urine crystals for training urinalysis and is in the process of identifying key volatile organic compounds (VOCs) that create an odor “fingerprint” which could be used to synthesize scent for diagnostic purposes.

In her current role at the University of Arizona, Dr. Englar oversees four consecutive semesters of Clinical Skills and six consecutive semesters of Professional Skills coursework. Her primary responsibilities are to integrate Clinical Skills into the systems-based pre-clinical curriculum and to partner with Teresa Graham Brett to design and launch the Professional Skills Curriculum. This includes 30 simulated client encounters that progress in intensity as part of a formalized communication curriculum that emphasizes relationship-centered care.

Teresa Graham Brett

Teresa Graham Brett, JD, leads efforts to fully integrate inclusion at the University of Arizona College of Veterinary Medicine. Along with Dr. Ryane Englar, she serves as course co-director of the six-semester longitudinal Professional Skills course. They have successfully integrated the development of skills for enhancing diversity and supporting inclusivity in veterinary medicine throughout the Professional Skills curriculum. Prior to being at the College of Veterinary Medicine, she served as Assistant Vice President for Diversity and Inclusion at the University of Arizona. Brett also served as Associate Vice President of Student Affairs and Dean of Students at the University of Texas at Austin, introducing intergroup dialogue coursework into the undergraduate curriculum. Prior to her time at UT, she served as Associate Dean and Co-Director of the Program on Intergroup Relations at University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Brett provides consultation and training in the areas of intergroup dialogue, social justice education, and integration of equitable and inclusive content and learning processes into the curriculum.

Jonathon Cox

Dr. Cox serves as the Director of Faculty Development in Pedagogy in the Office of Education Research and Development at the University of Arizona College of Veterinary Medicine (UA-CVM). An expert in classroom facilitation for small group, active learning, strategies, in the past year, Jonathan led workshops in facilitation for the UA CVM and faculty from over 25 other institutions. Before joining UA-CVM, he supported faculty across STEM (and a few non-STEM) departments at UA in implementing student-centered teaching strategies in small and large (500+ students) classrooms, many of which were being transformed into collaborative learning spaces. During this time, he also trained faculty and students to work and communicate as cohesive Instructional Teams to support student learning using formative assessment.

Brisa Hsieh

Dr. Brisa Hsieh received her DVM from Kansas State University in 2009. After a one-year small animal rotating internship at Veterinary Emergency and Referral Group in Brooklyn, NY, she completed a three-year small animal internal medicine residency at Gulf Coast Veterinary Specialists in Houston, TX. She became a Diplomate of the American College of Veterinary Internal Medicine and was a small animal internist in private practice for several years before joining the University of Arizona College of Veterinary Medicine. Dr. Hsieh co-leads the Foundations, and Cycle of Life systems courses and leads the Advanced Clinical Management Small Animal course. She also teaches in most of the courses of the UA curriculum concerning the fundamental and clinical aspects of the internal organ systems of the veterinary species with emphasis on dogs and cats. She has a special interest in active teaching methods, including peer instruction and team-based learning techniques.

Walt Klimecki

Dr. Klimecki received his Doctorate in Veterinary Medicine from Ohio State University in 1984 and his PhD in Pharmacology and Toxicology from the University of Arizona in 1994. Dr. Klimecki's teaching foci have included pharmacology, toxicology, epidemiology, immunology, and human medical genetics. He has been actively involved in the university-wide movement toward evidence-based pedagogy. At the UA College of Veterinary Medicine, Dr. Klimecki teaches Pharmacology in several systems courses, the summer Selectives course, and leads the 4-semester longitudinal course in Clinical Logic.

Holly Bender

Holly Bender is a professor and the Director of the Office of Educational Research and Development at the University of Arizona CVM. There she leads a team of faculty developers who train and coach faculty in evidence-based teaching practices and educational research, and scholarship. Before coming to the UA CVM, she held faculty positions at the Virginia Maryland and Iowa State University’s Colleges of Veterinary Medicine, teaching a wide range of subjects, most notably clinical pathology. There she gained a passion for teaching complex diagnostic reasoning and developing open-source software that supports expertise development (the Diagnostic Pathfinder, ThinkSpace, and now Allele) before leading faculty, postdoc, and graduate student development at ISU’s central teaching center, where she gained a passion for helping faculty become great teachers. Holly was chosen to be a founding member and Distinguished Expert of the AAVMC’s Academy of Veterinary Educators (AVE) who focuses on faculty development.