Anuja J Riles, Ellen Aster, Amanda A Cavanagh, Christina Reimer, Suzanne Brandenburg
Abstract
Background: Interprofessional education (IPE) in undergraduate medical education is often limited to human health professionals including nurses, pharmacists, social workers, or physical and occupational therapists. IPE activities that include both human medicine and veterinary students are crucial with the rise of complex one health issues such as climate change, antimicrobial resistance, and zoonotic diseases that involve and affect but humans and animals.
Methods: In order to foster collaboration between human and veterinary medicine trainees, a veterinary shadowing program was developed for first-year human medicine students. The impact of the shadowing experience and further opportunities for collaboration between the human medicine and veterinary medicine space were explored in a focus group. The anonymized focus group transcript was analyzed by the research team members for themes to help us understand how students saw connections between human and animal healthcare after engaging in this experience.
Results: Themes that emerged from the focus group include: i) opportunities for learning from veterinary colleagues including death and dying, quality of life conversations, approaches to non-verbal patients and second-hand history taking, cost of care discussions, provider safety, and impact of human medications and food on animals and vice versa; ii) interdisciplinary relationships and appreciation including jointly addressing burnout and mental health challenges and finding solutions to debt during training; iii) imposter syndrome and increasing confidence including effects on fostering a growth mindset, being comfortable with not being an expert, and opportunities for repeated and extended physical exam practice, and lastly; iv) joint community engagement programming including collaborative advocacy and leveraging animal health as a tool to improve human health.
Conclusion: As interprofessional programing continues to be implemented across health professional educational spaces, activities that bring human and veterinary medicine trainees together can be developed. This may lay the foundation for improved success in tackling complex One Health issues of the future.
Keywords: collaboration, human medicine, interprofessional, veterinary medicine.