Veterinary Clinical Education Delivery Models: A Conceptual Framework

Abstract

The sustainability of the traditional university-owned and -operated veterinary teaching hospital has been discussed for many years. Concerns around the shortage and lack of diversity of clinical faculty, financial sustainability, and suitability of secondary and tertiary case load for the development of Doctor of Veterinary Medicine students’ Day One Competences are perennial issues. Consequently, many schools have been looking at alternative ways of delivering veterinary clinical education. This article provides a conceptual framework for evaluating the delivery of veterinary clinical education, providing putative advantages and disadvantages of each model for further empirical investigation. Four different models are proposed—owner, third party, embedded distributive, and fully distributive—that can broadly be defined along two dimensions: the degree of integration of the clinical enterprise with the academic enterprise and the degree of authority of the dean/head of school with respect to clinical enterprise governance and their role in budgetary, investment, and hiring decisions. The author offers a typology that may assist deans/heads of schools make strategic decisions about the mode of delivery of veterinary clinical education for their school.