PETS: The Clinical Skills Lab of the Department of Veterinary Medicine at JLU

In the Clinical Skills Lab – PETS (Practical Experience of Technical Skills) at the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine at JLU, students learn and practice veterinary skills. The essence of skills labs is practical work on simulators and models – that is, constant hands-on experience. This is also done in the spirit of animal welfare according to the 3R principle.

At the Department of Veterinary Medicine at JLU, the Skills Lab is integrated or firmly established at various points in the curriculum and is undergoing continuous development, both in terms of content within the existing compulsory courses and through the new range of elective courses (Fig.).

In addition to the elective courses established by QuiS, the Skills Lab (PETS) offers free practice sessions for students from the second to the eleventh semester. With the help of QuiS, the offering has been expanded to 68 stations for self-directed learning. The rooms can be used for individual skills development and can be booked weekly to learn and review individual skills at your own pace, or to prepare for exams and internships.

Photo: Marcus Heine

In addition, the Skills Lab was further consolidated in the rotation (practical year in the 9th and 10th semesters) and the didactic concept of problem-oriented learning was established. In this course, students complete the Skills Lab in small groups of 3 to 4 people. Adapted to their advanced level of training, students not only work through individual exercise stations in this course, but also work on complex case studies with the help of our student tutors as role players for various situations (patient owners/colleagues). At this stage of training, it is no longer just about learning isolated practical skills, but about assessing the patient's current state of health, weighing up various differential diagnoses, and initiating and implementing further diagnostic measures in a structured manner to ensure optimal patient care.

The integral integration of the Skills Lab into the curriculum, combined with the opportunity for independent practice and the various elective courses, ensures a high degree of learning sustainability: certain teaching content is repeated and revisited, while others are added and developed further (a spiral curriculum). These are always adapted to the current level of knowledge of the respective semester and focus on the required learning objectives.