Veterinary pathology in the United Kingdom: past, present, and future

Monitoring and Investigating Natural Disease by Veterinary Pathologists in Diagnostic Laboratories

Many emerging diseases in animals are initially recognized by diagnostic pathologists in animal health laboratories using routine laboratory submissions, in conjunction with clinical veterinarians and wildlife biologists. Familiar recent examples are chronic wasting disease, bovine spongiform encephalopathy, West Nile encephalomyelitis in North America, and postweaning multisystemic wasting syndrome in pigs. The recognition of new diseases in animals requires that the curiosity of diagnosticians be articulated with the capacity of animal health laboratories to create effective diagnostic teams, solicit additional cases from the field at minimal cost to clients, and develop relationships with basic researchers. Bovine neosporosis is used as an example to illustrate how a disease investigation triggered by routine clinical accessions can have international ramifications. Between the late 1980s and 1995, diagnosticians with California’s animal health laboratory system identified neosporosis as a cause of reproductive wastage in cattle, characterized the lesions, isolated the agent, defined routes of transmission, met Koch's postulates, and developed diagnostic assays. Diagnostic pathologists catalyzed the process. The neosporosis investigation in California suggests useful attributes of veterinary diagnostic laboratories that pursue emerging diseases identified through routine laboratory accessions.

The role of undergraduate research experiences in producing veterinary scientists

This study retrospectively examined the influence of a science-based, research-oriented degree on the career choices of a group of "early emerger" students who had aspired from an early age to become veterinarians but chose instead to pursue an alternative career in veterinary research. This transformation was in large part because of active participation in research, with supervisors acting as role models and mentors. This finding has important implications for teachers and course designers seeking to influence career decision making in both bioveterinary science and professional veterinary programs.

Getting started with curriculum mapping in a veterinary degree program

The Royal (Dick) School of Veterinary Studies at the University of Edinburgh, UK, recently initiated a curriculum-mapping project to develop a tool that would facilitate curriculum review, improve integration and clarity across the curriculum, and provide a transparent method of demonstrating outcomes for quality-assurance purposes. The key finding from this project was that the curriculum-mapping process is a more resource-intensive undertaking than expected, and one that should not been taken lightly. At the time the project began, no commercial software was available that could be integrated with the program's other online systems or had content appropriate to an outcomes-based veterinary degree program. We recommend that future projects ensure a minimum of one dedicated full-time staff member, plus adequate educational technology support to develop a coherent and consistent format for the curriculum map that is integrated with the rest of the local online environment. Identifying the main focus of the map is also recommended at an early stage, as is the instigation of a small-scale pilot exercise to identify major local issues before starting the full mapping process. Future sustainability and development of a curriculum map also require buy-in from colleagues to ensure that relevant components of the map (e.g., learning objectives) are maintained and developed appropriately. This article is aimed at our colleagues who are considering starting a curriculum-mapping process at their institutions; we provide a brief overview of curriculum mapping, based on current literature, and then illustrate the process using our own experiences.