What can’t be taught

What can’t be taught is the name of a new column that has its first article in this issue of The CVJ. The idea for such a column came from the Emerging Leaders Program (ELP), which seeks to help veterinarians ensure there is joy in the workplace by effectively coping with the many challenges encountered in veterinary practice. Participants in this program believed that a column geared to the needs of new graduates and delivered in a light-hearted style would be valuable to new graduates and would be a useful addition to the serious science in The CVJ. This is seen as a mechanism for augmenting the 1-day ELP workshop held as part of the CVMA Annual Convention.

Veterinary schools are well known as storehouses of information and reasoning skills that serve graduates well in clinical practice or as a base for other forms of practice. New graduates can look back on an education that emphasized evidence-based information and the need for scientific rigor in their approaches to decision-making. They recognize the need to be able to separate facts that are based on sound scientific investigation from claims that are poorly supported and opinions that have no scientific basis. This mindset is important as new graduates, throughout their careers, will continue to assess the quality of the information they receive. They will recognize that information may change over time and that “clinical decision-making requires ongoing reconciliation of studies that provide different answers to the same question” (1).

However, learning is not restricted to science-based knowledge. There is a vast amount of information that is based on experience and doesn’t fit the mold for a case report or a scientific article. “Experiential learning is most succinctly described as ‘learning by doing’. But it’s not just about jumping in the water to learn how to swim. That’s just doing. Properly done experiential learning involves a period of reflection after a burst of doing, where the learner reflects on their actions and results in order to learn from them” (2). Recently, during a 50-year reunion of my class I had the opportunity to hear classmates relate some of their interesting activities in practice. None would qualify for a Case Report in The CVJ due to lack of controls in some cases, and involving only 1 or 2 cases in others. However, if the stories were told others may come forward to share similar experiences — reinforcing conclusions drawn by other practitioners. A classmate told of having a boxer dog annihilate a container with razor blades, which ended up as a massive number of small pieces in the stomach and small intestine. He did surgery and removed as many pieces as he could but estimated that about half the number of fragments could not be removed and remained in the dog’s intestine. The dog recovered well from surgery and was monitored over the next few days. The dog continued to do well and showed no adverse effects. When he encountered a 2nd similar case, he reasoned that surgery was likely unnecessary so he simply monitored the dog, which went on to recover from the episode without showing any ill effects. There were also really interesting cases involving the handling of personnel challenges.

The column “What can’t be taught” intends to focus on experiences in the first few years of practice and is expected to appear 4 to 6 times per year in The CVJ. It is being co-ordinated through the CVMA office and has the support of participants in the Emerging Leaders Program, who will be writing for the column. If there are others who would like to contribute to the column they may contact Ms. Heather Broughton (hbroughton@cvcma-acmv.org).

Veterinarians who have gone beyond the first few years in practice of any kind shouldn’t feel left out. You have even more experience to share. You may use “Practitioner’s Corner” to write about interesting cases or experiences from which colleagues may learn — or get a good laugh, or both.