From good clinicians to great teachers: Emergency veterinary educators discover the science behind effective teaching | Virginia Tech News

Veterinarians spend years learning to be excellent clinicians, passing on knowledge through “on-the-job training.” But when it comes time to teach others, they’re often on their own.

“We’re never taught how to teach,” said Alicia Long, a large animal criticalist at the University of Pennsylvania. Her words captured a sentiment heard throughout the inaugural Veterinary Emergency and Critical Care Education Conference recently held at the Virginia-Maryland College of Veterinary Medicine .

The two-day conference in July brought together 70 veterinary professionals who discovered that being an expert clinician and being an effective teacher require very different skill sets.

Breaking down the silos 

Long pinpointed exactly what she’d stop doing: “I’m gonna try to stop doing the stand-up-and-talk type of lecture where you just talk to people and hope they want to listen because they have to listen.”

It’s a teaching method used across veterinary education — the traditional lecture format that assumes captive audiences will absorb information simply because they’re required to be there. 

Her colleague, Maya Aitken, also double-boarded in surgery and emergency critical care, had an even more fundamental revelation: “Maybe I didn’t know how to learn. … Nobody ever discussed how one studies.”

The conference addressed a fundamental challenge in veterinary education: Highly skilled clinicians are expected to teach without formal training in educational methods. This gap becomes particularly acute in emergency and critical care. When seconds count and lives are at stake, the pressure to “know everything” can paralyze both educators and learners. 

“There’s an element of the unknown,” Aitken explained. “You have to prepare for anything that could walk in or be carried in through the door. It makes it intimidating for the learner.”

Global impact 

The conference attracted attendees with diverse educational challenges. Mariana Pardo works with Global Instruction for Veterinary Empowerment, traveling internationally to teach specialty techniques in countries without formal specialty training programs.

“We’re training adult learners who have already been practicing in a certain way for a decade,” Pardo explained. “Sometimes breaking that habit is harder, especially when they don’t have access to the evidence that we have.” 

The science of teaching

Led by keynote speaker Peter Doolittle, an expert in learning and memory, the conference introduced participants to research-supported teaching strategies that many had been using intuitively—without understanding the science behind them. 

Doolittle’s presentation revealed how memory actually works and why certain teaching approaches are more effective. The conference built on this foundation with sessions on creating learning objectives, developing meaningful assessments, and using motivation strategies to engage learners.

Participants explored technology integration in veterinary education and learned best practices for simulation training specific to emergency and critical care. Interactive workshops gave attendees hands-on experience writing assessment questions and developing educational plans. 

“I was surprised to recognize that some techniques I’d been using—I didn’t know why they worked,” Aitken said. “Now I’m looking through my lectures asking, ‘How do we make this more effective for the learner?'”