New research released this week by The University of Adelaide could have important implications for filling industry labour shortages affecting public health, food production, and animal welfare.
The study, titled, ‘Predicting career sector intent and the theory of planned behaviour: survey findings from Australian veterinary science students’ involved 844 veterinary students enrolled in five Australian veterinary programs in 2014.
It showed that the species they hoped to work with played a bigger role than gender, farming background, or animal handling experience in determining which sector they intended to work in post-study.
“Students do find themselves considering how they will use their veterinary science education as they approach graduation,” Dr Adele Feakes, The University of Adelaide’s Senior Lecturer in Veterinary Practice Management, said.
“However, for the undersupplied veterinary sectors, this negative final year effect is not good news.”
Dr Feakes said that the study’s findings could be applied to primary and secondary school learning materials and suggested that universities consider screening applicants to ensure representation of species preferences associated with sectors of need.
“Educating veterinary students is expensive and there is an undersupply of graduates for high need sectors such as biomedical research, industry and rural practice, despite some veterinary programs focussing on rural supply,” she said.
“Our finding of the importance of species preference to veterinary student intentions means we could harness this idea for primary and secondary level educational materials.”
For example, said Dr Feakes, are children’s books, games or activities about caring for animals and veterinarians, which could help by featuring a wide range of animal types, with less use of dogs and cats.
“This finding could also be applied in veterinary school admissions processes, to help boost supply of veterinarians to undersupplied sectors,” she said.
Dr Feakes cautioned against using questionnaires and interviews for species type preferences in veterinary program applicants, due to risk of ‘coached answers’ from applicants.
“I am very interested in exploring innovative adoption of tools from marketing to ‘reveal’ students’ species preferences such as choice experiments, eye tracking analysis, facial recognition and/or virtual reality games,” she said.