OVC Companion Animal Hospital: Background
The Hill’s Pet Nutrition Primary Healthcare Centre at the University of Guelph will bring a unique focus to maximizing the core competencies of our graduating veterinarians while conducting research to define primary healthcare in veterinary medicine and shape the future of the veterinary profession around the globe.
Currently, approximately 75% of our graduates enter private practice, with the bulk of them entering small animal or companion animal practice. Over time, veterinary teaching hospitals have become tertiary referral hospitals that treat uncommon or very complex medical and surgical problems, and no longer offer students as many opportunities to participate in routine primary and preventive healthcare. The Primary Healthcare Centre is an initiative begun to close this gap in veterinary training. To be successful, veterinary graduates must have more training in evaluating and treating common problems that they will encounter from the first day they are in practice.
The Primary Healthcare Centre will allow student veterinarians to begin developing their skills and gathering experiences in primary healthcare delivery from the day they enter veterinary college. When the envisioned curriculum is in place, more than 26,000 hours of student learning will take place in the center annually in an integrated and experiential learning program. From surgical and technical to business and communications skills, our student veterinarians will be more confident and have more experience in order to add value to their future employers. Our student veterinarians will utilize new and emerging technologies to diagnose, prevent, and treat disease. The hospital will be efficient, deliver high quality medicine and include diverse media to communicate with our internal and external clients: our students, pets, and their caregivers. This includes building surgical suites capable of live or recorded video feeds back to the classroom, and around the globe. A nutrition centre, seminar room, rehabilitation therapy facility, and long-term care areas are included in this centre.
Our vision is global: the primary healthcare service delivery model will be the foundation of future veterinary education. From international student veterinarians participating in the primary care program at OVC, to creating programs throughout the world that emulate our new model, we seek to be a leader in delivering primary healthcare education to student veterinarians.
This project is unique: under the umbrella of preventive and general medicine, eight integrated program areas have been developed with defined learning objectives and assessment. These program areas include: rehabilitation, nutrition, behaviour, good citizenship, communications, public health, animal welfare, and research. The primary healthcare initiative is one of several important components of the new Ontario Veterinary College Health Sciences Centre.
The Ontario Ministry Training, Colleges and Universities, Hill’s Pet Nutrition, and many supporters have collaborated with the Ontario Veterinary College in this initiative.
