Assessment of a Teaching Module for Cardiac Auscultation of Horses by Veterinary Students

SIMPLE SUMMARY: Veterinary students are required to determine an animal’s heart rate and diagnose heart murmurs and arrhythmias by the time of graduation.

Accurate assessment of the heart sounds of horses is considered as a day one clinical competency.

Limited opportunities exist in the veterinary curriculum to develop these competencies, especially during COVID-19 times.

This research aimed to determine if a multimodal learning resource consisting of diagrams, heart sound recordings and visual representation of the sounds would assist in the development of veterinary students’ confidence and ability to recognize normal and abnormal heart sounds of horses.

Students were invited to utilize the teaching resource and voluntarily complete surveys about their confidence in recognizing normal heart sounds as well as various murmurs and important arrhythmias of horses.

The survey results were analyzed by qualitative and quantitative means.

Over a two-year period, 231 fourth-year and 222 fifth-year veterinary students had access to the resource; 89 completed the initial survey and 57 completed a second survey after using the resource.

Results confirmed that after access to the resource students’ understanding and perception of their auscultation abilities improved.

ABSTRACT: Auscultation of heart sounds is an important veterinary skill requiring an understanding of anatomy, physiology, pathophysiology and pattern recognition.

This cross-sectional study was developed to evaluate a targeted, audio-visual training resource for veterinary students to improve their understanding and auscultation of common heart conditions in horses.

Fourth- and fifth-year 2021 and 2022 Bachelor of Veterinary Science students at the University of Queensland (UQ) were provided the learning resource and surveyed via online pre- and post-intervention surveys.

Results were quantitatively analyzed using descriptive statistics and Mann–Whitney U tests.

Open-ended survey questions were qualitatively analyzed by thematic analysis and Leximancer™ Version 4 program software analysis.

Over the two-year period, 231 fourth-year and 222 fifth-year veterinary students had access to the resource; 89 completed the pre-intervention survey and 57 completed the post-intervention survey.

Quantitative results showed the resource helped students prepare for practicals and their perception of competency and confidence when auscultating equine cardiac sounds improved (p < 0.05).

Compared to fifth-year students, fourth-year students felt less competent at identifying murmurs and arrythmias prior to accessing the learning resource (p < 0.05).

Fourth-year and fifth-year students’ familiarity with detection of murmurs improved after completing the learning resource (p < 0.001).

Qualitative analysis demonstrated a limited number of opportunities to practice equine cardiac auscultation throughout the veterinary degree, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, and that integrated audio-visual resources are an effective means of teaching auscultation.