AVA Conference Adelaide 2016

Surgical training is changing. In both human and veterinary spheres, surgery has traditionally been taught by the apprenticeship model, whereby students learn through repeated supervised practice. Advances in surgical technology, funding limitations and societal litigiousness, among other pressures, have made this ‘see one, do one, teach one’ approach difficult to implement. These pressures have led to the development of new tools to train the novice surgeon. One such emerging tool is mental practice. Mental practice is the use of visualisation to symbolically rehearse a physical task without external stimuli or executing the task itself. Mental practice enables surgery students to practice skills in a manner that requires minimal funding and physical resources. The application of mental practice in the field of human surgical training is growing and there is a potential for similar application in veterinary surgical training. Two studies were conducted comparing mental practice with textbook reading prior to performing surgery in veterinary students. The results of these studies identify that mental practice may be a useful technique for increasing confidence and promoting positive outcomes for surgical training in veterinary schools