AVA Conference Adelaide 2016

The competency of veterinary students in their final year is often assessed by rating their performance during training in the workplace, however little is known about what informs supervisor’s ratings. In this study, semi-structured interviews were analysed to characterise supervisor’s depictions of students they rated as excellent, marginal and weak. Twelve themes emerged from the data, with nine reflecting the following aspects of the student performance: engagement, trustworthiness, knowledge, application of knowledge, technical skills and animal handling, communication, social interactions, personal functioning and caring for animals. Three other themes went beyond descriptions of the student’s performance to involve the student’s destiny, impact on the supervisor, and the difficulty in judging their competency. For the most part, the themes discussed by supervisors aligned well with the themes in the marking scheme used for workplace assessments, but they differed in emphasis from the graduate outcomes for the programme