Assessing Moral Judgements in Veterinary Students: An Exploratory Mixed-Methods Study from Germany.

Kirsten Persson,Peter Kunzmann,Wiebke-Rebekka Gerdts,Sonja Hartnack

doi:10.3390/ani12050586

Abstract

Simple SummaryOn the one hand, veterinary ethics is a required part of veterinary education. On the other hand, the success of ethics teaching and the students’ skills concerning judgements in morally demanding situations are hardly evaluated systematically. This article presents an innovative tool to evaluate those skills in veterinary students in a first case of application. One group of students in this case had taken ethics classes, the other had not. The participants were asked to fill in a questionnaire with different scenarios from veterinary practice and answer additional free-text questions. Students who had taken ethics classes did not answer generally different from those students who had not taken ethics classes. However, there were many overall differences between the students’ answers, decisions, attitudes, and explanations. The tool is therefore suggested for further evaluations of ethics teaching and moral judgement skills in veterinary students.Although veterinary ethics is required in veterinary curricula and part of the competencies expected of a trained veterinary surgeon according to the European Association of Establishments for Veterinary Education (EAEVE), knowledge concerning the effects of ethics teaching and tools evaluating moral judgement are scarce. To address this lack of tools with a mixed-methods approach, a questionnaire with three case scenarios presenting typical ethical conflicts of veterinary practice was administered to two groups of veterinary students (one had taken ethics classes, one did not). The questionnaire contained both open-ended and closed questions and was analysed qualitatively and quantitatively. The qualitative part aimed at revealing different argumentation patterns between the two groups, whereas the quantitative part focused on the students’ approval of different roles and attitudes possibly relating to veterinarians. The results showed no major differences between both groups. However, answering patterns suggest a clear diversity among the students in their perception of morally relevant factors and the veterinary profession. Awareness of morally challenging elements of their profession was presented by students of both groups. With this exploratory study, the application of an innovative mixed-methods tool for evaluating the moral judgement of veterinary medical students is demonstrated.

Highlights

With growing public awareness of the interests and needs of animals, the role of veterinary professionals is increasingly gaining responsibility, albeit rather subtly/implicitly
Abstract: veterinary ethics is required in veterinary curricula and part of the competencies expected of a trained veterinary surgeon according to the European Association of Establishments for Veterinary Education (EAEVE), knowledge concerning the effects of ethics teaching and tools evaluating moral judgement are scarce
To address this lack of tools with a mixed-methods approach, a questionnaire with three case scenarios presenting typical ethical conflicts of veterinary practice was administered to two groups of veterinary students

Summary

Introduction

With growing public awareness of the interests and needs of animals, the role of veterinary professionals is increasingly gaining responsibility, albeit rather subtly/implicitly. Similar to situations in human medicine, veterinarians are regularly faced with ethically challenging contexts [2–5]. These circumstances should be reflected in veterinary education. Professional veterinary ethics is a crucial part of undergraduate study programmes in veterinary medicine, as stated in the EU Directive 2005/36/EC Basic sciences: “professional ethics”) and in the “FVE, AWARE & EAEVE Report on European Veterinary Education in Animal Welfare Science, Ethics and Law” (June 2013) [6]. Among the extensive list of Day One Competences of veterinarians is, for example, the ability to “appraise the social context and participate in societal debates about animal welfare and ethics” [7], p. Among the extensive list of Day One Competences of veterinarians is, for example, the ability to “appraise the social context and participate in societal debates about animal welfare and ethics” [7], p. 2 accompanied by the recommendation that “Animal Welfare science, ethics and law should be a core subject, and examinable with the same pass/fail criteria as other core subjects.” [7], p

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