It is known that veterinary profession is one of the most stressful professions (Stoewen, 2015, Merck Animal Health Veterinary Wellbeing Study, 2018). Graduating students face an intensive working environment once they have come out into the business market. The working environment of a veterinarian endures many pressures: dealing with patients’ owners, severely ill patients, death of a patient, animal abuse and welfare issues, administrative and economic running of private practice, moral and ethical issues. At the same time, veterinary students are poorly equipped with tools to overcome these extensive challenges while working in their professional field. Statistics show that almost half of the veterinary practices in EU are 2 person practices (FVE report, 2015), which means that veterinarians running them are responsible for all aspects of the business: the professional work, administration, accounting and marketing. The male/female ratio in veterinary business is approximately 50:50 (with proportion of female veterinarians much higher amongst veterinarians under 40), which means an additional strain to veterinarians with families. Therefore, the primary target group of this project are students of veterinary medicine that need to be better prepared for societal challenges in their future working environment. The second target group are teachers at veterinary universities that also need to upgrade their teaching competences in the area of "soft skills" i.e. non-veterinary skills. The aim of this project is to develop curriculum that will contain teaching modules to educate students in the areas of a)interpersonal skills, b) entrepreneurship c)digital skills for implementation into the undergraduate studies of veterinary medicine. Although the project partners have some experience in teaching soft skills, there is no standard of competences, or even recommendations from veterinary education assurance authorities (e.g. EAEVE of FVE). Filling this gap and developing such procedures can only be done by means of cooperation and strategic partnerships. Therefore, this project aims at building a new Pan-European soft skills curriculum according to the new challenges recognized through EU modernisation agenda 2017 and New skills for Europe agenda. The term "soft skills" within the context of this project will be used in a broad sense, as life skills and encompass also entrepreneurial and digital skills. The project is complementary to both Agendas that emphasize, amongst other things, the need to resolve the mismatch between the skills students have and the skills students need, especially in the area of life skills. Creating teaching methods for creativity and innovation in higher education is also the common ground between the agenda and goals of this project idea. THE OBJECTIVES are to: 1. Develop. a) Develop recommendations of soft skills competences for veterinary students. b) Develop new and improved soft skills Pan-European curriculum for veterinary universities. c) Develop a training concept for education of teachers involved in soft skill teaching. 2. Implement. Pilot implementation of the new and improved soft skills modules at partnering veterinary universities. 3. Evaluate. Evaluation of the outputs and their impact on both target groups, students and teachers. 4. Disseminate. Dissemination of the finalized version of the recommendations and the new “soft skills” curriculum amongst veterinary schools of EU through online platforms and veterinary education associations (FVE, EAEVE, VETNEST). The new soft skills curriculum should be applicable to any veterinary HEI in Europe. The long term benefits of this project are systemic and include both veterinary higher education as well as the veterinary profession at EU level. The innovative way of designing the new “soft skills” curricula in this project aims at setting new standards of teaching, implementation of available IT technologies in the teaching and work based learning.
Scientific literature, together with surveys among veterinarians shows an increasing need for enabling veterinarians with skills to cope with challenges imposed on them by the rapidly changing world and the enormous strain the profession puts on them. The Cov19-pandemic is a perfect example of the importance of having a broader view on complex problems. Skill acquisition and development are essential for the performance and modernization of the profession in order to provide new forms of flexibility and security for veterinary professionals. Project objectives that were set in the beginning were achieved in full extent and within project timeline: 1. Developing Recommendations of life skills competences for veterinary students (IO1). 2. Developing a new life skills curriculum applicable in veterinary HE institutions. (IO2). 3. Developing 3 training concepts for teachers (IO3) in communication, entrepreneurship and digital skills. 4. 46 teachers were trained in teaching & training activities for competence in specific modules of the new life skills curriculum. 5. Implementation partners have carried out a pilot project at their institutions, implemented and evaluated selected learning outcomes in the existing courses from the new curriculum. 6. The participants in the pilot project (more than 200 students) have evaluated through an online survey based on IO4 their experience, overall satisfaction with new course and obtained competences. IO1 provides recommendations of life skills competences for veterinary students focusing on three key areas: communication, digital skills, entrepreneurial skills. The list of competences applies to higher education in veterinary medicine and can be integrated in whole or in part into existing curricula. IO2 provides a suggestion of a life skills curriculum for use in veterinary higher education. The Curriculum includes 3 courses syllabi in 3 sections: Communication skills, Entrepreneurship skills and Digital skills. The SOFTVETS life skills curriculum for use in veterinary higher education is prepared for veterinary teachers, teacher trainers, students as well as faculty management and regulating bodies. The aim of this document is to aid implementation or integration of proposed syllabi in existing curricula. IO3 provides training concepts for education of veterinary teachers involved in life skills teaching in 3 areas: communication, digital skills, entrepreneurial skills. Training concepts are also suitable for teachers of any veterinary subject wishing to upgrade their teaching techniques. The training ensures that teachers acquire new knowledge on topic of specific life skills, gain an insight how these topics are taught elsewhere and obtain ideas they can include in their everyday teaching. IO4 The SOFTVETS Evaluation Questionnaire for Students and the SOFTVETS Reflection Questionnaire for Teachers were developed for higher education institutions that aim at evaluating competence-based courses. The project results are applicable in the institutions that have recognized the importance and need for implementation of life skills teaching into their curricula. During the course of the project, three Teaching & Training workshops for teachers were organised in implementation partners’ schools. The project team also organised an online conference with the topic „Teaching life skills in medical education“. Project team members and all participating individuals (especially teachers and students) have gained comprehensive view on the scope, importance and necessity of life skills in veterinary education. The necessity for implementation of such skills that we have anticipated while applying for the project has only been accentuated in the year of pandemic we now live in. What has started as “a nice idea” is finding its way into strategic documents of institutions and associations, largely due to the “buzz” raised by this project and its members spreading the word, both in personal communication within institutions as well as in more formal occasions. The long term benefits of this project are systemic and include both veterinary HE as well as the veterinary profession at EU level with a special emphasis on student based teaching (competence based teaching). The project team worked highly interdisciplinary involving veterinarians, psychologists, communication, educational and entrepreneurship experts as well as veterinary students. They managed to extract the positive aspects of various veterinary curricula throughout Europe, which vary considerably, emphasizing the most common topics and competences that should enter future competencies curricula. Implementing new, non-professional skills into veterinary curricula is a difficult task but one has to start somewhere and the project outputs make a good aid in getting there.