Recent research conducted within the veterinary profession has reported higher rates of depression and stress than the general US population. While this decline in mental wellbeing has been documented in Doctor of Veterinary Medicine (DVM) students and veterinary professionals, there is a lack of research on the mental wellbeing of the pre-veterinary population. This gap led the authors to conduct a survey in the fall of 2021 utilizing the DASS-21 and ATSPPH-sf inventories to assess the levels of depression, anxiety, stress, and help-seeking stigma in pre-veterinary students to better understand when the decline in veterinary mental wellbeing begins. A pre-test survey was completed by 233 pre-veterinary students in September, and an identical post-test survey was completed by 184 pre-veterinary students in November. From the pre- and post-test data, depression, anxiety, and stress scores increased as students advanced in academic status during their undergraduate degree. Juniors reported the highest averages of depression, anxiety, and stress compared to their peers. In the post-test, sophomores and juniors exhibited higher rates of depression than freshmen, and juniors and seniors exhibited higher rates of stress than freshmen. Current VMCAS applicants exhibited higher levels of stress than non-VMCAS applicants in the pre-test, and lower levels of stress in the post-test. In both the pre-test and post-test data, respondents averaged a neutral attitude toward help-seeking. Based on these results, a decline in pre-veterinary mental wellbeing occurs as students’ progress in their undergraduate career and should be further studied to assess its impact on Doctor of Veterinary Medicine and veterinary professional wellbeing.
Veterinary Professions Advising Center (VetPAC) is a unique undergraduate advising center that combines Career Center services with pre-professional advising for pre-veterinary students at North Carolina State University (NCSU). During the past 10 years, VetPAC has created five distinct internships, three annual study abroad courses, a competitive annual high school summer camp, provided holistic advising, and hosted large-scale advising events that consistently provide resources to more than 800 students annually. The VetPAC provided outreach to an average of 13 local high schools per academic year, and educated over 300 visiting students about VetPAC and pre-veterinary life at NCSU since 2015. NCSU College of Veterinary Medicine has had a minimum of 26% and a maximum of 45% DVM students in the incoming classes who accessed VetPAC resources and advising. This article presents the impact VetPAC has had on pre-veterinary student success at NCSU, and provides an outline of VetPAC’s first 10 years of development as a model of combined career services and pre-professional advising for peer institutions.
During the summer of 2020, a survey-based study was conducted at North Carolina State University, a land-grant university, to evaluate the impact of COVID-19 on pre-veterinary students’ ability to gain experience hours for Doctor of Veterinary Medicine (DVM) admissions. Of the 286 respondents (47% of the respondent pool), 92% reported losing at least one animal, veterinary, research, extracurricular, or work opportunity due to COVID-19, and 59% were not able to find a replacement. Of the lost experiences, 74 (20.8%) were for academic credit, resulting in 131 total academic credit hours lost, while only 12 credit hours were gained via alternative experiences. Of respondents, 30% (29.7%) identified as applicants of the 2020–2021 Veterinary Medical College Application Service (VMCAS) cycle. More than half (52.6%) of the sample identified being concerned about the strength of their VMCAS experiences due to these lost opportunities. Many respondents reported considering delaying application submissions by taking a gap year (17.5%) or have had their intended graduation timeline affected (14.8%). Since the majority of veterinary colleges utilize a holistic review process, this study provides a basis for understanding the effects of COVID-19 on the duration, depth, and diversity of experiences gained by future DVM applicants. This article also provides recommendations for DVM admissions adaptations based on the outcomes of the data.
A one-credit hour, elective, professional development course was created at North Carolina State University (NCSU) to introduce pre-veterinary track students to the admissions process and the breadth of the veterinary profession. The course was designed to facilitate career exploration while building self-efficacy through vicarious learning, interactions with speakers in various veterinary subfields, and addressing misperceptions about veterinary admissions. To evaluate the student learning objectives and improve upon the current practices of the course, data from two pre-test and post-test course surveys for 235 course participants between Spring 2014-17 were analyzed. The results of the study showed that students experienced significant gains in self-appraisal (Cohen’s d ranged 1.88-2.53), gathering occupational information (Cohen’s d ranged 1.59-2.53), goal selection (Cohen’s d ranged 2.14-2.53), and planning and problem solving (Cohen’s d ranged 1.88-2.77); as well as experienced a decrease in five misperceptions about veterinary admissions. This novel course is presented as a prospective course for other universities.
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