Course summary

The world of veterinary medicine has always attracted some of the brightest and most able students - brought together by a desire to work with animals and a concern for animal welfare.The careers are varied across the clinical and non-clinical sector. Practising vets can focus on the small animal, equine or farm sectors where advances in animal science and technology are transforming both disease prevention and treatment. But career options in the non-clinical veterinary sector are also growing – with exciting avenues opening up in education, innovation and working collaboratively across animal and human health. A changing industry demands that the vets of tomorrow graduate with not only first rate clinical skills, but a broader set of capabilities. They need to be good communicators with a sound understanding of business. They also need to be confident and resilient first opinion practitioners – who have benefited during their training from access to a wide variety of extramural study placements in industry.These factors have combined to convince Harper Adams University and Keele University that the time is right to create a vet school that meets the challenges of today’s veterinary industry. Harper Adams has a strong pedigree in animal sciences, veterinary nursing and veterinary physiotherapy, whilst Keele has a long history in the life sciences and human medicine. Both institutions are well recognised for their strength in employability, student satisfaction and first class teaching. The unique two-centre School will provide students with the opportunity to take advantage of two institutions with a common commitment to excellence but complementary skill sets and resources. The clinical training will follow a distributed model of delivery and a range of approved third party veterinary practices have agreed to provide clinical placements. As is the norm with Veterinary Schools, the teaching week is intensive for the students, who can expect around 28 hours per week of contact time. Students also need to complete extra mural studies gaining hands on practical experience, and so the total study year ranges from 35-45 weeks a year across the five year programme. Due to the vocational nature and focus of the students, all modules have been created for the programme and are exclusive to it:

• Extensive use is made of the farm and companion animals on site at Harper Adams as well as state-of-the-art laboratory facilities and clinical skills rooms at both Harper and Keele

• Small group teaching facilitates the development of confidence in practical skills

• The curriculum will incorporate case studies from early in the first year

• In the final 2 clinical years of the programme, vets from referral centres provide keynote lectures, tutorials and practical classes, based on their current and ongoing experience in practice providing our students with real world experience and knowledge for their future careers

• Clinical teaching takes place not only in a hospital setting with the unusual or difficult cases, but also in practices where management of the everyday case is the primary focus