Universities would then take them and implement it in their curriculum. All very easy. But now, almost at the end of our project, we realised that it just cannot work that way because the curricula are designed in different ways.
So you don’t think that there is going to be an ideal curriculum for Europe? No, unfortunately not. When we realised that, we realised that it was a nice idea. We asked ourselves, “What are we going to do now?” We decided that we are going to provide a list of competences. This is the ideal list of competences every veterinarian should have in those three areas. Then we made a list of learning outcomes, and universities can choose whatever fits to their curriculum. We tried to make a comprehensive list, not too big, but including everything that would be great for people to have. To make it even easier, we are finishing the ideal version of the syllabus for each course. They can take it as a whole or take some parts and combine it with their existing courses. We thought that this would make it easier for people who are thinking about it. Now, they have an example and can take it from there to negotiate with their management - or wherever there needs to be negotiating. This is going to be the output of our project in the end. In the beginning, I really thought that we can create this ideal thing that everybody will like and be able to use, but reality is a bit different – in many ways.
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In our talk we have mainly focused on Europe. Do you know if there are any initiatives, similar to yours, in non-European countries? Yes! I know that most of the US Vet Schools have already implemented all of that. Especially communication but also entrepreneurship, innovation, and business management. I don’t know at what point they implemented it. I didn’t do that much research on that history, but I have seen some very nice documents on what their students need to know and what they are being accessed at the end of their studies. I think the case is similar in Australia. I think North America and Australia have gone a bit further with implementing “life skills.” I don’t know about the rest of the world, but these were the examples we were able to find. But then again, it's not as easy as saying: “Oh, they have done it beautifully! Let’s copy it and use it in our systems.'' Unfortunately, we cannot do that.