How to Close the Readiness Gap in Veterinary Education: Preparing Students for Real-World Practice
In a recent Enflux panel discussion, “Closing the Gap in Preparing Veterinary Graduates for Real-World Practice”, leaders in veterinary education and practice examined a critical challenge: How can veterinary schools better prepare students for real-world practice?
The conversation featured Dr. William Tancrady (DVM Founder and Owner, Old Ridge Veterinary Hospital Chadds Ford), Dan Thompson (MEd Assistant Director of Instructional Design and Faculty Development, Oklahoma State University College of Veterinary Medicine), and Cori Solomon-Santone (Director of Growth&Strategy at Enflux). Together, they shared insights on vet school curriculum design, strategies for improving clinical readiness for veterinary graduates, and the role of learning analytics in bridging the gap between classroom instruction and vet school clinical experience.
From classroom to clinic: the challenges of veterinary graduate readiness
Enflux: What are the biggest challenges in veterinary medicine education new graduates face when moving from the classroom to clinical practice?
Dr. William Tancrady: One major challenge is the sheer volume of knowledge. The Merck Veterinary Manual is now about 50% longer than when I graduated, yet veterinary school isn’t any longer. Students are expected to learn much more in the same timeframe.
Another issue is variability in clinical exposure. On one rotation I was busy dawn to dusk, while others were slow. By the end of my first year in practice, I had done a dozen foreign body surgeries but waited years before performing a splenectomy. That’s not a failure of the veterinary school curriculum—it’s just the reality of medicine.
Graduates also struggle with the transition from academic teaching hospitals, staffed by specialists, to everyday practice, where clients may not afford advanced diagnostics or lengthy recovery plans. Real-world care often requires flexibility and context, something training can’t always replicate.
That’s why we need to treat new graduates as individuals and support their growth, rather than expecting them to be fully formed clinicians on day one.
Enflux: What strategies help veterinary graduates adjust to real-world decision-making?
Dr. William Tancrady: I give them latitude with support—my door is open, but I’m not standing over their shoulder. The goal is balance: humility without anxiety, and confidence without arrogance. Both extremes can harm patients.
The culture of overwork is another concern. One veterinary school faced backlash when half the class reported working 100-hour weeks. Instead of learning, students were simply enduring. When graduates associate veterinary training with exhaustion, we risk creating an unsustainable workforce.
To its credit, the school later introduced workload monitoring policies. Recognizing the problem is the first step toward solving it.
Using instructional design and data to advance veterinary education
Enflux: Veterinary students today face information overload. How are you using instructional design and data-driven strategies to prepare them for clinical readiness?
Dan Thompson: Students today are asked to learn more content than ever before. That makes efficient learning essential, and instructional design—along with artificial intelligence (AI) in veterinary medicine education—is a powerful tool to achieve it.is a powerful tool to achieve it.
Our focus is on formative assessment— the one that promotes learning during the process, not just measuring it at the end. At Oklahoma State University (OSU), we’ve seen clear data showing that student engagement with course content improves their performance on midterms and finals. But true engagement isn’t just watching videos—it’s about thinking critically.
Through OSU and VetEd Teaching Solutions, we’ve built modules that give students repeated opportunities for clinical reasoning reps. Because clinical exposure varies by rotation, we simulate cases and provide immediate feedback. These modules include multiple-choice, open-ended, matching, and sorting formats, with explanations even for correct answers, so students strengthen their understanding and self-assess their progress.
The efficiency comes from targeting learning. Using Enflux dashboards, we can quickly identify where students are struggling—sometimes in real time. That data guides us in building modules that address specific learning gaps, improving outcomes while helping students retain knowledge long-term and apply it in practice.
Enflux: How do you collaborate with faculty to align teaching methods with these strategies?
Dan Thompson: Faculty development is central to our work. We design training that helps instructors adopt effective teaching methods and create learner-centered content.
For clinical faculty, we build case studies that give students more exposure to radiographs, ultrasounds, and patient scenarios they may not consistently encounter in rotations. Since animal illness is seasonal, we ensure students are engaging with cases year-round, not just when they happen to appear.
We also pay close attention to how material is delivered. If students can skip to the answer key, they miss the critical thinking process. That’s why we use gated modules, requiring them to generate differential diagnoses before reviewing expert guidance. This approach ensures students actively engage with the material, strengthening both immediate learning and long-term retention.
Data transparency and learning analytics in veterinary education
Enflux: How have you seen data transparency and learning analytics help veterinary programs succeed?
Cori Solomon: When data is transparent, everyone—faculty, program directors, and students—can work from the same picture.
Faculty gain clarity on whether they’re truly teaching and assessing the competencies they intend to, especially as programs transition toward competency-based education. Leadership gains confidence that the program is aligned with accreditation standards. And students benefit from more intentional feedback and support.
It’s like making flashcards but never reviewing them—the value isn’t in collecting the data, but in using it to guide practice. The power comes when we engage with data to drive improvement.
Enflux: What challenges in veterinary medicine education have you seen when working with faculty and stakeholders to uncover the value of data?
Cori Solomon: Faculty respond differently when data feels like a growth tool instead of a report card. Framed that way, analytics highlight what’s working and where students need more support. That gives faculty confidence to make changes without feeling judged.
For example, one veterinary program discovered through analytics that students were underperforming on competencies tied to vet school clinical experience. The faculty had been teaching these skills, but they weren’t mapped or assessed consistently enough to track. Once the gap was visible in the data, they embedded more case-based learning and aligned assessments. Within a semester, student performance improved.
The conversation shifted from anecdotal to evidence-based—a critical step for student outcomes and for demonstrating compliance to accreditors.
The challenge is that data can be overwhelming. Numbers alone don’t tell the story. If no one can translate data into actionable insights, faculty can’t easily use it. Our role is to bridge that gap.
Enflux: How does Enflux make this process easier?
Cori Solomon: Every program already has data, but it’s scattered across spreadsheets, Canvas, Blackboard, ExamSoft, and accreditation binders. Enflux centralizes that information, allowing faculty to see patterns in minutes instead of months.
That empowers educators to act quickly, saving time, strengthening accreditation readiness, and creating a sustainable structure that endures through faculty or leadership turnover. Continuous improvement becomes possible, not just episodic.
Integrate data from your LMS, assessment tools, experiential learning platforms, SIS, national surveys, and internal systems—all in one platform
Dan Thompson: I’ll add to that. When we’re buried in spreadsheets and multiple platforms, it takes too much time to pull data together. That leaves less time for what matters: making data actionable.
When I can streamline my data sources, I can focus on building teaching methods or learning modules that directly improve student outcomes. At the end of the day, all of us are here to help students become veterinarians. Data should not just measure outcomes—it should improve them year after year.
Actionable strategies to improve veterinary graduate readiness
Enflux: What is one immediate strategy institutions could implement this semester to strengthen veterinary education and student readiness?
Dan Thompson: Students remember content when they return to it repeatedly in different formats. Even within a lecture, you can pause and ask students to summarize the key points in their own words. That small shift turns passive listening into active learning.
It’s easy to get distracted by technology trends, especially with AI everywhere. But the fundamentals of instructional design still matter. Planned repetition—not redundancy—creates retention. By intentionally revisiting content in varied ways, we build deeper, more lasting learning.
Dr. William Tancrady: I’d focus on systematically building decision-making and communication opportunities into the veterinary curriculum—while remembering that students are paying for an education, not serving as free labor.
Some worry this makes graduates “soft.” I disagree. Veterinary medicine already has high rates of burnout and mental health challenges. Being supportive and kind isn’t a weakness—it’s essential to developing resilient clinicians who can thrive long-term.
Cori Solomon: One simple step is to pick a single course and map its assessments against program competencies. Even a basic dashboard or spreadsheet can quickly reveal where skills are over- or under-assessed, sparking meaningful faculty discussions.
And yes, faculty need kindness, too—they’re juggling a lot. Tools like Enflux make the process easier by centralizing data from multiple platforms, so teams can spend less time compiling reports and more time improving outcomes.
Enflux: Beyond clinical skills, what qualities help new veterinary graduates succeed in practice?
Dr. William Tancrady: Resilience and maturity often matter more than medical knowledge. Most cases are straightforward, but outcomes aren’t always favorable—even when clinicians do everything right.
I’ve seen new veterinarians shaken when treatments fail or when clients are upset. For example, enemas only work about half the time, but when one fails, clients sometimes blame the doctor. Those moments test emotional strength more than clinical skills.
That’s why we must support graduates personally as well as professionally. Veterinary education can’t just focus on checking competency boxes; it has to foster resilience, empathy, and communication—skills that define long-term success in practice.
The role of educational technology in curriculum development and assessment
Enflux: You’ve both shared how Enflux has supported your curriculum changes. How critical do you find educational technology in supporting curriculum development and assessment?
Dr. Catherine Cone: Just yesterday, my data coordinator sent out results from our latest graduating student and preceptor surveys. We pulled the data directly from Enflux, complete with beautiful graphs comparing our outcomes to peers and national benchmarks. We shared it immediately with experiential faculty and the assessment committee, giving them a clear picture of strengths and areas for improvement.
Before Enflux, that process took hours—building slides manually, formatting charts, and compiling reports. Now it’s instant, which means our time is spent addressing issues, not formatting data.
Dr. Erinne Kennedy: In dentistry, our challenge looks a little different. Right now there are about 700 open faculty positions across U.S. dental schools, so we’re constantly recruiting and working to bring more people into dental education. That makes educational technology essential.
I think about EdTech in terms of how it supports faculty: Does it make their workflow more efficient? Does it save them from spending an entire semester crunching numbers? The tools we’ve implemented in the College of Dental Medicine not only enhance student learning, they also make faculty processes easier and more efficient. In some cases, they can even replace the workload of a full FTE. That’s critical in helping us do more with limited resources while still maintaining quality education.
Preparing veterinary graduates for real-world practice requires more than medical knowledge. Success comes from effective curriculum design, supportive faculty development, and data-driven insights that strengthen both competencies and resilience.
Close readiness gap with data-driven insights
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