As a veterinary nurse in practice my motivation for maintaining high standards was for the good of the animals I directly cared for. As a veterinary nurse educator my driving force to promote best practice is still the ability to affect, admittedly indirectly, the level of care of the animals our students will be responsible for. Following on from this idea I see open education resources in veterinary nursing as having the potential to improve animal welfare standards. People in the developing world are in need of the basic animal husbandry information that we have. For what reason should we keep the information of how to care for an animal’s health privileged knowledge?
I have travelled in the third world and witnessed first hand the misuse of animals, especially horses, mules and donkeys. The people caring for these animals income and lives depend on them. Their poor husbandry practices are due to a lack of evidence based information and resources, not ill will. Could free and open information about animal husbandry and health have a positive effect on these peoples lives and on the lives of their animals. How about prevention of infection, or how to trim a hoof, how to treat a hoof abscess or care for a wound, perhaps the first signs of dehydration. It is all written in our notes.
Reading back over it all sounds a bit pie in the sky but how many of us use Wikipedia? And who had heard of it ten years, or even five or six years ago.
The benefit we may gain from collaboration with international veterinary nurse and veterinary technician educators would be to encourage the professional veterinary nurses in New Zealand to stand up, raise their game and match or exceed the standards set for the profession in the USA and Europe.
I agree this would be a fantastic opportunity to improve conditions in other countries. What is the likelihood that the people who could benefit from this knowledge would be able to access the information? Have you a sense of how many people would be likely to access the Internet?
ReplyDeleteFor this idea to work you may have to look further, and think about mobile learning. Most people in the developing world apparently have access to cellphones, and wifi. So they could be used as the vehicle for transmitting the information. Short vids that could be downloaded or streamed via cell phones with a minimum of text would probably be the way to go. Perhaps if you get your students to create some of these resources as part of a project, the vids could be used to deliver the information to the third world. Part of the project could be to seek out a group that could benefit from the resources, and they could share their practices with your students. What rich stories could be told, and what an eye opener for your students. These stories could be recorded as a resource for future classes - in an open format of course. Does this sound possible?