During clinical workplace learning, effective communication between veterinary students and clinical staff is of paramount importance to facilitating learning, assessment, and patient care. Although studies in health sciences education have indicated that students may experience communication difficulties as a result of linguistic, cultural, and other factors and that these difficulties can affect clinical learning and academic outcomes, this has not yet been explored in veterinary clinical educational contexts. In this study, the authors sought to identify whether final-year veterinary students perceived that their communication ability influenced their clinical learning and, if so, whether language background was of significance. Seventy-one students from a final-year cohort at an Australian veterinary school completed a student perception survey at the end of their clinical training. Exploratory factor analysis was used to investigate the extent to which learners perceived that their communication ability influenced their clinical learning. Two factors explained 72.3% of total variance. Factor 1 related to communication ability as a source of concern; Factor 2 related to comprehending and contributing to clinical conversations. Communication ability as a source of concern differed significantly (p < .001) between students who did and did not have an English-speaking background, but there was no significant difference between these two student groups for Factor 2. Although language background was associated with self-perceived communication ability, evidence also emerged that students may experience communication challenges during clinical learning, irrespective of their language background.

Item Type:	Refereed Article
Keywords:	communication ability, clinical workplace learning, international student, non-English-speaking background (NESB), work-integrated learning (WIL), clinical placements, clinical veterinary education
Research Division:	Agricultural, Veterinary and Food Sciences
Research Group:	Veterinary sciences
Research Field:	Veterinary anaesthesiology and intensive care
Objective Division:	Expanding Knowledge
Objective Group:	Expanding knowledge
Objective Field:	Expanding knowledge in education
UTAS Author:	Green, WJ (Dr Wendy Green)
ID Code:	151439
Year Published:	2019
Web of Science® Times Cited:	4
Deposited By:	Education
Deposited On:	2022-07-29
Last Modified:	2022-09-13
Downloads:	0