VSPN Review by Oreta Samples, CVT, MPH, PhD
(Click on stars for an explanation)

  As a veterinary educator, I was very interested in seeing this 3-book set as it is not often that publishers give the educational veterinary technology community both an instructors guide as well as a corresponding student activity book. More often, educators are left to rely on internet resources provided by the publisher to complement the students’ textbook. And while this is, I suppose the wave of the future, call me old fashioned, but sometimes I like the luxury of making up lesson plans on the couch, in the bed, etc. This book will go a long way in filling the bill.

The books are set up to address the Essential Skills list of the AVMA with each lesson being a combination of Learning Objectives, Overview and Resource as well as Student Self-Check Questions to utilize in stimulating classroom discussion as well as challenging exercises that test students’ knowledge and critical thinking skills.

The book is divided into 18 modules that each deal with a specific area of veterinary medicine that is sub-divided into multiple lesson plans. For instance Module 18 addresses Laboratory and Exotic Animals with the six lessons addressing specific groups of these animals.

While not a standalone text, this set of texts would be quite useful to an educator striving to make sure each area of the CVTEA requirements as covered and understood by students, as well as a reference source. In order to get the most out of the texts, students must have access to several other texts that are listed in each lesson as “Resources”. All resources are well known veterinary technology textbooks and other learning tools (such as terminology flashcards) and may already be in use by the programs. However if they are not, some of the usefulness of this set may be lost. One other distractor is the lack of a Table of Contents or an Index which makes location of specific topics cumbersome and requires flipping through the whole book.

On the plus side, educators may find this to be another resource that will come in handy providing ideas on ways to introduce lessons to those in both collegiate and vocational-technical schools the art of being a veterinary technician. The lack of Table of Content as well as an Index garners this set of books a 4 out of 5 star rating.

Publisher: BlueDoor Publishing (2014)

ISBN: 9781599845456

VIN Bookstore: Currently Unavailable