Platt College

Kristy Veltri, BS, RVT, FFCP (Veterinary), RECOVER BLS, serves as the Veterinary Technology Program Director for Platt College Los Angeles's Alhambra campus, overseeing both the campus-based and distance education programs. Her approach to veterinary technology education emphasizes clinical reasoning, practical skill development and helping students build the confidence needed to transition successfully from the classroom into veterinary practice.

Ask a veterinary technology student to define coccidiosis and many can give you the textbook answer almost word for word. Then ask what they'd consider when evaluating a 10-week-old shelter puppy with bloody diarrhea and the same student hesitates. They know the information. They haven't learned to use it yet.

That gap is one of the biggest challenges in our field. Veterinary technology programs are built to cover content, but practice demands judgment. If we want graduates who can reason through real cases, our courses and especially our assessments, have to ask for reasoning, not just recall.

The Problem with Coverage

Our students must develop knowledge and skills across anatomy, pharmacology, anesthesia, clinical pathology, dentistry and nursing, often on compressed schedules. Faculty feel real pressure to cover all of it, because graduates will soon be responsible for live patients.

I saw the cost of that pressure in Veterinary Parasitology, a five-week course midway through our program. In that time, students learn identification, life cycles, transmission, clinical signs, diagnostics, treatment considerations and zoonotic risk for dozens of parasites. In end-of-course evaluations, several said the volume and pace left them overwhelmed.

“Our graduates need to recognize what they're seeing, connect it to what they've learned, communicate effectively with the veterinary team and know when additional guidance is needed.”

They had a point. As I began rebuilding my assessments, I questioned whether my questions reflected the clinical reasoning I expected students to demonstrate and whether my tests were measuring coverage more than competence.

Redesigning for Reasoning

In my on-campus course, technology supports how I teach clinical reasoning. Assessment was the natural place to start, because it shapes how students study. I've been rebuilding my parasitology exam banks in Canvas with clinical relevance and cognitive complexity in mind, using the VTNE content outline and entry-level veterinary technician competencies to guide my decisions.

I organize the banks by topic, incorporating foundational questions alongside clinical scenarios. This allows me to assess whether students can recall essential information and apply it to clinical scenarios within the same subject.

Within a single bank, that might look like this:

• Recall: "What is the intermediate host of Dipylidium caninum?"

• Clinical application: "A flea-infested cat has rice-like segments around the anus, but the fecal flotation is negative. Why might this occur and what would you explain to the owner about preventing reinfection?"

The second question still requires the life cycle. It just asks students to use it.

Image-based items offer another opportunity. Students can identify parasites from microscopy images, then consider the clinical significance of their findings, zoonotic implications and appropriate client education within the veterinary healthcare team. I also model the reasoning first, working through a case step by step before students try similar ones on their own.

Foundational questions still have a place in both practice activities and formal assessments. The difference is that they shouldn't dominate the exam. Students must also demonstrate that they can connect what they've learned to clinical situations.

Technology doesn't teach clinical reasoning on its own. Its value comes from how intentionally we use it to design practice, assess understanding and identify where students need additional support.

What Programs Can Do

1. Prioritize content. Identify what students must know to practice safely, what strengthens their clinical judgment and what is useful but secondary. Give the greatest instructional emphasis to the essentials.

2. Assess for application. Students prepare for the assessments we give them. If our exams primarily reward recall, we shouldn't be surprised when students focus their studying on memorization.

3. Use assessment data thoughtfully. Learning management systems offer tools for examining question performance and identifying items that may warrant closer review. Particularly with small cohorts, these results should inform an instructor's professional judgment rather than replace it.

4. Listen to student feedback. When students report feeling overwhelmed, the problem isn't necessarily motivation or effort. We should also examine how we've organized, paced, taught and assessed the material.

Patients don't arrive with four answer choices. Our graduates need to recognize what they're seeing, connect it to what they've learned, communicate effectively with the veterinary team and know when additional guidance is needed.

Memorization is where that ability starts, not where it ends. Our responsibility is to design learning experiences and assessments that help students take the next step, from knowing the information to understanding what to do with it.