Abstract:

Introduction and objectives:
In modern society, information is a key tool for any professional activity. Health related professions, need it to achieve the final step of the Preventive Medicine strategy directed to the population. Consequently, the improvement of communication skills at University level is necessary. In topics such as Public Health and Animal Health, veterinarian´s ability to inform stand for a guaranty with regard to welfare, wellbeing, health and economy in both animals and humans.

Communication skills have been poorly included as competences in the Veterinary faculties and veterinarians do not feel prepared to manage the communication process. Having these deficiencies on mind, we decided to design a practical activity called “School Education Workshops” to improve communication skills in Veterinary students.

The main objective of the activity is to help the students on the information process understanding, and also on the training for Public Health communication skills. This activity has been included in the learning program of Zoonoses, Preventive Medicine and Health Police, a discipline taught in the last course of the Veterinary degree at the University of Zaragoza (Spain). A second objective associated to it is the contribution to the childhood health education at school.
Methodology:
The activity involves the veterinary students and lecturers of the Zoonoses, Preventive Medicine and Health Police discipline and the students and lecturers of the biology discipline of "El Pilar Maristas” school in Zaragoza (Spain).

This is a not compulsory avtivity, but is included into the official university learning program of the discipline and contributes to the final evaluation.

School Education Workshops have been organized using two methodological tools: the “Teamwork strategy” and the “problem-based learning” (PBL). Under lecturer supervision, veterinarian students develop the activity by means of face to face sessions, homework activity and tutorial sessions, in order to explain a specific health topic selected. In the other side, the school students are informed on this topic by means of communication media documents. Finally, the veterinarian students prepare a classroom presentation for the school students.
Preliminary results:
The balance of the activity is considered positive from two different points of view: the evaluation of the veterinarian students involved in the workshops and the opinion of the school students (achieved by means of a survey).

A special challenge for the university teachers of the discipline was the hypothetical response of the school students, either regarding the classroom presentations or the discussions promoted after those. Also school lecturer’s evaluation showed their satisfaction with the activity.

These results encourage us to increase the number of workshops and improve the level of the student’s involvement at the school on the topics development, by means of dual teams including University and School students.

Keywords:

Public Health, Communication, Bachelor School, Veterinary sciences