How do students approach lameness? A case study

Reasons for performing study:

It is unknown how students develop lameness assessment skills.

Objectives:

To quantify student performance, visual approaches and attitudes to lameness evaluation. Study design: Comparison of student cohorts.

Methods:

Twenty 3rd year (inexperienced cohort) and thirteen 4th to 5th year (experienced cohort) students evaluated 30 video clips showing horses on the straight line or circle, followed by a general questionnaire. Eyetracking records (Tobii X102) were collected in parallel. The percentage of correctly evaluated horses was calculated based on verified expert opinion. From the eyetracking records on the straight line, the percentage time spent on different regions on the horse was calculated and compared between cohorts.

Results:

For both cohorts, while the correct detection of lameness per se was high (median ≥92%), detection of the correct limb was lower (median 40–80% depending on quarters and cohort) and detection of sound horses was at chance level (median = 50%). The correct limb was indicated significantly more often by the experienced cohort (P≤0.032) except for forelimb lameness on the circle (P = 0.053). The inexperienced cohort dedicated more time to looking at limb movement, while the experienced cohort focused on head and pelvis movement. Students judged their expected task performance realistically, on average underestimating themselves slightly by around 8%. The task difficulty was rated as a mean (s.d.) of 4.10 (0.48) out of 5 by the inexperienced and 3.35 (0.47) by the experienced cohort.

Conclusions:

Lameness detection skills evolve and improve over the course of the curriculum, with a shift from limb assessment to upper body assessment. Students must learn to reliably determine soundness, and hindlimb lameness proved more difficult than forelimb lameness. Students find lameness detection comparatively difficult, but have a realistic understanding of their skill level, suggesting that they can determine their needs for further practice