Developing and sharing clinical skills videos

The University of Veterinary Medicine, Hannover, has produced clinical skills videos for use in their clinical skills laboratory (CSL) during practical classes, and for students’ self-directed study. The videos cover a range of skills such as suturing, bandaging, and intra-venous catheter placement.

The University of Veterinary Medicine, Hannover, has produced clinical skills videos for use in their clinical skills laboratory (CSL) during practical classes, and for students’ self-directed study. The videos cover a range of skills such as suturing, bandaging, and intra-venous catheter placement. 

To facilitate easy access for students, the videos were uploaded to YouTube on a channel called ‘TiHoVideos’. This also allowed sharing of the video resources and a number have been translated into English in collaboration with the University of Bristol, to increase the usefulness to non-German  speakers. The videos are freely available as Open Educational Resources (OER) under a Creative Commons License (non-commercial use attributing the authors).

Google Analytics data were used to evaluate video access, number of subscribers to the ‘TiHoVideos’ channel and users’ country of origin, from the launch date (27.04.2012) until 31st March 2014.

There have been 86,706 views from 160 countries and the ‘TiHoVideos’ channel has 283 subscribers from 52 countries, including Germany, the USA, the UK, Switzerland, and Brazil.

The videos have been used worldwide, and the English videos attract more views from a larger range of countries than the German videos, when considering the English versions have been available for a shorter time.

Creating videos is expensive and translating them into English is a cost-effective way to increase the potential audience and therefore usefulness of the videos. The project has provided a valuable set of learning resources for staff at academic institutions, which could also be used by veterinarians teaching in practice.