Announcing:

The CBVE Collaborate Community of Practice

Collaborate is now focused on building the CBVE Collaborate Community of Practice (CoP) with the goal of connecting educators facing similar challenges. This community will be hosted through AAVMC Connect, the online platform used for networking, collaboration, and knowledge sharing across the global veterinary community. Virtual open meetings will be scheduled quarterly to discuss implementation topics, facilitate interactive discussion with Q&A, and occasionally conduct journal clubs or other literature reviews. Our first meeting is scheduled for 30^th July, 2026 at 4:30 pm Eastern Daylight Time, with the topic of Psychological Safety in the Clinical Training Environment.

July CBVE CoP Topic Preview: Using the CBVE Model to Formulate Actionable Feedback and Promote Psychological Safety in the Clinical Training Environment

What is psychological safety? Simply put, it is a shared belief amongst team members that they will not be embarrassed, rejected, or punished for taking interpersonal risks. In a clinical training environment, it means that the learner or coach feels safe to speak up, voice ideas, and ask questions without fear of negative consequences. For the first session, we will focus on the learner and will address how to use CBVE to anchor the types of feedback instructors provide to observable student behaviors, making the feedback actionable and informative. When used appropriately, CBVE helps build instructor confidence in delivering honest feedback without harm and reinforces that instructors can learn to foster a growth mindset in students. Creating psychological safety for learners is a skill, not an instructor personality trait. Psychological safety is crucial to strengthening the learning culture across the clinical training environment.

If you would like to register for the July CoP meeting, click here.

Must Reads (Recent Publications)

The ABCs of Cultivating Psychological Safety for Clinical Learner Growth. Brown W, Santhosh L, Stewart NH, Adamson R, Lee MM. J Grad Med Educ. 2024 Apr;16(2):124-127. doi: 10.4300/JGME-D-23-00589.1. Epub 2024 Apr 15. PMID: 38993303; PMCID: PMC11234300.

Educators have a significant influence over psychological safety in the clinical learning environment. Proactively implementing behaviors that strengthen psychological safety amongst the learning team is critical. In this quick read summary, the authors review three specific strategies that can be used.

1. Adjust Frame (Here to Learn, While Providing High-Value Care). Reframe expectations in the clinical learning environment to promote the intentional practice of critical thinking, medical decision-making, and clinical skills.
2. Be Curious (Not Judgmental). Approach mistakes with curiosity! Set out to fill in knowledge gaps rather than fixating on them. Formative assessments are critical to this strategy.
3. Connect (Collaborate and Coach). Partner with learners toward a goal of their growth. Try to minimize power distance and seek input from everyone in the learning team to develop trust.



Clinician Teacher as Leader: Creating Psychological Safety in the Clinical Learning Environment for Medical Students.McClintock AH, Fainstad TL, Jauregui J. Acad Med. 2022 Nov 1;97(11S):S46-S53. doi: 10.1097/ACM.0000000000004913. Epub 2022 Aug 9. PMID: 35947474.

In a multi-institutional, cross-sectional study using semi-structured interviews of final year medical students, participants described key themes of relationships, learning emphasis, clear expectations, autonomy, and frequent feedback as promoters of psychological safety. The authors concluded that clinician educators’ leadership behaviors directly impact student perceptions of psychological safety in the clinical learning environment. Importantly, it is difficult to repair a psychologically unsafe environment, but there are early actions that can be implemented to ensure an environment is and remains psychologically safe.

Updates

CBVE Analyze

The Analyze Working Group has completed a survey of North American veterinary college leaders examining the current state of final-year clinical education across U.S. and Canadian veterinary schools. A parallel survey has also been distributed to non-North American AAVMC member institutions, and we continue to encourage participation to strengthen the dataset. To determine whether your college has already participated, please contact Michelle Coleman at mccole@uga.edu.

Concurrently, COVE and the AAVMC are developing a revised In-Training Evaluation Report (ITER) for clinical rotation assessment. The Analyze Working Group aims to establish a snapshot of current final-year clinical training practices before the new ITER is widely implemented.



Finally, Analyze's two-part series on student and instructor perceptions of feedback in veterinary clinical education was recently published in Frontiers in Education. Findings support that although clinical year students and instructors share many perspectives on the purpose and qualities of effective feedback, misalignments in recognition, definitions, and openness may limit feedback’s educational impact and affect student motivation.

CBVE Activate

The Activate Working Group continues to create resources to support implementation of CBVE. Ten Just-in-Time videos are available on the CBVE webpage under CBVE Resources, including a new video on curriculum mapping using the CBVE Competency Framework to guide revisions to an existing curriculum. Three additional videos are expected to be released over the next few months. Grab-and-Go Kits are being developed to provide educators with all the resources they would need to create a workshop on a particular topic for their faculty, staff or students. These kits include a downloadable PowerPoint presentation, as well as activities and resources that can be customized to meet their program needs. The first Grab-and-Go Kit on Providing Feedback is now available in the AAVMC’s learning management system LEARN. Anyone can create a free LEARN account to access this and future Grab-and-Go Kit topics including promoting reflection in the curriculum, using entrustment-supervision scales to assess EPAs, and preclinical assessment.

CBVE Outreach

The Outreach Working Group has developed two subgroups to focus on additional stakeholders; students and clinicians/practitioners. A major focus of the subgroups will be identifying the key messages for these additional stakeholders, as well as how and when these message will be conveyed. The subgroups will be reaching out to these stakeholders for their input as to how best to engage with their constituents.

Upcoming Events

• AMEE, August 22-26, 2026 st Vienna, Austria. Click here for more information.
• Primary Care Veterinary Educators Symposium, Oct 19-11, 2026 at University of Georgia. Click here for more information.
• Competency-Based Education in the Health Professions Conference, 24-hour online World Summit, Oct 29-30, 2026. Click here for more information.
• VetEd Down Under Symposium, Feb 2-5, 2027, Melbourne, Australia. Click here for more information.