Preparedness and Disaster Response Training for Veterinary Students: Literature Review and Description of the North Carolina State University Credentialed Veterinary Responder Program

The nation's veterinary colleges lack the curricula necessary to meet veterinary demands for animal/public health and emergency preparedness. To this end, the authors report a literature review summarizing training programs within human/veterinary medicine. In addition, the authors describe new competency-based Veterinary Credential Responder training at North Carolina State University College of Veterinary Medicine (NCSU CVM). From an evaluation of 257 PubMed-derived articles relating to veterinary/medical disaster training, 14 fulfilled all inclusion requirements (nine were veterinary oriented; five came from human medical programs). Few offered ideas on the core competencies required to produce disaster-planning and response professionals. The lack of published literature in this area points to a need for more formal discussion and research on core competencies. Non-veterinary articles emphasized learning objectives, commonly listing an incident command system, the National Incident Management System, ...