Introduction W LIV 0252 Final Report APPENDICES.

Page 11 of 96 2 Appendix 2: Training needs assessment

2.1 Introduction

This report was written by the following members of the project team: Tristan Jubb, Michael McCarthy and Leisha Hewitt. The report was completed in September 2009. This report was intended to deliver against Objective 5: Review training material and training activities for accredited veterinarians and stockpersons to ensure that relevant information from Objectives 1 to 4 are covered. It was intended to review current practices operating in the export industry. The training needs assessment was one of the first activities completed for the project. The W.LIV.0252 project was designed to have accredited veterinarians AAVs systematically following standardised disease investigation and data collection procedures on board cattle ships. At the time this training needs assessment was done the project team was early in the process of developing protocols and procedures for the project. There was interest in understanding roles and responsibilities and training needs for both AAVs and stockpersons for two reasons. The first was that we recognised that stockpersons may assist AAVs in collecting observations on morbidity and mortality and may also assist in doing necropsies. The second was that in the event that a voyage enrolled in the study was not accompanied by an AAV then we needed to be prepared to have the senior stockperson acting as the collector of project-relevant data and information. As it turned out, all enrolled voyages were accompanied by an AAV and all project responsibilities were assigned to the AAV. In many cases the AAVs routinely seek assistance from stockpersons on board the ship and at an informal level stock persons did contribute to the data collection processes. It was recognised that some level of training would be required to achieve this even though most veterinarians and stockpersons will have had some ad hoc and on-the-job training and experience. They will have participated in disease investigations and gathering of animal health data for the mandatory daily and end of trip, voyage reports. This report aimed to produce a training needs assessment of accredited veterinarians and stockpersons participating in disease investigations on cattle ships. Completion of this report required a number of questions to be answered including:  What skills and knowledge are required to deliver the tasks to the required standard  What are the existing skills and knowledge among accredited veterinarians and stockpersons  What training courses and materials are already available  What constraints are there to running training, and  What are the training options This training needs analysis attempts to provide answers to these questions under the headings below. Page 12 of 96

2.2 Skills and knowledge requirements