Use of smartphones to aid the teaching of equine ocular fundus examination.

Background: Teaching and learning how to perform examination of the ocular fundus is challenging. Smartphones can support to enhance students' confidence and experience.

Methods: Following an optional year-4 ophthalmoscopy practical using hand-held ophthalmoscopes, students completed a questionnaire using a visual analogue scale (VAS) investigating if students felt smartphone use aided learning and if student's self-assessed confidence in visualising the ocular fundus had improved. VAS scores were compared using the Wilcoxon signed rank test (significance: P<0.05).

Results: All 30 year-4 students attending the practical participated to the study. Confidence in performing direct ophthalmoscopy significantly increased after the practical. Confidence after the practical was 65.3 (±19.8) per cent compared with before the practical when confidence was 20.1 (±15.6) per cent (P<0.001). The perceived usefulness of traditional teaching was 62.3 (±23.8) per cent. The perceived usefulness of the teaching with the smartphone was 91.1 (±8.6) per cent. While students found both methods useful, they perceived the use of the smartphone to be significantly more useful (P<0.001). Free-text comments on the use of the smartphone were all positive and included 'useful', 'fun' and 'good teaching tool'.

Conclusions: This study shows that students positively received the use of the smartphone, which can be a useful tool to teach the equine ocular examination to undergraduate veterinary students.