Dr Dynatra Subasinghe
Academic and research departments
School of Veterinary Medicine, Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences.About
Biography
Dynatra is the Interim Associate Dean Education Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences. Dynatra is also the Program Leader/ Program Director for the clinical years of the BVMSci program. She has engaged in curriculum review and development in her role and continues to enhance the BVMSci curriculum as chair of the school curriculum committee among other strategic leadership roles within the school.
She is also the section head for the small animals clinical teaching team and is responsible for line management of a team of clinical academics at the Department of Clinical Sciences. She serves as the Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences Pedagogical Coordinator for the School of Veterinary Medicine and works with colleagues in multiple schools to deliver teaching, leaning and assessment aligned with University's education agenda.
She teaches small animal general and charity practice. She has led the year 1 of the BVMSci program and coordinated other modules including a clinical practice module in the 3rd year of the program. She served as a Senator in the University of Surrey Senate.
She was awarded the senior fellowship of the Higher Education Academy in 2021. Since she joined the university, she has served as international champion of the school and as Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences representative for the Student Experience Subcommittee. As a member of the employability work group of the school, she chaired the first panel for diversity in the workplace in 2021 vet school careers event to discuss equality, diversity, and inclusion in the veterinary workplace in preparation of students entering the veterinary workplace. She initiated and chaired the organising committee for the first school of veterinary medicine research celebration event in 2020. She has mentored colleagues working towards their Certificate in Higher Education and Senior Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy.
Due to her diverse health and biological sciences, multi-disciplinary background in teaching in higher education (in UK and internationally), research in toxicology, pharmacology, and small animal general and charity practice, she currently undertakes research in to teaching and learning in higher education, student academic support and explores avenues to enhance Antimicrobial Stewardship (AMS) in all aspects of veterinary practice with an emphasis on small animal general practice. She addresses this one health one medicine public health concern with a unique approach as a trained medical scientist and educator with a background in Law. She collaborates with multiple organisations in the UK and overseas for research and curriculum development.
Background prior to joining University of Surrey.
Dynatra Subasinghe graduated as a veterinarian with honours degree from the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine and Animal Science, University of Peradeniya in Sri Lanka. She also is an Attorney-at-Law from the Law College of Sri Lanka. As a veterinary science undergraduate, she received the Newman society award for best performance in the third year of the undergraduate degree and distinctions in multiple subjects in the BVSc program. Subsequently she joined the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine and Animal Science teaching team and worked as a demonstrator and completed an internship in small animal practice.
She then received The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, International Union of Toxicology scholarship to complete the Post Graduate Diploma in Toxicology from Royal Melbourne institute of Technology, Australia. She was awarded an Asian institute of Technology and French government scholarship and completed her MSc in Toxicology Technology and Management in Asian Institute of Technology in Thailand. Dynatra completed a master’s thesis in Cemagref, France. Dynatra received the prestigious YP Sinhania award for outstanding master’s thesis for her research work and graduated as the top student in the class.
As a post graduate student, she served the student union as the Editor in chief and chairperson of the media affairs team representing post graduate students from around 45 Asian countries. As a post graduate student she obtained a UN-studentship to work part time at the United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP) in Bangkok, Thailand for a year. She worked on a conservation and sustainability project for the Greater Mekong river area involving 6 Asian countries.
Upon returning to Sri Lanka, she continued teaching in higher education and led a team of small animal charity practice veterinarians and support staff in a post tsunami disaster relief rabies control program in the southern coast of Sri Lanka.
Subsequently, she came to the UK to pursue her post graduate studies as a Cambridge Commonwealth Trust scholar and New Hall College Centenary Scholar at the University of Cambridge and completed her PhD in Biological sciences at the Department of Pharmacology. Keen to continue practicing as a veterinarian, during her PhD she undertook further training in veterinary medicine and surgery in several practices in the UK in multiple species. After successfully completing the MRCVS examination she obtained membership of the RCVS in the same year as her PhD. After completing a postdoctoral placement at the University of Oxford she returned to Sri Lanka to continue to work closer to her family.
Back in Sri Lanka she continued to work in both private and charity sector small animal practice as a team leader/charity project coordinator for several years while teaching as a visiting lecturer in multiple state universities in Sri Lanka. This included teaching learning and curriculum design and review of a Bachelor of Pharmacy honours degree in University of Colombo and a visiting senior lecturer for the BSc Pharmacy program at the Sir John Kothalwala Academy, Sri Lanka. She served as a external examiner for the final year BVSc program of the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine and Animal Science, University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka. During this period, she was involved in teaching small animal medicine and surgery to both Sri Lankan and international veterinary students, as she had developed an international EMS surgery training course and coordinated the program while working for the Charity. In this role she worked and researched extensively into rabies control and humane dog population control under one health, going on to write about the work in national news papers and present at scientific conferences. She also coordinated responsible pet ownership education programs via the media and through public and school education programs.
She returned to the UK on personal reasons and undertook several years of small animal general practice in the south of England and joined the University of Surrey.
Areas of specialism
University roles and responsibilities
- Interim Associate Dean Education Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences
- Program Leader/Program Director Clinical years (BVMSci Program)
- Chair Board of Examiners BVMSci Program
- Chair Staff Student Liaison Committee BVMSci program
- Ex-officio member Curriculum Committee BVMSci program
- Ex-officio member Professionalism Group BVMSci program
- Ex-officio member final year intra mural rotations (IMR) Operations Group BVMSci program
- Ex-officio member final year intra mural rotations (IMR) Education Advisory Group BVMSci program
- Ex-officio member Workload Planning Committee School of Veterinary Medicine University of Surrey
- Ex-officio member Operations committee School of Veterinary Medicine
My qualifications
Previous roles
ResearchResearch interests
Dynatra has a broad range of research interests in health and biological sciences, veterinary practice and pedagogy. Her research work includes minimising antimicrobial use in general veterinary clinical practice/antimicrobial stewardship. A one health one medicine public health issue. Given her background in small animal practice, toxicology and pharmacology, she is keen to explore alternative therapies and preventative care in general veterinary clinical practice, in order to minimise antimicrobial use. Her pedagogical research work includes exploring innovative teaching techniques for clinical practice teaching, learning,teaching and assessment in higher education, curriculum design and review, active learning, practical clinical skills learning, academic support in higher education. She is active in supervising PG and UG student projects and engaging veterinary practitioners in clinical research.
Research interests
Dynatra has a broad range of research interests in health and biological sciences, veterinary practice and pedagogy. Her research work includes minimising antimicrobial use in general veterinary clinical practice/antimicrobial stewardship. A one health one medicine public health issue. Given her background in small animal practice, toxicology and pharmacology, she is keen to explore alternative therapies and preventative care in general veterinary clinical practice, in order to minimise antimicrobial use. Her pedagogical research work includes exploring innovative teaching techniques for clinical practice teaching, learning,teaching and assessment in higher education, curriculum design and review, active learning, practical clinical skills learning, academic support in higher education. She is active in supervising PG and UG student projects and engaging veterinary practitioners in clinical research.
Teaching
Dynatra is the Program Leader/Director for the clinical years of the BVMSci program and teaches small animal general and charity practice. She also coordinates a clinical practice unit including clinical skills teaching in the BVMSci program. She contributes to all levels of the curriculum to ensure the effective delivery of small animal practice and shelter medicine teaching throughout the course. She is has undertaken multiple pedagogical projects to enhance scholarship of teaching and learning in veterinary education. She undertakes curriculum design and review and provides strategic leadership for the BVMSci program as Program Director for clinical years. She is keen to enhance the student experience and academic support in higher education while fulfilling her current roles and responsibilities at the university. She also champions antimicrobial stewardship in clinical practice and continues to research in this area and translate her research to her clinical practice teaching.
Publications
Highlights
Lewis A. Baker and Dona Wilani Dynatra Subasinghe. Student use and perceptions of embedded formative assessments in a basic science veterinary programme. Journal of Veterinary Medical Education. 2023. DOI: 10.3138/jvme-2023-0011
In Sri Lanka, home‐cooked diets are often fed due to the cost and poor availability of commercial diets. Milk has traditionally been a popular food to give to dogs in this country. There is a recent perceived increase in the number of owners choosing commercial diets for their pets. This study aimed to determine how dog owners visiting a single veterinary practice in Colombo fed their pets. We hoped that this would help achieve a general understanding of pet feeding practices in Sri Lanka and gain some basic demographic information on the owned dog population. The study was conducted via questionnaires distributed to pet owners visiting a first opinion and referral practice in Colombo. Hundred questionnaires were collected and analysed, 69% of study dogs were neutered, 42% of dogs were fed only home‐cooked food, while 18% were fed only commercial food. About 40% of dogs were fed a mixture of commercial and home‐cooked food, 49% of dogs were fed milk as a separate meal in addition to their normal diet and 57% of dogs received dietary supplements. Dogs consuming commercial food for more than half their intake were no less likely (P = 0.75) to receive dietary supplements than dogs fed homemade food for more than half their diet. This study provides some basic information regarding the feeding practices and demographics of the owned dog population in one Sri Lankan city, Colombo, highlighting some areas of concern.
Keywords: homemade diets, nutrition, Sri Lanka
Surveillance systems for rabies in endemic regions are often subject to severe constraints in terms of resources. The World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE) and the World Health Organisation (WHO) propose the use of an active surveillance system to substantiate claims of disease freedom, including rabies. However, many countries do not have the resources to establish active surveillance systems for rabies and the testing of dead dogs poses logistical challenges. This paper explores the potential of using a scenario tree model parameterised with data collected via questionnaires and interviews to estimate the sensitivity of passive surveillance, assessing its potential as a viable low-cost alternative to active surveillance systems. The results of this explorative study illustrated that given a large enough sample size, in this case the entire population of Colombo City, the sensitivity of passive surveillance can be 100% even at a low disease prevalence (0.1%), despite the low sensitivity of individual surveillance components (mean values in the range 4.077 × 10−5 − 1.834 × 10−3 at 1% prevalence). In addition, logistic regression was used to identify factors associated with increased recognition of rabies in dogs and reporting of rabies suspect dogs. Increased recognition was observed amongst dog owners (OR 3.8 (CI, 1.3–10.8)), people previously bitten by dogs (OR 5.9 (CI, 2.2–15.9)) and people who believed they had seen suspect dogs in the past (OR 4.7 (CI, 1.8–12.9)). Increased likelihood of reporting suspect dogs was observed amongst dog owners (OR 5.3 (CI, 1.1–25)). Further work is required to validate the data collection tool and the assumptions made in the model with respect to sample size in order to develop a robust methodology for evaluating passive rabies surveillance.