A recent weekend at home comprised a much-needed rest and time spent with my family – which, of course, includes the animals.
Tom, my moggie farm-born cat (who is far more scared of any potential prey than it would be of him, so doesn’t really live up to his farm origins), has an allergic skin condition that usually gets worse during the winter months. However, his most recent flare-up was worse than usual, so I took him to the practice I undertook EMS with over the summer and found myself on the other side of the consult table – as the client.
Having primarily taken him in for his skin, the vet prescribed a short course of corticosteriods to reduce the itching, as I had anticipated.
However, upon physical examination, it was discovered that Tom had lost weight and had a 3/5 heart murmur.
It wasn’t until the vet said she could possibly feel a thyroid nodule that the penny dropped – at home Tom continuously cries for food and has a constantly “on edge” demeanour (he’s practically scared of his own shadow).
This, along with him being an older cat (14 years old), makes for an almost textbook case of hyperthyroidism – so we decided to monitor his weight over the next couple of months and take T4 blood tests if he continues to show a loss.
I felt a bit guilty for not realising thyroid could be at play. However, Tom has always cried for food, so I’d never noticed a particular increase in that behaviour – nor had I realised he’d lost condition. Hopefully, this is not because I’m a poor excuse for a vet student, but because gradual changes can easily go unnoticed, which underlines the importance of recording figures for parameters such as weight.
It can be easy to become frustrated with clients who don’t notice these sorts of things, or omit information that could be vital but they might consider irrelevant. But, having now experienced this myself while understanding the position of both the vet and the client, I think I’ll be able to sympathise much more in the future.
When you apply to vet school, there are certain boxes you have to tick: achieve the right A-Levels (or Advanced Highers), complete a number of weeks of work experience, and pass that dreaded interview.
What nobody tells you, however, is that being a vet student requires a number of other skills that seemingly have nothing to do with the veterinary profession.
Star Baker
After completing a week of EMS at a vet practice, there is the unspoken expectation that you should produce some form of teeth-rotting goodness as a thank you. Your vets would probably appreciate a box of Celebrations, but they’re going to be far more impressed if you turn out to be harbouring secret Mary Berry-esque talents.
Not only that, many clubs and societies use baked goodies to lure in new members, and some vet schools even host an anatomy themed bake off, for which the more exceptional entries often leave us questioning whether their creators are in the right profession.
Salesperson Extraordinaire
Fundraising is a common theme at vet school, whether it’s for a charity event, to reduce the ticket price of halfway ball or for a veterinary society to hold a practical session.
Getting fellow students to part with their hard-earned cash can be more difficult than you’d expect, but persuasion is a great skill to develop, especially when you may find yourself moving on to trying to entice large pharmaceutical companies to sponsor a much bigger event.
Perseverance (or rather bugging people on Facebook and through emails) can really pay off.
Catwalk Designer
Jordan (far left) and the other Glasgow Gnomes prepare for the AVS sports weekend.
Vet students are notorious for their love of fancy dress. Perhaps the results aren’t quite what you’d expect to see on the cover of Vogue, but it is astonishing what we can whip up out of nothing in five minutes flat (or perhaps three hours that may have been better dedicated to studying).
Movie characters, gnomes, circus, thrift shop, “anything but clothes”… There hasn’t been a theme that has baffled us yet.
Rally Driver
We may not all be the next Sébastien Loeb or Lewis Hamilton, but driving is a pretty important skill. Granted, not every vet student holds a licence, but those that do find it a lot easier to get to the numerous EMS placements we have to fulfil during our time at vet school.
Many of us have other attributes from being sporty or musical, to being a fluent multi-linguist or technology whizz. These may stem from trying to boost our personal statements prior to applying for vet school or could just be personality traits.
However, if you don’t enter vet school as a “well-rounded” person, you’ll certainly come out as one.
Argentinian Tango dance duo German Cornejo and Gisela Galeassi. Image: Fuentes/Fernandez
Before the full force of third year hit, the first week back at vet school started with everyone catching up on tales from their summer holidays.
Before long, it was like we’d never left and the four months of freedom seemed to fade into a distant memory. However, one particular topic of holiday gossip that I have been dwelling on is extramural studies (EMS).
Everyone had undertaken some form of EMS over the summer, whether it was just a week or two, a solid two months, clinical, preclinical, large or small animal – there is a lot of room for variation in our placements, but I was still surprised to hear of how different some of my friends’ experiences had been, despite doing theoretically similar placements.
A number of us had embarked on our first clinical placements, and although we’re all at the same stage of our studies and therefore should be able to get involved during veterinary placements to a similar extent, the truth is somewhat different.
Just among my friends, there were experience levels at both ends of the scale, with some students having been simply told to observe consultations and others being allowed to scrub into surgical procedures.
This wide range of experiences can be attributed to many factors, including:
the veterinary practice
how well the vet knows the student (either from previous experience or length of placement)
how well the staff have judged the student’s knowledge and ability based on stage of the veterinary course
attitude and competency of the vet
the individual student’s skills, experience and attitude
I was advised by a final year student last year to undertake the majority of my clinical EMS at one single practice if possible, because by getting to know the vets well (and vice versa), they’ll be able to judge your level of competency better and encourage you to get more involved. I can now begin to appreciate this advice more, having listened to the anecdotes from my friends.
The practical teaching we receive at vet school is just not enough to be able to adequately develop and refine essential clinical skills that will be needed everyday in general veterinary practice. The solution to this is EMS, and we are constantly being told that we, as students, need to take responsibility for our own learning and ensure that we get the most out of EMS by getting involved. And I whole-heartedly agree – we can’t be spoon-fed forever and need to be proactive in gaining the right type of experience.
However, you could be the most enthusiast student in the world and read up on cases every night, and yet still be very limited in what you are allowed to do. While getting the most out of a placement is up to us, it takes two to tango, and we need the vets’ support too in order to enable us to do this.
I know taking on students and teaching or letting them practice techniques can be time-consuming and inconvenient, but we need to gain experience somehow. At some point during their training, all vets would have had to see practice and learn in the same way, so is it not just a way of giving back to the profession?
I can also appreciate that some people are just not natural teachers (after all we’re training to work in a vet clinic, not a school), but a little bit of patience and some advice can go a whole lot further than just ignoring a student.
It may sometimes be inappropriate for a student to be asking questions or trying things out – in the consultation room in front of the client, for example – but these situations can be fine when approached the right way. I was lucky enough to stand in with vets that would always try and get me to see/hear/feel things. If they found something interesting in the consultation room, they’d always explain to the client that I was a student and ask if they minded me having a look. This seems far more reasonable to me than telling a student they are to observe only.
Another approach I experienced myself was the vet taking the animal to the surgery room to take blood samples and allowing me to perform my own clinical examination (having not actually been in the original consultation).
As mentioned previously, there can be many factors involved in getting a “good” clinical placement. It also depends how busy the surgery is – if there are four clients waiting to see the same vet, it’s understandable for the vet to whizz through them without having much time for questions or explanations (whenever this happened to me, the vet apologised for not explaining, even though she really didn’t need to!).
I have to agree there are advantages to going back to a veterinary practice you know. I did work experience for three years before university at the practice I did my EMS at this summer, and definitely felt welcomed as part of the team, which can be difficult at an entirely new practice.
Yes, it is our responsibility to find the balance between getting involved to gain experience and not interfering with consults, but we also need vets to help us a bit too. Undertaking EMS is the only way we will prepare ourselves for the future, and we’re extremely grateful for the vets that encourage and help us every step of the way (partly why most vet students are pretty good at baking). I think it’s just a case of finding the right practice for both you and the vets you’ll be learning from.
Vet school doesn’t prepare you for making a complete idiot out of yourself.
At vet school, you learn some basic clinical skills and are taught how to conduct a general clinical examination to prepare you for EMS placements in veterinary surgeries. What they don’t prepare you for is making a complete idiot out of yourself.
Before my first clinical placement I told the vets I would be working with that I had only just finished second year and had no pharmacological knowledge as of yet, non-existent surgical experience and very little understanding of small animal medicine in general.
Luckily, all the vets in the practice were very good at judging the level of my understanding and seemed to find the right balance between patience and pushing me for answers.
Things seemed to be going OK. I’d successfully taken blood samples and started to make sense of abdominal palpation. However, applying clinical skills taught at vet school isn’t necessarily straightforward – cadavers have a distinct lack of weapons in the form of claws and teeth, but I was coping with that reasonably well and taking note of the vets’ advice on particular techniques.
This was until a few days in, when I found myself working with the head vet…
In the same morning, I managed to spray penicillin all over my face while trying to administer an injection, incorrectly insert an endotracheal tube despite being 99% sure it was OK, and cover myself in guinea-pig blood while clipping nails, leaving me to wear the stained tabard for the rest of the day.
To add insult to injury, I later misread the scales and recited the incorrect weight without thinking (it didn’t occur to me that there’s no way a fully grown border collie could weigh 10kg).
Isolated, these incidents might not seem like the end of the world, but when they all happen in the same day in front of the head vet and when one of the clients involved is your neighbour, you do feel like shouting “I am a vet student – honest”, despite feeling like a complete moron.
This was, however, followed by days of mini-triumph, such as inserting an IV catheter correctly for the first time or scaling and polishing a dog’s teeth myself.
The important thing to remember is that you are inexperienced, and you just have to accept there will be days when nothing seems to go your way, get past them and carry on with your head held high – even if it is covered in yellow spots of penicillin.
A couple of articles have been brought to my attention this week regarding the public perception of vets versus the reality.
When somebody finds out that you want to be a vet or are studying veterinary medicine, there are a few arduous questions that usually follow:
“Is it seven years at university for that?”
“It’s hard to get into isn’t it?”
And, of course:
“Well, vets earn loads of money don’t they?”
Unfortunately, only one of those three assumptions is true. However, those detached from the veterinary world still uphold the perception that vets are rich and set high prices to rip off the unsuspecting public. What these people don’t understand is that a new veterinary graduate can expect to start on a salary of around £20k while working all living hours of the day, plus being on call.
While each individual job varies, the reality is that we can expect to earn very little considering the length of intense training required and the high levels of stress and responsibility that come with the job.
With experience and promotion to more superior roles – such as becoming a partner in a practice – the salary will increase, but often to less than half the average wage of a GP doctor. In general, vets accept this and are highly dedicated to the health of the animal they work with. If they were after a high salary, they’d be better off in a different career field entirely.
But the public can’t be entirely blamed for their own ignorance – I think a lot of the problem lies with the National Health Service…
“There is no NHS for pets, and I think many people would do well to remember this.”
We are blessed with a “free” health service in the UK, but this means those of us outwith the field of human medicine have very little understanding of how much treatments, operations or drugs cost.
Perhaps if people knew how much these things would cost if they had to fund them privately, they’d have a greater appreciation of both the NHS itself and the veterinary care they pay for for their animals. After all, there is no NHS for pets, and I think many people would do well to remember this.
My American friends tell me that clients in the US do seem to have a more grounded understanding of the cost of healthcare and are able to apply this to veterinary care without quite so much complaining.
It’s also worth noting that the money people spend on their animals’ treatments does not go directly into the pocket of the surgeon, but contributes to the cost of anything required for the procedure, including medication, electricity, needles and syringes, catheters, x-ray plates, bedding, food, anaesthetic, licensing… this list goes on – and somewhere at the bottom of that list sit the wages of the hardworking and dedicated vet, who often only receives a grumbling about the expense in “thanks”.
On a recent EMS placement at a small animal veterinary surgery, I witnessed a lot of this grumbling, and sometimes even full blown arguments about cost. Luckily it’s the few clients that are truly grateful and would do anything for their animals that make it all worth it.
I find it highly offensive and disrespectful when I hear remarks that vets are “only in it for the money” because, if that were true, then we are not as intelligent as our education might suggest.
In November, Glasgow descended on Liverpool as zombies for an alcohol-fuelled weekend of “sport”.
Having endured the wait for results, I can officially say I’ve passed my second year at vet school, and reflect on another crazy twelve months of life as a Glasgow vet student.
A vet is a unique type of student – despite having a crammed uni timetable we all manage to fill our “spare” time with a mountain of other activities. Not only that, but the close-knit circle of vet students at each individual school and the wider community across the schools in the UK and Ireland is something that is particularly characteristic to vet students.
In November, Glasgow descended on Liverpool as zombies for an alcohol-fuelled weekend of “sport”. Shortly after, however, the Glasgow vet sports teams focused their attention on the far more serious matter of “Dick Day”, the sports day against Edinburgh.
January brought my first experience of Association of Veterinary Students’ Congress, which was a great weekend of helpful practicals and talks. Here, the AVS elections opened, in which I was running for the editor position of JAVS (the vet student magazine).
Jordan gets her hands dirty during IVSA SpringBreak.
In March, I jumped on a plane to Germany to undertake foaling EMS at a thoroughbred stud yard, which was incredible and well worth the travel. Along with having an enthusiastic vet and yard manager (who were both keen for me to learn) I was also given the opportunity to return in the summer for yearling preparation.
After a year of meetings, emails and phone calls, the group of friends that had formed the Rodeo Committee finally pulled off a fantastic charity event for the public, despite battling the typical Scottish weather. It was a marathon effort for everyone involved, but worth it to see families having fun on the day, and succeeding in raising £16,000 for our chosen animal charities.
During the Rodeo aftermath, our exams hit, and the entire vet school population turned into library hermits. But after two weeks of red bull, little sleep and aching writing hands, we were free.
Shortly after, I ventured abroad once again, this time to Naples, Italy, as part of an IVSA (International Veterinary Student Association) trip. In addition to the interesting and unusual practicals and lectures, I met a variety of vet students from various countries and learned far more about veterinary in different cultures.
Having competed with the university riding team all year, I then found myself at the BUCS (British University and College Sport) Riding Championships with my teammates.
After three days of dressage and style jumping, our team was placed second in our league – a fantastic result for our club!
It’s been a busy year, and although exam results may suggest it’s now over, my summer has other ideas.
Missing her cats, Jordan ponders the feasibility of owning a pet while at university.
I’ve always had cats at home, and they often played the role of revision buddy/lap warmer. That was one of the things I missed most when I first went to university.
Pets aren’t allowed in student halls, but now that I live in a flat with other vet students, pet ownership becomes a possibility (landlord permitting).
As a student, I meticulously budget in order to ensure I eat well, am able to enjoy myself and get some travelling in without blowing all of my cash the first week that student loan comes in. But even with this amount of planning, could I find some spare to pay to feed a cat as well as myself? Probably. Could I find the money if something went wrong, if said cat needed lifetime insulin or thyroxine treatment or broke a limb in a road traffic accident? Probably not.
Pet insurance would extinguish the worry surrounding the “what ifs”, and I do know other students with pets that are insured. Even then, premiums that cover long-term conditions come at a fair price, and I wouldn’t want to find myself in a financial position forcing me to cancel insurance and risk my pet requiring costly treatment.
Money is not the only commitment that you make to a pet though. The other major consideration is time – although this is more of a concern with dogs, which require a greater time commitment than cats.
I often feel that owning a dog would be excellent stress relief, but as idillic as dog walking seems, could I commit several hours a day, every day, including around exam time?
Even if I could commit the time while I’m around, I know that I don’t stay permanently in one place. For the majority of the time I’m in Glasgow, but during the holidays I’m at home (Leicestershire), on EMS or travelling. Who would look after the pet then? Since I live with vets, they have similarly busy lifestyles and it would be unfair to expect them to pet-sit while I’m away.
And what would happen when I graduate? I don’t know where I’ll be living, where my first job might take me, or whether it will be feasible to take a pet along for the ride.
An alternative to pet owning is fostering. The Glasgow branch of Cats Protection has recently advertised their fostering service to vet students at Glasgow. The fostering scheme encourages taking on a cat, with bedding, litter and food provided. They will provide all veterinary care and will even take back the cats if you go on holiday.
I think fostering is a great way of caring for cats without a lot of the concerns outlined above, and perhaps the only option I’d consider while at university with regards to pets. As much as I’d love to own a pet in Glasgow, I think it would be unfair on the animal if I could not offer the money and time to give it a great quality if life.
It’s unfortunate that many people do not undertake greater consideration when deciding to own a pet. Perhaps many of the day-to-day ethical issues faced in practice could be avoided if they did.
It’s that dreaded time of year again: end of year professional exams.
Having already completed our OSCEs (practical clinical exams), we now have the written exams to “look forward to”. Stress levels at vet school are sky high at the moment, and while my immediate concern is also the fast approaching exams, I have a more long-term concern playing on my mind: how reflective are the exams of our veterinary knowledge, really?
Some people can do exams and some just can’t handle the pressure. I am definitely the sort of person that can cram for an exam and then forget the majority of what I’ve learned as soon as I walk out of the exam room – I think this stems from riding and having to learn four show jumping courses a day, then immediately erasing the route of the first from memory so as to not mix it up with the next.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a complete last minute crammer – I have been working towards these exams for the best part of the last six weeks and hope I won’t forget everything immediately, but I know I can’t remember every detail from first year now. So how am I possibly going to retain everything I will need to know as a practising vet?
I have some small animal clinical EMS lined up this summer, and the staff at the practice are well aware that I’m only just finishing second year, so they won’t be expecting me to have expert knowledge on every drug in their cabinet or be a masterful surgeon. However, if I’m shown an radiograph of a limb, from first year anatomy, I should know what I’m looking at… but will I?
I suppose this reinforces the critical importance of EMS in supplementing our knowledge and allowing us to apply it in a practical situation. I can certainly appreciate the retention value of things I’ve seen or done on placements already – even from before vet school.
My first work experience placement at a vets was with a farm practice when I was 15. I remember being very cold while spending three hours pregnancy diagnosing dairy cows in February. But I also remember the three methods of correcting a left displaced abomasum that I saw that week and the unforgettable diagnostic “ping” heard through the stethoscope.
One of our practical exams last week involved the clinical examination of rumen function in the cow, and required that same diagnostic test. At this level, we were given healthy cows, and many of my friends were unaware of what exactly they were listening for. But I’m certain that even now, six years later, if I heard that ping, I’d know what it was.
Perhaps this just means that personally, I’m a practical learner – but being a vet will be a practical job, and the truth is, you can’t learn everything out of a book… and you can’t test long term retention by sitting a written exam.
The real test of whether I’ve remembered first year knowledge will be when vets start quizzing me in context.
The vet handed me the needle and vacuum tubes and, at the slightly bewildered look on my face, asked if I’d ever taken blood from a horse before. Upon my answer of “no”, he shrugged and said: “I’ll show you the first one, instruct you for the second, then you can do it by yourself.”
Having started at 8am on my first morning, he had me taking blood samples from broodmares used to produce top class racehorses by 8:05 – not something I would expect to be allowed to do as a second year vet student anywhere in England.
I spent the rest of that morning with Neils, the vet, driving to different yards and observing while he performed rectal ultrasound scans on mares, assessed an ongoing case of RAO (Recurrent Airway Obstruction) and extracted a tooth from a very old and very hairy pony, alternating between being utterly flummoxed by his exchange of German conversion with clients and him then explaining things to me in perfect English. I then returned to the stud yard I was based at (between Hannover and Hamburg) to groom, feed and bring in the mares.
Although I was technically supposed to be on pre-clinical EMS at the stud, Neils was eager for me to learn from him, in addition to the more husbandry-based experience I was gaining from being on the yard. Some days were spent entirely on the yard, and others were spent partially with him, gaining bonus clinical experience. Neils was a “one-man-band”, running a mobile equine practice by himself – an alien concept, compared to the practice based vets that are the norm at home.
About halfway through my first week, I spent an entire day with Neils and, having watched him scan (via rectum) more mares than I could count, he decided there were a few safe candidates for me to try my hand on (or, rather, arm in). After a few minutes of fumbling around, I managed to orientate myself and understood far more clearly what the grey and black mush on the ultrasound screen represented.
We then went on to x-ray a horse with a fractured radius and I assisted in applying its Robert Jones bandage. I took a few more blood samples and we called at other horses to drop off medication, vaccinate, assess lameness and rasp some teeth.
I felt like I’d had a taste of what it would be like to be a qualified vet – not from the practical and clinical things I got to see and do that day, but from the 14 hour day, having had nothing but a Creme Egg to eat and not stopping for breath…
However, arriving back to the yard that evening just after the arrival of a new foal made it worth every second. Between them, Neils and the yard manager explained everything that was done and needed to be done just after a foaling; we examined the afterbirth to ensure none had been retained, assisted the foal while it began to suckle and kept an eye on both the mare and foal for the next few hours.
The end of my two weeks in Germany came around all too soon and was quite sorry to have to leave. I was taken aback by their hands-on attitude and desire for me to get as much out of my placement as possible, and not just be another pair of hands for mucking out.
The generosity I experienced from everyone I worked with is something I’m extremely grateful for, and will never forget.
Vegetarianism can be quite the controversial topic, with many people choosing not to eat meat or particular types of meat for varying reasons – be that moral, financial or simply down to taste and preference.
But how should I stand on the matter, from the point of view of a vet student?
While on EMS, I’ve been met with differing opinions. At my lambing placement, the farmer’s mother just could not understand why anyone would be vegetarian and believed that we especially – as future vets – should not even entertain the idea. In stark contrast, the farmer and his family at my dairy placement were quite surprised when I told them that I eat all types of meat, and claimed that every previous vet student they’d had was vegetarian.
These views may simply arise from generation differences, with older generations still firmly sticking to the “you get what you’re given” attitude. But is it more than that? Are we, as vet students, expected to have an opinion one way or the other?
Vets contribute massively to the meat industry; they need to be present in abattoirs, and the aim of farm vets is to keep the industry going. On a day-to-day basis the farm vet is likely to undertake routine tasks (TB testing, pregnancy diagnosis or the occasional caesarian or surgical correction of a displaced abomasum), but if you look at the bigger picture, these all contribute to helping the meat and dairy industries run smoothly. The farm vet also plays a vital role in advising on improving production and maintaining high welfare standards in order to produce the optimum quality and quantities of meat.
So, if a farm vet spends their life oiling the cogs in the meat industry, surely it’s entirely counter productive to be vegetarian?
Of course, there is the moral argument against using animals for meat. But, as ambassadors for animal welfare, should vets sit on this side of the fence?
There is the opinion that any type of farming instigates cruelty and unnatural methods of some degree, and that, as vets, we should not stand for this. Dedicated to ensuring good welfare of all species, we, of all people, cannot turn a blind eye because we are faced with the reality of what goes on behind the scenes of the meat industry.
But we are not vets yet. And how much of the “student” in us dictates our diet, whether we like it or not? The hard truth is that meat is expensive to the average student, and a lot of us subconsciously undertake the decision to eat very little meat purely due to finances.
Is this how vets should be expected to think?
While I respect other people’s decisions to become vegetarian, I could never do it. Since we have a pig farm in the family, meat eating has always been a way of life, not a choice – not that I genuinely think I’d be forced to eat meat if I didn’t want to, but vegetarianism is just “not done” in our family (and I always get packed off to uni with enough home-produce to last me the semester).
As for seeing “behind the scenes” of the meat industry, I have very strong opinions on farming, and the reasoning behind methods and techniques that may be deemed as “cruel” to the outsider. These views stem from my farming background, and the ignorance of non-farming folk often frustrates me.
While vets have a much deeper insight into the meat industry than the general public, I’m not convinced that this has a particular effect on our choice in being vegetarian or not – and I don’t think being a vet student changes your opinion in one direction or the other.
However, I do believe that if someone genuinely had very strong objections towards the meat industry, they would find a veterinary course very difficult to handle morally. Even if you’re set on purely becoming a small animal vet, we all get immersed in the meat industry to some extent.
![It can be easy to become frustrated with clients who omit information that could be vital [...], but I think I’ll be able to sympathise much more in the future.](http://www.vettimes.co.uk/app/uploads/2014/11/3f8a6b19-9a0d-4ddb-8fb0-98761ecaeeab.jpg)
I felt a bit guilty for not realising thyroid could be at play. However, Tom has always cried for food, so I’d never noticed a particular increase in that behaviour – nor had I realised he’d lost condition. Hopefully, this is not because I’m a poor excuse for a vet student, but because gradual changes can easily go unnoticed, which underlines the importance of recording figures for parameters such as weight.
