At our vet school, in the last term of their third year, vet students spend three weeks participating in "junior clinics." They are intended to prepare us for the real thing, our fourth-year clinical rotations that will begin in just a few short weeks. Not all schools arrange this, and it is an amazing feat of scheduling on the part of the faculty, but as I am finishing up the last of my three junior clinics, I have to say that I feel so much more prepared for what I will be facing in June.
The fourth year of all vet med programs is spent in clinical rotations: one- to four-week rotations in different parts of the hospital such as cardiology, large animal medicine, and anesthesia. I have chosen to pursue a "general" track (my other options were large animal, small animal, and non-traditional). None of the choices will directly help me pursue a career in poultry medicine, but the general track will give me the most well-rounded perspective. I will be getting my poulty-specific education during my preceptorships and internships (students have to arrange those on their own, and that's a whole 'nother blog post in itself).
Back to the junior clinics. I was assigned cardiology (mostly small animal), large animal medicine, and RVP (rural veterinary practice). The junior clinics only approximate the real thing. We only spend five mornings with each of our assigned areas. But if you get lucky, those five mornings can be jam-packed!
I am surprised to tell you that, despite my suburban upbringing, I am much more comfortable with cows and goats than I am with dogs and cats. On Monday, I helped perform physical exams on two 10-day old pygmy-Nubian cross goats and then supported one while it was sedated and debudded (the specialized cells that grow horn were removed from its head). They were the size of small cats, and just as cute as they could be.
I spent several hours yesterday doing pregnancy checks on dairy cows. Pregnancy checks are done via rectal palpation. You usually have to empty a fair bit of poop from the cow's colon first, and no matter how careful you are, you get poop all over you. And some of them like to pee on you as well. Preg checking is a messy undertaking. You always make sure to wear decent clothing under your coveralls because nobody will let you back in the vehicles covered with that much poop. When I was able to correctly diagnose not just a pregnancy but in which uterine horn the fetus was located, it felt like a major achievement. Our instructors always check our "work" via palpation or ultrasound, so no management decisions are made solely on the say-so of a student. It's an amazing learning opportunity.
Today I spent a couple of hours putting special ear tags onto dairy heifers who had been vaccinated against Brucella abortus, a bacterial disease that can cause abortion in cows and make people very sick as well as cause abortions in women. People usually get exposed by consuming unpasteurized milk or cheese. The vet, the fourth-year student, and I divided that task up--vaxxing 51 heifers--and made it into no work at all. The vet administered the vaccines (not that we students couldn't have done the poking but it was a bit of a safety issue--it is a modified live vaccine and an accidental needle stick could have made us very sick, plus annoyed lots of people because of the reams of paperwork that would have had to be completed), the fourth-year put in an ear tattoo, and I finished up with the bright orange metal tag (ear tags are great but can easily get pulled out and lost; tattoos are permanent but impossible to see from a distance; redundancy is the goal here). Oregon has a surveillance and eradication program for this particular pathogen, and keeps tight records on vaccinations and outbreaks. Our work today will end up in state and federal databases in a few days.
As we were working our way down the narrow aisle of heifers with their heads locked into stanchions, we had to climb over mounds of feed that were piled in front of them. The cows were constantly sniffing us, licking us, and nibbling at our coveralls. I was covered in cow slobber from waist down. They were very curious!
I know that some of my classmates shudder at the thought of having to touch anything other than a dog or cat. But I think herd medicine is fascinating! The vaccine we were giving to the heifers protects both them and us from a really serious pathogen. It is a perfect combination of production animal medicine and public health. That's the kind of vet med I want to be involved in.
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