I just completed the third of my "big four" clinical rotations: large animal medicine. I finished large animal surgery and small animal surgery back-to-back (that was it's own special kind of hell in a year of hell) in November-December. I've still got small animal medicine to get through, and start it in three weeks.
Large animal medicine, the clinical rotation, trips up just as many people as large animal medicine, the third-year lecture series. Two classmates failed at least one term of third-year lecture and will have to repeat that. And at least two of my classmates will have to repeat the rotation. All four weeks of it, not just a makeup day or two. I was holding 'bated breath all morning waiting for my evaluation to roll in. It was fair, quite fair, and I got a score of 86 out of 100. I am not perfect in my skills but I tried really hard. I also had some challenging patients.
Large animal medicine is for the most part an emergency service and that means we see lots of very sick animals. During my first two weeks, I euthanized 75% of my patients. During the second week, I (and my patients) had better luck, and my overall death rate for the four weeks ended up being 38%. And before you get hasty and wonder what kind of janky care we are providing, know that it's often not our care that makes the difference. Sometimes animals come in that are just too sick to save. The best option is euthanasia.
One of the interesting aspects of large animal medicine is the sheer variety of species we see: goats, sheep, pigs (lots and lots of pigs), camelids, horses, bovines, mini donkeys...and they have an amazing array of ailments that range from the mundane (bacterial ear infection in a goat) to the dire (chronic liver failure in a horse, prognosis of days to live). The diagnostic tools and the pharmacopia used in large animal medicine are quite diverse as well. Dogs and cats will look pretty boring after this past month!
The other thing about the large animal medicine rotation is the hours. I put in around 63 to 78 hours per week at the hospital (I know, I had to track it). It is exhausting.
We had a bit of a scare two weeks ago when a calf one of my classmates was treating came up positive for the protozoa cryptosporidium. Very infectious, very contagious, very zoonotic. The rate of handwashing jumped up exponentially as soon as we got the news! This week is about the time when we will start showing symptoms if we got infected so there's been a bit of texting amongst the group to make sure everyone is still okay.
I now have a bit of time off from clinical rotations. I'd like to spend it sleeping but tomorrow I get on a plane and head off for three job interviews. I had yet another phone interview just this morning that was encouraging so there may be more site visits in the future. I'd really just like to settle the matter, get an offer and a contract, think about it for a few days, then sign it and be done. Knowing where I will end up when June rolls around would reduce my stress significantly.
