Summer 2011: This summer was the second go-around with the Student Jobs Program. I stayed on throughout the year with my hospital and was able to work throughout school and improve even more on my clinical skills. However, this summer my plans were to gain much more surgery experience and get more comfortable utilizing tools that a veterinarian uses every day, such as the ophthalmoscope and otoscope. Unfortunately, the doctor that I had previously worked closely with was activated by the Army Reserves and was deployed to South Africa for 6 months. The new veterinarian was not authorized to do surgeries solo yet, so we were only performing surgeries and dentals 2-3 times a week. While this put a wrench in my original plans for the summer, it allowed me to gain a different perspective from a veterinarian that had graduated just the previous year from a different school. In addition, she was also very interested in exotic medicine, which enabled me to learn more about working with exotic animals. Furthermore, since we had rotating “second doctors” on surgery days, it enabled me to work with many different veterinarians, such as an emergency doctor and a seasoned doctor that has been practicing for over 20 years. This allowed me to not only gain a perspective from different veterinary college educations, but also taught me to be more versatile to different styles of veterinary medicine, which will aid me immensely once I enter clinics in January.
While I had hoped to gain more surgical practice this summer, the quality of the surgical experiences outweighted the quantity immensely. For example, I was able to watch a pyometra surgery and learned how to work with the differences in anatomy and surgical approach. In addition, we also had an emergency forelimb amputation that I was fortunate enough to scrub in and assist. I also was able to view a preventive gastropexy, which I wanted to see for a very long time. Finally, my hospital allowed me to do many of the dental cleanings that we had over the summer. I am very interested in dentistry and desired to gain as much experience as possible since our education is extremely limited in the dental field. I was still able to assist and perform parts of some routine spays and neuters; thus I was able to get some practice in before my surgery class this semester. Although I had hoped to practice my own surgical skills more this summer, I was very pleased with the educational experience of assisting on the less-than-routine procedures and dental cleanings this summer. I learned so much more this summer and I cannot wait to enter clinics in January to utilize all of my preparation and knowledge gained from my experiences.