I Need A Mentor

After 5 years at vet school it’s safe to say I’m pretty good at being a vet student. Not to brag or anything, but I have mastered the art of both standing behind a vet in a consult nodding along silently, AND staying up all night to cram assignments. I’ve been doing this for the entirety of my adult life – I don’t need help with it.

When I graduate, that situation is going to change completely. Instead of suggesting plans and discussing cases with a vet before the animal gets treatment I’ll be the person who makes those decisions. I’ll be the one making the final call on which antibiotic and painkiller to use, and I’ll be the one who has the responsibility of letting loving pet owners know the bad news about their sick animals. I’ll be the one alone at 3 in the morning arm-deep in a cow before getting up at 6 AM to start my regular workday. I’ll also be the one with responsibility for the safety of my patient under anaesthetic while I perform surgery on it. Although I, and every other vet student, have been training for this for years, and have had plenty of experience doing surgery, treating animals, and talking with owners there’s a big difference between doing it as a student, and doing it as a new graduate vet. As a student we have support and supervision, and the decisions rest in the hands of the vet in charge – if we stuff up, it is their responsibility to fix it. It’s a safety net in case we fall, and it lets us develop our skills and prepare us for doing it on our own.

Staying Positive

This week I sent a puppy back home with her owners. Happy and boisterous, there was no sign of the virus which had ripped through her body and left her on deaths door less than a week before. The smile on her owners face was only slightly less enthusiastic than the wagging tail and tugging on the lead as I walked her to the front of the clinic. It was a great experience to have a happy ending after the hard work I’d put into nursing and caring for her over the previous days. Quite simply, it made my day.

The same day I checked the messages sent to me on my tumblr and got one from a biology major asking me if vet school was worth the stress. It’s a good question, vet school is tough, anybody who has done any searching online knows that. There’s no shortage of blogs and posts on social media about the sleepless nights, tough classes, and emotional challenges. I’ve posted my fair share. The question made me think about the perception that people looking in to veterinary medicine as a career have about being a vet, and the message we are putting out about our profession.

Articles about the high rates of suicide, burnout, and compassion fatigue are important, engaging, and fiercely relatable for veterinarians. It’s a reality of the profession that there are serious lows. It’s important that we talk about those things and establish a healthy dialogue so that we can support each other. But for each of those deep dark lows, there are also cloud-tipped highs.

The Husbandry and Feeding of Veterinarians (for new owners)

These tips are a how-to of surviving the highs and lows of sharing your life with a vet.

Read closely and heed the advice – it will serve you well if you’re one of the wonderful people who support us in our crazy, smelly, stressful careers.

Claws Carefully Sheathed

Congratulations on your new relationship! Partnering with a veterinarian is not without its challenges, but with some care and effort you can make things work. Here are a few pointers to help you maximize the bond with your veterinarian.

1. Veterinarians are omnivores – unless they are vegetarians. You’ll have to figure out which type you have. Start out by offering a nice mid-rare steak. If your veterinarian looks ineffably sad and turns away, you have a vegetarian. Eat the steak yourself and turn on fans to vent the smell of cooked flesh, then offer your veterinarian a nice pasta or salad.

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Supermarket Pet Products

It is my personal and (soon to be) professional opinion that veterinarians should be the go-to people for pet advice, and yes, that advice does extend to the products that you buy for your pets.

Chew toys that are unsuitable and become life-threatening obstructions, or choke collars which are used incorrectly by people wanting an easy fix to their pulling dog are examples of when supermarket-aisle pet products go wrong. Todays post isn’t exploring those issues, or many others. In this post I just want to share a few gripes that I came across in checking out the parasite control medications available. I am currently studying parasitology, so this definitely counts as study… just so that’s clear.

The first issue that I came across was this:

How to Survive Becoming a Vet

A few weeks ago I was asked to give a speech to first year students and their families at a dinner to celebrate the beginning of their course and the long journey ahead. This is that speech: It’s a long read, but I think it includes some important points and advice for people at the start of their university career. I’m nearly at the end of mine, and it’s been the adventure of a lifetime.

I only had time to do a full read-through once, so the speech was as nearly as new to me as the people I was sharing it with

It’s important to realise how fortunate you are all to be here. For many of you this has been a dream since you were old enough to hold a plastic stethoscope up to your cat, which probably wanted nothing to do with it. But the good news is that this is just the start of the adventure. When I was finishing high school I was told time and time again that I would never have as many options as I did then – “The world was my oyster” I was told. But I’ve never had as many opportunities as I have had since my very first day of Vet Science.

While I’ve been at CSU I’ve been able to travel the world, travelling to India and Pakistan on veterinary placements, and I’ve travelled Australia from Queensland cattle stations to conferences in Perth. As vets you will get the chance to help animals, and people – you’ll save the lives of animals and help farmers to put food on the table for their families. Whatever you go into, it’s a career of constant challenge and change. But before you get to that there’s vet school to get through first.

For many of you, vet school will be the biggest adventure of your life. By the time you leave here it’ll be the longest thing some of you have ever done. 5 and a half years – over half a decade, and as you will hear again and again, that IS as long as it takes to be a ‘real’ doctor…

Spey/Neuter in India

As I write this I am sitting in an airport; I’m sleep deprived and craving the creature comforts of home that I’ve been missing… namely a warm shower – something I haven’t had in over a month. This is because I’ve been In Tamil Nadu, India, developing my surgery skills as a part of animal birth control (ABC) charity work on behalf of the Worldwide Veterinary Service (WVS). For people who are involved in ABC work already through any number of organisations (Vets Beyond Borders and AMRRIC to name a couple) what I am about to share will likely be very familiar. This is what a spey/neuter project in India is like:

My Story

I recently had to fill out a scholarship application which asked the question: “What’s your story and what are your plans with your degree?” What I wrote surprised me, not only because I managed to sum it up in less than 500 words, but also because it drew my focus back to what I’m actually at University to do. All too often we get caught up in the here-and-now and we lose track of what we are aiming to achieve. The exercise in remembering how I got here and also where I’m (maybe) going was really rewarding, and I’d encourage everybody to take some time to think about your answer to this question,

“What’s your story, and what are your plans for your life?”

My answer’s below the cut.

This is a part of what the future definitely holds for me – lots more dog population control. – At WVS India

The Harsh Reality of Vet Med…What the World Needs to Understand

This is the reality. Have a read and see what vets go through nearly every day.

OCRTriVet

I remember being a young child and dreaming one day of becoming a veterinarian.  The thought of working with animals brought me great joy, and I longed to save every furry creature that came across my path.   Most everyone knows that I achieved that dream and proudly serve my community as a small animal veterinarian.  It makes me happy to help animals in need and to educate pet parents simultaneously.  I love my job.

I love my job…at least I keep telling myself that.

To be upfront, I really do have a passion for animal welfare and I honestly cannot see myself doing anything else as a career.  Yet I believe there are a lot of misconceptions about my field of expertise by the masses…and even by those who aspire to stand where I stand now.

There is a reason why burnout is so high in my profession…and there is…

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It Shouldn’t Happen To A Chef

I’ve been away lately. I haven’t been posting on any of my social media accounts and I’ve been scarcely getting enough time to scratch myself, let alone write! With end-of-year exams over I have 18 months to go before graduation, and only six until final rotations. I was looking forward to working to save some money, reclaiming my social life, and mostly getting stuck in to my writing. But life had other ideas.

Superstitions have a special place in my heart, whether they are veterinary superstitions like the ones featured on VIN recently, or the habit of throwing salt over my left shoulder that I picked up from my great-grandmother. In this case though, it was the rule of threes that led to me working as the sole cook in a busy café with absolutely zero experience. In the space of one week away (for veterinary placement, what else!) from my regular part-time job at a local café two assistant chefs had broken bones. Both breaks had them out of action for at least 6-8 weeks, leaving the head chef to run the kitchen solo. Unfortunately due to health reasons the head chef was forced to stop work the week I returned from placemen, leaving the kitchen 3 chefs down with nobody to man the kitchen besides one of the baristas who was needed for the café’s primary order of business – coffee. Somewhat foolishly, this situation led to me volunteering to ‘give it a crack’…

For those of you used to working in a vet clinic, working in a kitchen would be an excellent experience. There are more similarities than you may realise…

Things I’ve learned: Resilience

Since my last post I’ve been continuing to learn heaps at uni – and no, that’s not because exams are on and I’m cramming! This semester I’ve begun internal rotations through the various areas of the university and we are finally getting the chance to cut our teeth in the clinical world. This hasn’t been without its difficulties, chief among which seems to be differentiating ‘slightly greyer grey’ from ‘only very slightly greyer grey’ in diagnostic imaging.

Light-bulb moments are rare in radiology (yes, I went there)

Outside of the classroom I’ve experience the other side of the vet-client relationship when my horse decided to get a very frustrating abscess that had me completely revert back to full client mode. It’s amazing what having your own animal injured does to your ability to asses a situation. And by that I mean: completely destroy it!

The patient – before the 50 layers of cloth-tape required to keep the poultice on!