Anyone know of any good externships for primate medicine?

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blue9900

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I'm a second year veterinary student interested in exotics/wildlife medicine. Looking for recommendations of any places specifically working with primates to do during my breaks or clinical rotations.

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I'm a second year veterinary student interested in exotics/wildlife medicine. Looking for recommendations of any places specifically working with primates to do during my breaks or clinical rotations.
Greetings, OP:

I know that you mentioned that your primary interest is in exotics/wildlife, but I'd like to offer up lab animal externships in primate medicine as a viable alternative. Clinical externships at the major US primate centers (Georgia [Yerkes], Washington, Tulane, California, Oregon, and others provide high quality experience in various aspects of primate medicine. Many major human medical schools also have a large census of primates, and some of these also take visiting vet students as clinical externs. I visited Yale University in New Haven, CT for a clinical externship in lab animal med at the outset of my fourth year. Primates aren't my major interest in lab animal med, but I did see quite a few primate cases at this location. Friends of mine within the lab animal field completed primate-specific externships at primate centers (you can find out more about Oregon's here: Veterinary Externship Descriptions, and others here: https://www.aslap.org/Content/files/files/Public/primateexternships 10-6-2017.pdf). Hope this is helpful. If you're really into primates, don't count out a career in lab animal/comparative medicine :) Good luck!
 
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I think HSUS has an externship for one of their rescue ranches that has primates... worth looking on the HSVMA site to see if I recall correctly.

Only interacted with them shortly, but the people with Wake Forest were great teachers when I went there on an elective.

Otherwise lab animal externships will definitely be your best bet. @kcoughli, got any primate centric suggestions?
 
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Definitely echo what @Lab Vet said about looking at lab animal externships.

For primates specifically on the ASLAP website under career development they have a link for primate specific externships (HERE)

Otherwise the places I went with the most primate specific experience were:

- California National Primate Research Center: Mostly a lot of rhesus macaques. You do a LOT of wound management, bandaging, suturing, digit amputations, etc and there's usually some cool stuff as well. Occasionally a necropsy, ultrasound, scope, what-have-you depending on what the schedule is like. Did some TB testing/physical exams, "round ups" in the outdoor pens for health checks, behavioral observations, etc. Pretty solid rotation and good experience.

- Johns Hopkins Comparative Medicine: They have a lot of primates (macaques, owl monkeys, marmoset breeding colony). Get to see a lot of different species BUT with the caveat that they typically only get things out when something happens so you may or may not get hands on with all of the species. That being said, they also have a macaque breeding facility ("The Farm") outside of town that we did a lot of stuff at, TB testing, PEs, etc.

- University of Illinois-Chicago: Definitely biased because that is where I'm doing my residency, but still has a good primate census. Macaques and baboons but we really try to schedule things for when students come (dentistry, annual physicals, etc). Will learn to do treatments, wound care, etc but again depending on what's going on at the time.

- Yale: already mentioned above but similar to UIC.

I didn't go to the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center (in Bastrop, TX NOT Houston!) but I have heard really great things about that externship and they have chimpanzees which I've always wanted to work with but haven't had the chance yet. Similarly I've heard great things about Yerkes in Atlanta.

Hope that's helpful!
 
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