Are internships necessary?

[Miss Vet]

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Hey, i've been doing a lot of research on various and numerous internships and residencies and wanted to know if it is necessary for a DVM degree?
Does internships and residencies necessarily mean 'more' income besides the obvious training and experience?

While doing a residency, is it possible to be working at a clinic or are residencies done as 'hands on schooling'?

Are the chances higher for a DVM to get accepted to a position if he/she has that board certified diploma (from the residency/internship)?

And last, what is the major difference between the residency and internship?

 

[silverelf]

No they are not necessary for the DVM degree. that is awarded to you after your 4th year/clinical year in the program. If you want to specialize (i.e. work in cardiology or orthopedics or etc) then YES it is required for you to do a residency in order to become board-certified. If you want to work as a regular clinical or research vet then have a board-certification is useless because you're not going to use it so no its not going to help you get a job. It is useful only if you are interested in pursuing a specialty.

NO you will NOT have ANY free time while doing your internship/residency. Get used to living cheap (you'll make about 20-25K a year)...but you will spend most of your life on-call and will not be able to carry another job load...unless possibly if it was something where you would work from home when you can (like telemarketing or something) but I've found things like that to be dodgy at best.

The major difference between a residency and an internship is what step they are in the process. An internship is a 1 year program, which prepares you for your 3 year residency. Most schools (I believe) require you to complete an internship before your residency, or if its not a requirement its at least highly recommended if you want to be a serious applicant. Many vets who are not interested in a specialty but want more clinical experience before "going out on their own" will do an internship. An example of this is the vets you see on E-Vet Interns on Animal Planet....they can go on to specialize, or they could go into general clinical work from there. A residency is a 3 year program that prepares you to become board-certified in your field.

 

[Miss Vet]

'Are the chances higher for a DVM to get a hired if he/she has that board certified diploma (from the residency/internship)?'

 

[kate_g]

'Are the chances higher for a DVM to get a hired if he/she has that board certified diploma (from the residency/internship)?'

I do know some practices, when looking for a new/young (read: low salary) vet to fill a job opening, prefer to hire one who has either completed an internship or has practiced elsewhere for a couple of years. The reason is that a standard "rotating" internship has the intern spend several weeks working in various departments - internal med, radiology, surgery - and allows them to gain more independent clinical practice experience within a supervised setting. So you can be more useful on the job from day one, rather than needing a lot of hand-holding. So yeah, doing an internship can increase your job options.

Now, as silverelf mentioned, a residency is something you do after internship if you want to become a board certified specialist. Being board-certified is generally necessary to work as a specialist, and generally not necessary if you want to be a "regular vet." So whether it helps you get hired depends on what you want to be hired to do. 🙂

 

[OSJ]

I think where I work if a vet has done an internship they get paid more.

 

[Bill59]

Does internships and residencies necessarily mean 'more' income besides the obvious training and experience?

It depends on the job. In general, a board certified specialist working in a private specialty practice will make more than someone in a general practice because their production is higher. But it depends on the specialty and the practice.

Someone with an internship will be slightly more competitive for a job in general practice compared to someone with 1 year of non-intern experience. But not by a lot and you have to consider the intern has been working for a year at less than minimum wage while the other person has been making a decent salary for that year. In other words, don't do an internship for the money.

While doing a residency, is it possible to be working at a clinic or are residencies done as 'hands on schooling'?

Residencies are clinical training programs. You are working in a hospital under the supervision of specialists.

Are the chances higher for a DVM to get accepted to a position if he/she has that board certified diploma (from the residency/internship)?

You don't automatically get boarded from doing a residency -- there are other requirements such as examinations. But you're comparing apples to oranges because specialists and generalist are not applying for the same jobs. If it's a specialty position, they are going to hire someone who has completed a residency in that specialty and usually someone who is boarded.

If it's a general practice position, they aren't going to hire a boarded specialists, they're looking for a generalist.

And last, what is the major difference between the residency and internship?

Rotating internship -- 1 year clinical training position working in a variety or areas designed to provide additional training for those entering general practice or a residency

Residency -- usually a 3-year clinical training position working primarily in that specialty to provide requirements to become board-certified in that specialty

BTW, there are now also 'specialty internships' where the intern works mostly in that particular specialty. This is usually for people who have already done a rotating internship to help them be more successful in getting a residency in that specialty.

 

[kate_g]

If it's a specialty position, they are going to hire someone who has completed a residency in that specialty and usually someone who is boarded.

If it's a general practice position, they aren't going to hire a boarded specialists, they're looking for a generalist.

To add to this, the clinic where I shadowed (5 full-time vets, 2 part-time) has a board-certified surgeon who does all their more complicated surgeries like organ repair/removal and orthopedic work. But they don't get enough surgical cases to make a full-time workload, so he also sees regular office visits - checkups/vaccines, diagnosis and treatment of non-surgical problems. This clinic also has a dentist with the same arrangement. I don't know how common positions like that are, but that would allow some middle ground between being a full-time specialist and a full-time generalist.

This is usually for people who have already done a rotating internship to help them be more successful in getting a residency in that specialty.

Another point that might not have been made yet is that you can't just go do an internship or a residency if you want to. They are both competitive applications, and they're separate, so doing an internship doesn't guarantee you'll be able to get into the residency you want.

 

[StealthDog]

I wouldn't call internships necessary, but a lot of people are finding them useful "confidence builders" after finishing vet school but before starting as a full-fledged practitioner. As vet school gets more and more squeezed with newer subjects (like genetics), or devoting more time to old subjects as they become more important (like dentistry, nutrition, etc), students are leaving feeling less prepared to deal with life "in the trenches". Internships give you one more year of supervised study that can help if you leave vet school not feeling confident enough to practice yet.

So yes, they do pay poorly, but technically the fact that they are paying you to teach you is a pretty good deal. Interns also have a higher starting pay once they do enter practice than do people who entered practice right away.

 

[silverelf]

'Are the chances higher for a DVM to get a hired if he/she has that board certified diploma (from the residency/internship)?'

from what i posted above.....

"If you want to work as a regular clinical or research vet then having a board-certification is useless because you're not going to use it so no its not going to help you get a job."

Please READ THROUGH the post next time....it took me awhile to type that up and that was a snooty little reply for the time I took to help you. I'll be sure to reply to your threads again 🙄

 

[birdvet2006]

I wouldn't call internships necessary, but a lot of people are finding them useful "confidence builders" after finishing vet school but before starting as a full-fledged practitioner. Interns also have a higher starting pay once they do enter practice than do people who entered practice right away.

I feel that you must have confidence before starting an internship, otherwise you may not make it out of an internship!! You get nagged and everything you do is nit-picked and discussed during an internship. Very invaluable, however if you're not confident enough in your actions/decisions it can send you scurrying into a hole... The ability to take constructive criticism is a must.

I have heard of people making the same amount that I am making straight out of vet school. So it depends on your geography. Most intern-trained vets should have a higher production however, and can make more with a percentage of production in their salary.

(I just finished an internship and started a "general practice" job as I wasn't accepted into a residency, for those who do not know me).

 

[StealthDog]

I feel that you must have confidence before starting an internship, otherwise you may not make it out of an internship!!

Good point! I guess I meant "confidence-builder" in the sense that you leave an internship feeling more well-rounded and better prepared to be a practitioner, not that you would enter an internship so that you can have another year of hand-holding before being booted out of the nest into the real world.

it depends on your geography

Good point here as well. I am just repeating what our professors have told us, so perhaps Minnesota is more generous to interns. *shrug* wanna move out here?