Becoming two different types of Doctors???

[VeterinaryLover]

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I was thinking....is it possible for someone to become two different types of doctors for example a Vet and a pediatrician???

 

[nyanko]

Um, well I imagine you could go to both vet school and med school if you had the financial resources (there ARE limits to the amount of loans that you can take out). You'd need to maintain licensure and CE requirements for both and I can't imagine that you could really dedicate yourself properly to either one if you actually wanted to practice as both.

I don't really think that would be a very practical thing to pursue, if you are actually thinking of pursuing something like that. 😕

 

[hoodle]

Given some of your other posts, VeterinaryLover, I think you'd be well off browsing this forum extensively to get an idea of what veterinary medicine is, why people do (or don't) do it, and what sort of resources (both time and financial) it takes to become a vet and practice successfully. This is not a decision to be taken lightly... and it seems like you might need to explore the field a bit more and figure out how you might fit in.

back to your question - WHY on earth would you do that?! I can see people changing their minds (my mom, a psychiatrist, briefly considered vet school at age 50), but to graduate from college with a goal of straddling two discrete fields? jack of all trades, master of none... you'd get a lot of funny looks when you explain what you want to do.

that said, if you have a clearly defined goal which encompasses both a MD and a DVM, which you've thought about thoroughly and really think the two doctor degrees is the way to go... please share, it sounds fascinating!

 

[Electrophile]

I was pre-med for a looooong time, so I can understand your interest in it. I think you'll find that if you go the vet school route, you'll actually learn a decent amount about the way humans work too, which they do for a couple reasons:

-researchers these days almost always have to try to apply for outside grants, and in biomedical research, with the current funding situation, this means applying what you're doing to human medicine. So you'll need to know how to apply human stuff to an animal model.

-some things are just not that well characterized in veterinary medicine yet that are better characterized in people (or vice versa).

-many people learn well (myself included) by comparative anatomy and physiology, applying what you know about yourself to something not as familiar.

So that being said, there's a couple things you can do with both humans and animals in the medical field, be it human or veterinary. You can go into public health, especially zoonotic disease (which there is a great demand for), you could do research in the human/animal bond (like therapy dog work), or you could go into biomedical research and apply animal models to people (or vice versa). A lot of research seems to start in animals in biomedical research, then goes to people medicine, then comes back to the animals in veterinary medicine. Hope that helps.

 

[theunraveler]

I was thinking....is it possible for someone to become two different types of doctors for example a Vet and a pediatrician???

hi

u sound like me, i am in vet school now working to wards my BVSc degree and i intend to practice as a vet for awhile (10-20 yrs?) then go medical school

ideally u shld not go into medical school after a vet degree unless ur purely into comparative medicine or academia

 

[VeterinaryLover]

I don't really think that would be a very practical thing to pursue, if you are actually thinking of pursuing something like that. 😕

No I am not thinking about doing that, it was just a questions that I had asked...Thats just too much work for some one to do!

 

[winglessflight]

one of my professors was a dvm, md, phd. Crazy crazy man. He studies human diseases using animal models (which you can do without all the degrees), although he has done private veterinary practice as well. That is WAY too much schooling for me.

 

[Electrophile]

one of my professors was a dvm, md, phd. Crazy crazy man.

😱 Wow! That's really something...I'd want to ask him which he thought was the most challenging and why. One of my mother's physicians used to be a large animal vet until he got kicked in the face by a bull and just about shattered most of his facial bones. I guess he didn't want to switch to small animal, so he was in his mid 40s when went to med school and became a family practice doc.

I don't think it's the same guy...but check this guy out:

http://www.unmc.edu/dept/anesthesia/index.cfm?conref=10

DVM, PhD, MD, and an MBA! He should have gone to law school too, just to cover everything!

 

[ratbandit]

That's crazy, I liked how he writes the DVM BEFORE the MD in his list 🙂

 

[Futureprincess]

that doesn't work?

 

[futurevet3]

Some people either get a PhD while in vet school (ie dual PhD/DVM program) or go into a PhD program after finishing the DVM. It reslly isn't that uncommon, as many vet professors have done this. I have been thinking of doing this, as I am more inclined to research than practice right now.

 

[Pugsforlove2014]

that doesn't work?

Holy thread resurrection.

 

[hazelmoo]

I was 14 when this thread started...