Class of 2015... How ya doing?

Veterinary Science Graduate Programs from U. of I.
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can we just put time on hold for a day or two (or a week...)? please? i have sooooo much i need to get accomplished in the next 5 days before i descend into the deep, dark hole that is internal medicine for the next 5 weeks...
 
dyachei said:
they won't give you the badge unless you can also verify you are the member with the license number. So it's not like finding my license helps you much.
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So now i just have to search every state to find someone licensed with the same last name as me.
Damn. Wish I was named John Smith. :sour:
 
Coquette22 said:
I was told I'm good at internal medicine today. Unfortunately, that was cold comfort in diagnosing a dog with end stage hepatic failure.
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Meh. I feel like half of all internal med referrals are doomed from the get-go. For every asthma cat that does well on steroids I've got 2 lymphoma labs that are dead a week later, yanno?
 
I'm afraid to go back and review my cases this week and segregate them into "still alive" and "no longer with us". I don't think it's going to be a happy ratio. (Which might not be so bad if I was on an ECC rotation, but Internal Med? Sigh.)
 
LetItSnow said:
I'm afraid to go back and review my cases this week and segregate them into "still alive" and "no longer with us". I don't think it's going to be a happy ratio. (Which might not be so bad if I was on an ECC rotation, but Internal Med? Sigh.)
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I have three categories of patients. VAX, FTD (fixin' to die), and DOA. It's been a rough two weeks.
 
Just hanging out at home, waiting for my phone to ring. I'm on call tonight and there's a dyspneic yorkie coming in, but it was several hours away this afternoon. I hate the waiting, because the later it gets, the less sleep I know I'm going to get.
 
Coquette22 said:
Just hanging out at home, waiting for my phone to ring. I'm on call tonight and there's a dyspneic yorkie coming in, but it was several hours away this afternoon. I hate the waiting, because the later it gets, the less sleep I know I'm going to get.
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Meh. Lasix trial, send it home. 😉
 
My dog got into a bunch of chocolate Thurs. night (buckeyes and peanut butter m&ms so the dose I calculated that she received was below the toxic dose). Upon waking up on Friday, she was PU/PD and uninterested in food. Then she started vomiting. Took her to school, freaked out a 3rd year (Friday was their 3rd day on clinics), and left her in the ICU for the day. She is fine now, but holy crap I cannot handle when my own animals get sick.

I finished up the surgeries and have moved onto community practice. I like having the 3rd years around. Vaccine appointments that take 2 hours are f-ing miserable, however. Boards in just over 3 weeks. Need to decide what I'm doing with my life... i.e. if I am going through the match.
 
So they've started a program where first and second years have one scheduled shift per semester in the VTH. I love having them. One is filling out my treatment sheet for tomorrow. Score, saves me having to do it.
 
Coquette22 said:
So they've started a program where first and second years have one scheduled shift per semester in the VTH. I love having them. One is filling out my treatment sheet for tomorrow. Score, saves me having to do it.
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We've always done 6-hr clerk duty shifts in the LA hospital but this semester they started making the 1-2 years do 2-hr shifts in SA ICU, too. I think it's a great idea. They don't do tx sheets but it's nice to be able to pass off some tx to them when you're super busy.
 
Question for you guys on clinics- on your general practice / community practice rotations- how long would you say your healthy pet vaccine appointments take? Or how long your dental procedures last?

Our 3rd years entered clinics this past week and I've gotten some feedback on really long appointment times for pretty routine appointments.. Just wanted to hear some feedback from some other schools to see if this is the norm across the board.
 
Kpowell14 said:
Question for you guys on clinics- on your general practice / community practice rotations- how long would you say your healthy pet vaccine appointments take? Or how long your dental procedures last?

Our 3rd years entered clinics this past week and I've gotten some feedback on really long appointment times for pretty routine appointments.. Just wanted to hear some feedback from some other schools to see if this is the norm across the board.
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haven't been through it at NCSU yet, but that stuff could take FOREVER at SGU. Easily over an hour (if lucky) and often two hours for appointments. Dentals...varied on what needed to be done, but in general, anesthesia times were long. Perhaps more thorough than what I had seen in GP in general though.
 
Kpowell14 said:
Question for you guys on clinics- on your general practice / community practice rotations- how long would you say your healthy pet vaccine appointments take? Or how long your dental procedures last?

Our 3rd years entered clinics this past week and I've gotten some feedback on really long appointment times for pretty routine appointments.. Just wanted to hear some feedback from some other schools to see if this is the norm across the board.
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They push hard for 30 minutes and it's possible to get grade reduction if you frequently take longer than that. But the whole appointment can take longer depending on what is going on.

Dentals are dropped off in them mornings and a board certified dude comes in to do them - the CP student gets to do one during their rotation. Prolly takes like 30 minutes without extractions and with xrays.

(Yeah, I have done one dental on a live dog in my life I mean, it's not like dentals are a big part of small animal veterinary practice, right? :lame: )
 
Kpowell14 said:
Question for you guys on clinics- on your general practice / community practice rotations- how long would you say your healthy pet vaccine appointments take? Or how long your dental procedures last?

Our 3rd years entered clinics this past week and I've gotten some feedback on really long appointment times for pretty routine appointments.. Just wanted to hear some feedback from some other schools to see if this is the norm across the board.
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Do you mean the entire appointment from the time the client enters the room to leaving? Or do you mean the time you get as a student with the client before you go snag your clinician?

We're told to take no more than 20 minutes before we come meet with the clinician, but that's for a sick-animal case. For a true wellness patient who is in for a yearly PE, vaccines, and preventatives ... and where the owner doesn't have any concerns/questions/whatever ... they really want us in/out in less than 15 min.
 
twelvetigers said:
They push hard for 30 minutes and it's possible to get grade reduction if you frequently take longer than that. But the whole appointment can take longer depending on what is going on.

Dentals are dropped off in them mornings and a board certified dude comes in to do them - the CP student gets to do one during their rotation. Prolly takes like 30 minutes without extractions and with xrays.

(Yeah, I have done one dental on a live dog in my life I mean, it's not like dentals are a big part of small animal veterinary practice, right? :lame: )
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This is how I figured clinics would be as far as appt times - because thats about how the real world will be... If not shorter (depending on the room)... But. apparently our community practice appointments can take 2+ hours Easily (ETA- from start to discharge.... and our dental procedures regularly last 1.5 + hours, with many being at least 2 hours

I dont see how the hospital keeps clients at this rate! - especially for in room appointments! Time is money, and 2 hrs in a room for a vaccine appt is a huge waste of time for a client. Not to mention that this doesnt really prepare the student for the "real world" post graduation.. And now I understand why a lot of people take their animals to other GPs in the area for routine stuff!!

As far as the dentals go - I know they get full mouth rads and a very thorough cleaning, but unless there are multiple extractions or carnassial extractions, I dont see why pretty routine dentals should last 2+ hrs!

I know there is a lot of teaching going on, but woah, what about teaching some efficiency too?
 
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LetItSnow said:
Do you mean the entire appointment from the time the client enters the room to leaving? Or do you mean the time you get as a student with the client before you go snag your clinician?

We're told to take no more than 20 minutes before we come meet with the clinician, but that's for a sick-animal case. For a true wellness patient who is in for a yearly PE, vaccines, and preventatives ... and where the owner doesn't have any concerns/questions/whatever ... they really want us in/out in less than 15 min.
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From initial intake to discharge.
 
Kpowell14 said:
This is how I figured clinics would be as far as appt times - because thats about how the real world will be... If not shorter (depending on the room)... But. apparently our community practice appointments can take 2+ hours Easily.... and our dental procedures regularly last 1.5 + hours, with many being at least 2 hours..

I dont see how the hospital keeps clients at this rate! - especially for in room appointments! Time is money, and 2 hrs in a room for a vaccine appt is a huge waste of time for a client. Not to mention that this doesnt really prepare the student for the "real world" post graduation.. And now I understand why a lot of people take their animals to other GPs in the area for routine stuff!!

As far as the dentals go - I know they get full mouth rads and a very thorough cleaning, but unless there are multiple extractions or carnassial extractions, I dont see why pretty routine dentals should last 2+ hrs!

I know there is a lot of teaching going on, but woah, what about teaching some efficiency too?
Click to expand...


*shrug* The clinic I hang at, and hope to work at, takes at least that long for a dental procedure. They do drop-offs in the morning, and then anywhere from 2-4 dentals/day (only one dental table with one doctor on it per day). That said, they're in the "every dental includes full mouth rads, etc" group. So their dentals are more complete than many places.

Our internal medicine appointments can easily go 1.5 hours. They're supposed to go 1, but they're more complex.

Our GP appointments are only supposed to go a total of 30-45 minutes, but they never do.

I can see how it sounds long from where yer sitting, but I think you'll find when you get there that it's harder than it sounds to pack it into a time even remotely close to how fast most private practice clinics are able to do it.

Let's say my client shows up at 2p. I grab them from the lobby, introduce myself, weigh their dog, find a room. It's already 2:03. I do a more thorough history than any practicing clinician would because I'm a dumb-ass student who doesn't know which questions I can skip and which I can't, so I get their life story, plus the life story on every animal anyone they ever know has owned. Then I do a physical, whereas an experienced clinician would do the physical and take history at the same time. I blow right through my 20-minute time limit and get out of the room in 25 minutes. Track down my clinician, who is inevitably busy with something else. Sit and wait. Now we're at 30 minutes. Clinician and I chat. I present the case, my problem list/ruleouts if it's sick, my dx plan (healthy OR sick), my tx plan. That takes 5-15 minutes, depending on healthy/sick/complex. Now we're at 35-45 minutes. Stroll back, clinician chats and does a physical. 45-55 minutes total. I snag the animal, take them back to the tx room to draw blood (I mean, you're probably running at least a HW test.....). But tx room is busy so you have to stand around a few minutes looking for someone to hold while you draw blood. 55-1:05. Get them back to owner and discharge.

It's very easily a 1-hr process even for just a generic GP patient.

Yeah, you get faster as you go, and sure, I do my histories/physicals simultaneously now, and my histories are getting tighter and more focused. But until you get there and see how many things can snag up the process I'd withhold judgement. Yanno? It's a very different process (at least, here at UMN) than it is in a functioning private practice.
 
Kpowell14 said:
This is how I figured clinics would be as far as appt times - because thats about how the real world will be... If not shorter (depending on the room)... But. apparently our community practice appointments can take 2+ hours Easily.... and our dental procedures regularly last 1.5 + hours, with many being at least 2 hours (ETA: from start to discharge)

I dont see how the hospital keeps clients at this rate! - especially for in room appointments! Time is money, and 2 hrs in a room for a vaccine appt is a huge waste of time for a client. Not to mention that this doesnt really prepare the student for the "real world" post graduation.. And now I understand why a lot of people take their animals to other GPs in the area for routine stuff!!

As far as the dentals go - I know they get full mouth rads and a very thorough cleaning, but unless there are multiple extractions or carnassial extractions, I dont see why pretty routine dentals should last 2+ hrs!

I know there is a lot of teaching going on, but woah, what about teaching some efficiency too?
Click to expand...

An hour and a half seems about right for a dental procedure. I have occasionally seen a dental take only 40 minutes, but that is rare, especially if taking full mouth rads as well. I mean for a dental you have to do the drop off in the morning which can take anywhere from 10 minutes to 30 minutes. Then you have to anesthetize the patient, get them on monitoring equipment. Then you can begin the cleaning and depending on how bad the mouth is that could take 30 minutes or so. Then take your xrays. Then evaluate all the teeth for pockets or any other abnormalities. Then extract any teeth that might need extracting and some extractions (canine teeth) can easily take 15-20 minutes to get out, if you have multiple, difficult extractions you can easily have a dental taking 3, 4, 5 or even 6 hours.
 
LetItSnow said:
*shrug* The clinic I hang at, and hope to work at, takes at least that long for a dental procedure. They do drop-offs in the morning, and then anywhere from 2-4 dentals/day (only one dental table with one doctor on it per day). That said, they're in the "every dental includes full mouth rads, etc" group. So their dentals are more complete than many places.

Our internal medicine appointments can easily go 1.5 hours. They're supposed to go 1, but they're more complex.

Our GP appointments are only supposed to go a total of 30-45 minutes, but they never do.

I can see how it sounds long from where yer sitting, but I think you'll find when you get there that it's harder than it sounds to pack it into a time even remotely close to how fast most private practice clinics are able to do it.

Let's say my client shows up at 2p. I grab them from the lobby, introduce myself, weigh their dog, find a room. It's already 2:03. I do a more thorough history than any practicing clinician would because I'm a dumb-ass student who doesn't know which questions I can skip and which I can't, so I get their life story, plus the life story on every animal anyone they ever know has owned. Then I do a physical, whereas an experienced clinician would do the physical and take history at the same time. I blow right through my 20-minute time limit and get out of the room in 25 minutes. Track down my clinician, who is inevitably busy with something else. Sit and wait. Now we're at 30 minutes. Clinician and I chat. I present the case, my problem list/ruleouts if it's sick, my dx plan (healthy OR sick), my tx plan. That takes 5-15 minutes, depending on healthy/sick/complex. Now we're at 35-45 minutes. Stroll back, clinician chats and does a physical. 45-55 minutes total. I snag the animal, take them back to the tx room to draw blood (I mean, you're probably running at least a HW test.....). But tx room is busy so you have to stand around a few minutes looking for someone to hold while you draw blood. 55-1:05. Get them back to owner and discharge.

It's very easily a 1-hr process even for just a generic GP patient.

Yeah, you get faster as you go, and sure, I do my histories/physicals simultaneously now, and my histories are getting tighter and more focused. But until you get there and see how many things can snag up the process I'd withhold judgement. Yanno? It's a very different process (at least, here at UMN) than it is in a functioning private practice.
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Rooms with new puppies and kittens... after you get through explaining the vaccine schedule, why you should deworm, how deworming works, explaining heartworm disease, answering all the questions about how to keep said puppy from pooping all over and eating the owner's left sneakers, etc, etc... it can easily be 45 minutes to an hour.
 
LetItSnow said:
*shrug* The clinic I hang at, and hope to work at, takes at least that long for a dental procedure. They do drop-offs in the morning, and then anywhere from 2-4 dentals/day (only one dental table with one doctor on it per day). That said, they're in the "every dental includes full mouth rads, etc" group. So their dentals are more complete than many places.

Our internal medicine appointments can easily go 1.5 hours. They're supposed to go 1, but they're more complex.

Our GP appointments are only supposed to go a total of 30-45 minutes, but they never do.

I can see how it sounds long from where yer sitting, but I think you'll find when you get there that it's harder than it sounds to pack it into a time even remotely close to how fast most private practice clinics are able to do it.

Let's say my client shows up at 2p. I grab them from the lobby, introduce myself, weigh their dog, find a room. It's already 2:03. I do a more thorough history than any practicing clinician would because I'm a dumb-ass student who doesn't know which questions I can skip and which I can't, so I get their life story, plus the life story on every animal anyone they ever know has owned. Then I do a physical, whereas an experienced clinician would do the physical and take history at the same time. I blow right through my 20-minute time limit and get out of the room in 25 minutes. Track down my clinician, who is inevitably busy with something else. Sit and wait. Now we're at 30 minutes. Clinician and I chat. I present the case, my problem list/ruleouts if it's sick, my dx plan (healthy OR sick), my tx plan. That takes 5-15 minutes, depending on healthy/sick/complex. Now we're at 35-45 minutes. Stroll back, clinician chats and does a physical. 45-55 minutes total. I snag the animal, take them back to the tx room to draw blood (I mean, you're probably running at least a HW test.....). But tx room is busy so you have to stand around a few minutes looking for someone to hold while you draw blood. 55-1:05. Get them back to owner and discharge.

It's very easily a 1-hr process even for just a generic GP patient.

Yeah, you get faster as you go, and sure, I do my histories/physicals simultaneously now, and my histories are getting tighter and more focused. But until you get there and see how many things can snag up the process I'd withhold judgement. Yanno? It's a very different process (at least, here at UMN) than it is in a functioning private practice.
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Yea I get that there are a lot of steps -many of which wont occur in a PP. And the learning/teaching process is super important. So Id say an hour, maybe a bit more would be pretty acceptable to make sure the clinician / student cover their bases... But a 2.5 hour vaccine appointment - even with all those steps - it seems pretty excessive. :shrug:

- just wanted to hear how some of the other schools GP/CP rotations work and if this is the norm or not!
 
Kpowell14 said:
Question for you guys on clinics- on your general practice / community practice rotations- how long would you say your healthy pet vaccine appointments take? Or how long your dental procedures last?

Our 3rd years entered clinics this past week and I've gotten some feedback on really long appointment times for pretty routine appointments.. Just wanted to hear some feedback from some other schools to see if this is the norm across the board.
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Really bad at Penn.
Things just take forever here.
I was on community practice and a prof (not a vet school person - i think MD researcher) who took his dog in yelled at the 4th year for it taking so long. Literally yelled. That wasn't cool.
 
StartingoverVet said:
Literally yelled. That wasn't cool.
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She will at least be well-prepared for general practice. I have had multiple people in my face yelling at me as a tech. We once had a guy tell us at the reception desk that he was going to pick up the stapler and throw it because the vet was running 10 minutes behind. We had another client who was going to come in and shoot everyone because we refused to treat her cats anymore (she was not allowed to own cats anymore due to hoarding). I wish I could count on one hand the number of times I have had people outright yell at me and curse at me, unfortunately, it is too many to even remember anymore.
 
LetItSnow said:
Of course it happens. I don't think that was the point. I think she was looking for general lengths.
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Yea - Just wanted to see how things are done at other schools.. Especially want to hear if any schools value efficiency and how they accomplish that while still fitting in all of the learning.
 
One of my rotation-mates, who I've never actually considered myself that close with, sent me a message to ask me if I wanted her to take my on-call shift tonight since I have a very involved patient right now and she has nothing. This made my day.
 
@Kpowell14 For CP, a "typical" vaccine appointment would be 5-10mins to get patient in room, 15-20mins for hx/PE, 5-10mins consulting with clinician (maybe a bit longer if you had to find them), 5 mins to give vaccine, walk them to the front. So ~30-45mins, if it was truly just a vaccine appointment, plus however long it took reception to get their bill settled, etc. Most other appointments were more involved, but CP is actually pretty on the ball; it's medicine that can be a cluster.
 
Man. We're either the most mellow class year ever, or we're a bunch of slackers, or ... I dunno. C/O 2016 is on page 81, we're on 53, and we've had an extra year.

Should we start totally post-padding our thread?
 
P.S. I'm on ophtho now, and while it's a good learning rotation, I'm getting pretty damn worn out from doing the 8-6 hospital thing, coming home, grabbing dinner, and then studying ophtho until 1:30am every night. We do some pretty intense topic rounds in this rotation.

And it's really making me agitated that I have NAVLE coming up on the 17th and have absolutely no time to study for it this entire rotation.

And with that ... back to writing up the ophtho cases.
 
LetItSnow said:
P.S. I'm on ophtho now, and while it's a good learning rotation, I'm getting pretty damn worn out from doing the 8-6 hospital thing, coming home, grabbing dinner, and then studying ophtho until 1:30am every night. We do some pretty intense topic rounds in this rotation.

And it's really making me agitated that I have NAVLE coming up on the 17th and have absolutely no time to study for it this entire rotation.

And with that ... back to writing up the ophtho cases.
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I have that next so... yeah, hoping it's not too bad. The clinician has a fart machine. I'm hoping for laid back. (With leaning! But relaxed learning!)
 
twelvetigers said:
I have that next so... yeah, hoping it's not too bad. The clinician has a fart machine. I'm hoping for laid back. (With leaning! But relaxed learning!)
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Yeah. Our topic rounds every day consist of a small book of pictures ('cornea', 'lens', etc.; tomorrow is 'fundus'). The clinician goes person-by-person grilling each one of us about a picture. What are the lesions, what's the exam-room dx, what's the etiological dx, and then a bunch of questions pertinent to the condition. It's not relaxed learning - it forces you into "cram-for-topic-rounds" mode, which I find counterproductive. And not that vet school always needs to be 'fun', but ... it shouldn't be needlessly 'not fun' either. This rotation could be fun, relaxed, and super educational ... instead it's tense, stressful, SUPER tiring, and pretty educational.

I dunno. I really, really like the clinician. She's smart, she's friendly, she's great to work with. I love being in the exam room with her because she talks through every little thing she sees. I think she just has a different take on how rotations should be organized than I do.....
 
LetItSnow said:
Man. We're either the most mellow class year ever, or we're a bunch of slackers, or ... I dunno. C/O 2016 is on page 81, we're on 53, and we've had an extra year.

Should we start totally post-padding our thread?
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I think 2016 is where the pre-vet forum really took off. But also probably we're slackers.

I'm finishing up lab animal/exotics, which has been excellent of course 😀 We've done so much amazing stuff. I'm waiting for my last two letter writers to submit for my rez app to be done. Then life kind of snowballs into Important Things.

Also, I didn't take ophtho and I'm glad I didn't, butttt I have too many eye questions on Zuku and it scares me.
 
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