Class of 2019...how ya doing?

Veterinary Science Graduate Certificate from UofI
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pinkpuppy9 said:
Yeah, all of our overnight/weekend stuff is solo. For equine, there is usually a tech there on weeknights but other than that you're dealing with horses alone.

For her shift specifically, she was sitting in a room watching a parvo puppy in isolation via a live camera. Can understand why you would doze off if you're just sitting at a table and not allowed to leave from 1AM-8AM, but still not a good situation.
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That sucks. I'm fairly certain the policy here (at least for large animal, not sure about small) is to always have at least two people in the hospital, probably at least in part for that reason. I hope she doesn't get in too much trouble :/
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WildZoo said:
That sucks. I'm fairly certain the policy here (at least for large animal, not sure about small) is to always have at least two people in the hospital, probably at least in part for that reason. I hope she doesn't get in too much trouble :/
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Luckily she didn't, they were actually concerned about whether or not she forged the treatment sheets which I didn't even think about. I guess they thought she slept for several hours and would have missed treatments (but they saw the treatment sheet was filled out), she only slept for like 20 minutes between hourly treatments. Still a butt pucker moment for sure
 
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Had to shoot some more rads on the horse that without chemicals wanted to take me out however long ago. Was sedated before I showed up today and was such the gentleman. Me likey. Me likey very much. haha

Another rotation almost done. Getting ever closer to the goal line. :pompous:
 
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Lupin21 said:
Had to shoot some more rads on the horse that without chemicals wanted to take me out however long ago. Was sedated before I showed up today and was such the gentleman. Me likey. Me likey very much. haha

Another rotation almost done. Getting ever closer to the goal line. :pompous:
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Rotation 3 done! SAIM is next, so I am looking forward to sinking my teeth in a bit more for cases. I hear first week is hard because there is so much UVIS involved, but then it gets better. Need to brush up on my endocrine stuff this weekend though.
 
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Lupin21 said:
Rotation 3 done! SAIM is next, so I am looking forward to sinking my teeth in a bit more for cases. I hear first week is hard because there is so much UVIS involved, but then it gets better. Need to brush up on my endocrine stuff this weekend though.
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Medicine was a pain mostly because it as so busy and I felt like I had no time to learn.
 
Just finished week 1/4 of this externship and it seems like it's going to be a nightmare. New head vet is unprofessional and unpleasant, I hear 3 different things from the three vets there and it's extremely frustrating already, there's a ton of staff drama, and I've been tasked with data collection for a project. Not a big deal to collect data, but it's been in the mid to high 90s so far and I have to hoof it across the entire zoo 3x/day in khakis and a polo. Currently looking at vented button ups, but holy expensive! Also, the data collection is already interfering with me being able to see the cases, so I may have to kindly bring that up...
 
Another rotation down. My next one is my first large animal rotation. Not gonna lie, I’m pretty nervous. I feel like I really don’t know horse diseases and there have already been multiple broken bones since we started clinics (only 1 was a student). I’m also not sure how I’m going to deal with dorm living and I’ve heard the refrigerator situation out there is pretty bad.
 
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Enjoying internal med. I've been so lucky and have just the best clients. So sweet and amazing. I've also managed not to have that bad of a train wreck case though, so one of the last standing without heartbreaking ending. I'm sure it'll catch up soon enough.
 
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Lupin21 said:
On emergency phone duty tonight. Good times. heh
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I remember that. So much fun. Not.

I mean, it was okay. Sometimes.

Best call for me was a woman who found out that goats can get rabies and was calling and panicking because she washed bottles she fed the little goat with in the sink along with silverware etc. that her children use. I couldn’t say anything to convince her that it just wasn’t a concern... omg. Twenty minutes of hysteria and no chance to put her on hold and make someone else tell her the same thing because they were busy with a dog in the ICU.

Hopefully you get something memorable like that! And hopefully you are home and in bed and have been for like an hour and a half already.
 
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twelvetigers said:
I remember that. So much fun. Not.

I mean, it was okay. Sometimes.

Best call for me was a woman who found out that goats can get rabies and was calling and panicking because she washed bottles she fed the little goat with in the sink along with silverware etc. that her children use. I couldn’t say anything to convince her that it just wasn’t a concern... omg. Twenty minutes of hysteria and no chance to put her on hold and make someone else tell her the same thing because they were busy with a dog in the ICU.

Hopefully you get something memorable like that! And hopefully you are home and in bed and have been for like an hour and a half already.
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My favorite call was a prank from one of the interns.

She asked us what we wanted to round on at like 4AM one morning so someone said trauma. She asked "what kind of trauma". So I said "piano fell on dog". She gave me a look like I was insane, but hey, it was 4AM rounds and pianos falling on dogs can totally happen... right?

Anyway, I was sitting by the ER phone later when it rang and I hear "yeah, I have a dog and a uh... piano... fell on him" then she started cracking up.

Some of my better times were actually on overnight ER/ICU.
 
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twelvetigers said:
I remember that. So much fun. Not.

I mean, it was okay. Sometimes.

Best call for me was a woman who found out that goats can get rabies and was calling and panicking because she washed bottles she fed the little goat with in the sink along with silverware etc. that her children use. I couldn’t say anything to convince her that it just wasn’t a concern... omg. Twenty minutes of hysteria and no chance to put her on hold and make someone else tell her the same thing because they were busy with a dog in the ICU.

Hopefully you get something memorable like that! And hopefully you are home and in bed and have been for like an hour and a half already.
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Sadly my calls involved possible snake bite, question about likely abdominal mass diagnosed by another vet, then I stopped answering phones to take care of a parvo puppy. It was no bueno. We ended up euthanizing due to financial concerns and how far along pup was. Very messy sadness. Then a pom with GI issues for rads. Didn't see anything on rads so I believe it got fluids and metro. I wasn't allowed back in ICU at that point since I was contaminated. Home about 2 am, so not great, but not awful there.
 
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Food Animal is a nice change of pace. I've taken on the alpaca cases. Little cria that had a broken leg was rather squirrelly and tried to take me out with a head butt. Guess the student on her before me got a busted lip. haha

A lot of on call though. Will be glad to have diagnostics next that has a pretty kush... schedule. :)
 
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Still struggling to find the balance between 'you're an idiot for not knowing' and 'you were never taught this, it is absolutely no where in your notes, and it is something that is never done outside of the 4 walls of a teaching hospital so you didn't even know it existed...but now you learned about it' for those on-the-fly questions where you truly have no idea what the answer is. Internal med is rough for most people but I would like to feel like I at least know a little bit.

Oh, and all the aggressive animals keep finding me so that's always fun. On Monday, a big beefy dog with a history of sketchiness came in for a recheck. I was told not to muzzle because he had fine recently even though I asked twice. Guess who got a warning bite to my face during an ultrasound? I would have needed facial reconstruction if the dog wasn't kind enough to make it a warning.

Gonna be a long two weeks.
 
Skimble said:
I feel like I've answered SO many VetPrep questions, and I'm not even 1% done. :drowning::rofl:
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I figured out that it was about 50 questions (answered correctly) per 1% on VetPrep 2 years ago when I did it. It might be a bit off or there might be more now but yep, its a grind for sure
 
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Skimble said:
I feel like I've answered SO many VetPrep questions, and I'm not even 1% done. :drowning::rofl:
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SAME. % completion is only of questions you answered correctly. Makes perfect sense, but I wasn't thinking of that that when I started so I was really frustrated with it.

I wish VetPrep had a feature where you could set yourself to x amount of questions per session and it would count down for you. That's my only real complaint thus far, other than regularly getting questions on things I've never heard of in my life.
 
pinkpuppy9 said:
SAME. % completion is only of questions you answered correctly. Makes perfect sense, but I wasn't thinking of that that when I started so I was really frustrated with it.

I wish VetPrep had a feature where you could set yourself to x amount of questions per session and it would count down for you. That's my only real complaint thus far, other than regularly getting questions on things I've never heard of in my life.
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I would also like this countdown feature! It would make following their schedule a lot easier!
 
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If it makes you feel any better, it does start going faster once you start getting the questions you previously missed again (assuming you remember the correct answer).
 
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Lupin21 said:
Practice exams you can set the number of questions. Sometimes I have time for a few, sometimes I can do 60 etc.
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I liked these. It was hard for me to sit down, focus and study. So I'd set up a practice exam with x number of questions, then take a 5-10 minute break, then repeat. This way I could schedule study time and tell my brain.... "you'll have a break when this exam is done", there was a set end point which made it easier for me.
 
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DVMDream said:
I liked these. It was hard for me to sit down, focus and study. So I'd set up a practice exam with x number of questions, then take a 5-10 minute break, then repeat. This way I could schedule study time and tell my brain.... "you'll have a break when this exam is done", there was a set end point which made it easier for me.
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yup. It suits my behavior patterns for sure. haha
 
DVMDream said:
I liked these. It was hard for me to sit down, focus and study. So I'd set up a practice exam with x number of questions, then take a 5-10 minute break, then repeat. This way I could schedule study time and tell my brain.... "you'll have a break when this exam is done", there was a set end point which made it easier for me.
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I'll definitely have to try these then. I was worried I would take one, get a terrible score, and get really down about it because I'm no where close to being ready to be scored on something yet.

I got 3% done this week...that's a little something. I just still don't know how this is going to stick.
 
DVMDream said:
I liked these. It was hard for me to sit down, focus and study. So I'd set up a practice exam with x number of questions, then take a 5-10 minute break, then repeat. This way I could schedule study time and tell my brain.... "you'll have a break when this exam is done", there was a set end point which made it easier for me.
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For me it’s hard to take these at home because there is always something that comes up that pulls me away from my computer when I do something like this. I swear my dogs know I’m studying/doing something with a time limit and purposefully act up and get into things.
 
Skimble said:
For me it’s hard to take these at home because there is always something that comes up that pulls me away from my computer when I do something like this. I swear my dogs know I’m studying/doing something with a time limit and purposefully act up and get into things.
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Oh I definitely did the..... "well **** what is the cat getting into NOW?? Oh well, ignoring, would yell out 'please don't kill yourself' then wouldn't move to find out what kind of **** she managed to get into."
 
Skimble said:
For me it’s hard to take these at home because there is always something that comes up that pulls me away from my computer when I do something like this. I swear my dogs know I’m studying/doing something with a time limit and purposefully act up and get into things.
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You can always end exam if something comes up. No big deal. :)
 
I'm finishing up my last 4 week block of research*, and it's going to be sooooooo good to be done and submit my paper. This has been an absolute rollercoaster of emotions. I've had times of complete despair and feeling like my project is going nowhere and that I had no idea how to analyze the data, what to make of it, or how to put it into words. Then I've had times of feeling like I can do this and actually write a paper that I'm super proud of that has some interesting (though not mind blowing by any means) results.

I feel like I've learned so much doing this research and that it'll really be invaluable to me in the future. I'm hoping to pursue specialization and I know I'll be needing these skills. It's much better to figure this stuff out now than when I'm a resident.

It's also been pretty awesome to have a huge name in the field as my advisor. It's been great for networking and I should be able to get a nice letter of recommendation out of it.

*At RVC all students have to complete a research project, which takes place over two 4 week blocks during rotations. Oh, and it's worth nearly half of our final grade for the year (so, you know, no pressure!).
 
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Staffie said:
(bumping)

Just seeing if anyone can help me out with the dates of the rotation blocks at UC Davis December 2018 and January 2019.

Thanks!
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Hey Staffie,

The dates around that time get a little complicated because we have "Siamese-weeks" which means that we have 3-week rotations instead of 2 weeks in order to accommodate the holiday season. Here are the Monday start dates of each rotation:

12/3/2018
12/17/2018
1/7/2019
1/22/2019
2/4/2019

Hope this helps!
 
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DVMDream said:
Ring tone PTSD, it really happens.
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I still have ringtone PTSD from my on call phone I had years ago. Unfortunately, it is a fairly common ringtone for other people to have.

Lupin21 said:
On pathology now. So lovely. I needed this.
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Same. Earliest days start at 8am, and the latest I've stayed thus far is 3pm. Getting so much done on my research and vetprep!
 
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vetmedUCDavis2019 said:
Hey Staffie,

The dates around that time get a little complicated because we have "Siamese-weeks" which means that we have 3-week rotations instead of 2 weeks in order to accommodate the holiday season. Here are the Monday start dates of each rotation:

12/3/2018
12/17/2018
1/7/2019
1/22/2019
2/4/2019

Hope this helps!
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Thanks for the info! Unfortunately, I don't think an externship there is going to work out for me. I'm not too disappointed, though, as it would have cost me quite a bit to get out there.
 
I expected to pass my last rotation and not get any particularly specific feedback, but I got a really great review. I'm grateful for it but sometimes I convince myself that they must have mixed me up with someone else :shrug: I didn't think the officers/clinician paid much attention to me at all.
 
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Found a closed pyo on necropsy today! Sad for the doggo, but it was cool to finally 'find' the problem. Sounded like rDVM was on the pancreatitis train, which made sense given the clinical presentation. It was such a small amount of gross fluid, but it caused such a huge problem.
 
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Lupin21 said:
Definitely enjoy diagnostics rotation. I am appreciating such a broad overview of disease as well for NAVLE study.
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I feel awful for the half of my class who won't have diagnostics until after the NAVLE.
 
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