Class of 2020... how you doin?

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batsenecal said:
Okay, 2020 fam! I'm planning/setting up externships for 4th year and I'm trying to figure out as many externships I can apoly for to be off campus as I can. We get 3 2-week blocks for free electives, 5 2-week blocks for directed electives, and 4 2-week blocks off.

For the directed electives, we can only go off campus for 3 blocks if we do equine, beef, dairy, swine, equine, or lab animal. Do yall have any recommendations in those categories? A lot of the 4th years at my school either stayed on campus or haven't done their off campus yet, but we should be submitting our preferences this month. So I'm turning to yall!
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My two recommendations are always:
Humane Alliance
Leader Dogs for the Blind

Best use of weeks in my fourth year for sure. Loved both of them sooo much. And both have housing, either for free or cheap.

@kcoughli, any lab animal recommendations?
 
Also, always willing to host mah SDN peeps if you want a SA externship, too! We have an apartment at the clinic and I have a spare bedroom depending on preferences.

Smaller town practice with no local ER that literally sees everything that walks in the door. 90% SA, I see the exotics, my older boss sees LA. We've got ultrasound and endoscopy and a boarded surgeon that comes by weekly. It's a fun place. 🙂 PM me if interested.
 
batsenecal said:
Okay, 2020 fam! I'm planning/setting up externships for 4th year and I'm trying to figure out as many externships I can apoly for to be off campus as I can. We get 3 2-week blocks for free electives, 5 2-week blocks for directed electives, and 4 2-week blocks off.

For the directed electives, we can only go off campus for 3 blocks if we do equine, beef, dairy, swine, equine, or lab animal. Do yall have any recommendations in those categories? A lot of the 4th years at my school either stayed on campus or haven't done their off campus yet, but we should be submitting our preferences this month. So I'm turning to yall!
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UIC for lab animal! Not just because I'm here (though will be moving on to a different location come October) but they really do a good job of hands on stuff here as opposed to many of the other places I visited. Primate centers are also fun places to extern at as they tend to also be very hands on and clinical (I personally went to the California Primate Center and it was pretty good, I've also heard great things about Yerkes and Southwest). I thought Yale and Johns Hopkins also had some more clinical hands on stuff. If you want to see industry/pharmaceutical company AbbVie has a good program - there's a combo pathology/lab animal thing and I think they house you for it.
 
Last year during my first month of my residency alone I diagnosed like 5 dogs with immune mediated meningoencephalitis/MUO/whatever you feel like calling it.
 
Spent the last week with a really sick mini in our isolation unit. After a few cycles of improving/declining, and passed this evening. I was having a real strong gut feeling to go in for 8pm treatments to get him to eat, but decided against it. I got a text about 40 minutes later that he'd died. He was a lot of nursing work, and diagnostics that didn't quite point to any one specific thing being wrong... He'll be going to necropsy tomorrow so hopefully we can get some more definitive answers.

It's eating at me that he's just sitting in his dirty stall all alone in an entirely segregated building. I don't think I get real attached to patients (especially horses), but this is weighing on me. Poor Cha Cha.
 
supershorty said:
Doing my first live surgery for my thesis project on Friday and have to be both anesthesiologist and surgeon. I love surgery but I’ve been having stress dreams since I scheduled this one last week :scared:
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Update: this went really well! It was not perfect during surgery, but I handled it fine, and patient was doing great when I did my last SOAP!
 
I feel like I've gotten a mini summer break this month between 2 weeks of vacation, and then derm which only meets 3 days a week (it's a 3 week rotation, but only 2 credit hours). I know I'll be missing this once I have anesthesia and internal med back to back in September/October, but right now I'm actually kind of bored. I probably should be using this time to get through more of VetPrep... :whistle:
 
LyraGardenia said:
I feel like I've gotten a mini summer break this month between 2 weeks of vacation, and then derm which only meets 3 days a week (it's a 3 week rotation, but only 2 credit hours). I know I'll be missing this once I have anesthesia and internal med back to back in September/October, but right now I'm actually kind of bored. I probably should be using this time to get through more of VetPrep... :whistle:
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I had two weeks of radiology, then two weeks of diagnostic skills, and now vacation. Haven't had to be at school before 8 or after 5, or on the weekend, in a month. Most days in the last two weeks I got an hour or more for lunch. When I come back from vacation I'm on orthopedic surgery. I'm going to die.
 
WildZoo said:
I had two weeks of radiology, then two weeks of diagnostic skills, and now vacation. Haven't had to be at school before 8 or after 5, or on the weekend, in a month. Most days in the last two weeks I got an hour or more for lunch. When I come back from vacation I'm on orthopedic surgery. I'm going to die.
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Ortho is a cakewalk here compared to soft tissue surgery. They are very good at getting us out on time and not wasting a bunch of our time on senseless bs (except trying to hunt a Dr down to get radiographs approved)

Internal med is like my last thing in our hospital. I've got alot of work to do securing some externships in the spring, but soon it will all be smooth sailing
 
Teepster87 said:
Ortho is a cakewalk here compared to soft tissue surgery. They are very good at getting us out on time and not wasting a bunch of our time on senseless bs (except trying to hunt a Dr down to get radiographs approved)

Internal med is like my last thing in our hospital. I've got alot of work to do securing some externships in the spring, but soon it will all be smooth sailing
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They're both pretty rough here, as far as I know. So. I'm just glad I have avian/exotics in between lol
 
WildZoo said:
They're both pretty rough here, as far as I know. So. I'm just glad I have avian/exotics in between lol
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Soft tissue and ortho are both rough here too, and I have them back to back at the very end. 😢
 
So I am curious how rotations are at other schools. I just completed 6 weeks with not a single day off and some very long days. I am soooo exhausted, have no social life, no time to exercise, and trying to find time to study for the NAVLE.
 
Petsfurever said:
So I am curious how rotations are at other schools. I just completed 6 weeks with not a single day off and some very long days. I am soooo exhausted, have no social life, no time to exercise, and trying to find time to study for the NAVLE.
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Most of our rotations are 3 weeks long, some are 2 weeks. I haven't had any with really intense patient care yet (internal med and surgery are notorious) but on equine we had a couple emergency shifts each week, so I had a few really long days then. Right now I'm on Pet Health (basically small animal GP) which is pretty much 7:30 to 5:30 M-F, but I'm dreading anesthesia in September, I've heard on that rotation if you get called in and stuck there overnight, you're still expected to come in the next day. Like I mentioned earlier, the last month or so has been pretty chill for me, but some of my classmates have been having a rougher time while others seem to be loving clinics, it really varies. I haven't done a ton of NAVLE studying yet, I think I'm at 13% on VetPrep, but planning on stepping things up over the next few weeks.
 
Petsfurever said:
So I am curious how rotations are at other schools. I just completed 6 weeks with not a single day off and some very long days. I am soooo exhausted, have no social life, no time to exercise, and trying to find time to study for the NAVLE.
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Our rotations are 2 weeks, except small animal internal med and anesthesia, which are both 4. 6 weeks without a day off sounds awful and should not happen. My longest stretch without a day where I didn't have to be at the hospital at all was 19 days, but I had days in there where I just had to be there for morning and evening treatments and otherwise was free. I guess I could see it happening here if you had 3 inpatient heavy rotations in a row, or maybe internal med and then another intense one right after. Certainly wouldn't have to be there all day for that long of a stretch but with morning and evening treatments it could happen.

I think I'm at like 1% on vet prep tbh. Been busy with other things. Going to try to ramp it up here but I also have a paper to write and two posters to work on so... :shrug:
 
Our rotations are 3 weeks long. This past year the school instituted a cap of 60hours a week for students in the clinic. It doesn't happen for all rotations, but it's getting better hospital wide. Internal med and soft tissue surgery are our notorious ones for running over that cap. My class's e board has been working with admin to give feedback about reasonable changes that we think could improve those rotations for students. There's also an accompanying rule about total number hours straight students are allowed to spend in hospital, and time off before coming back in. I don't remember what those numbers are off the top of my head. I'll see if I can find the email announcement and post it.

For our anesthesia, if you're here past midnight you normally don't have to come in the next day.

It's a legitimate safety concern. Not just for patients but ourselves as well. I think it's totally unreasonable to be running on empty for that long.
 
Teepster87 said:
Our rotations are 3 weeks long. This past year the school instituted a cap of 60hours a week for students in the clinic. It doesn't happen for all rotations, but it's getting better hospital wide. Internal med and soft tissue surgery are our notorious ones for running over that cap. My class's e board has been working with admin to give feedback about reasonable changes that we think could improve those rotations for students. There's also an accompanying rule about total number hours straight students are allowed to spend in hospital, and time off before coming back in. I don't remember what those numbers are off the top of my head. I'll see if I can find the email announcement and post it.

For our anesthesia, if you're here past midnight you normally don't have to come in the next day.

It's a legitimate safety concern. Not just for patients but ourselves as well. I think it's totally unreasonable to be running on empty for that long.
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That sounds amazing. Internal and soft tissue are also the ones we have where you'll be lucky if you're here less than 12 hours every day, and weekends you're usually here for 3-4 hours minimum each day as well.

Our LA overnights you're scheduled for 16 hour shifts for two weeks straight with no breaks. It's a little ridiculous.
 
Teepster87 said:
Our rotations are 3 weeks long. This past year the school instituted a cap of 60hours a week for students in the clinic. It doesn't happen for all rotations, but it's getting better hospital wide. Internal med and soft tissue surgery are our notorious ones for running over that cap. My class's e board has been working with admin to give feedback about reasonable changes that we think could improve those rotations for students. There's also an accompanying rule about total number hours straight students are allowed to spend in hospital, and time off before coming back in. I don't remember what those numbers are off the top of my head. I'll see if I can find the email announcement and post it.

For our anesthesia, if you're here past midnight you normally don't have to come in the next day.

It's a legitimate safety concern. Not just for patients but ourselves as well. I think it's totally unreasonable to be running on empty for that long.
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Is your school doing anything to address the hours that interns and residents are there? I'm just curious because more and more schools are instituting rules like this for their students, which is great, but they seem to neglect to realize that the interns and residents are working even longer hours. I'm down from about 120 hours as an intern to about 60-80 as a resident, depending on the week. This comment isn't intended to take away from how appropriate it is for you guys to have an adequate work/life balance.
 
Teepster87 said:
It's a legitimate safety concern. Not just for patients but ourselves as well. I think it's totally unreasonable to be running on empty for that long.
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Yeah. My last rotation was an average of 84 hours/week on the other campus, and on top of that, I had to commute every day for the first week (~50 minutes each way, but really, 40 minutes with me speeding like a lunatic at 4 am) because one of my cats was sick, and I didn't have anyone who could take care of him for me. And I ended up having to bring him in through emergency at the small animal hospital and figure out a way to manage it all while on that insane schedule. It's quite honestly a miracle that I didn't slam my car into a f-ing tree. Having the drive be the only time I could eat anything probably saved me from falling asleep at the wheel, to be honest. It's ridiculous. Even on the days where I was able to stay on campus for the night, there was only time to eat, shower, and crawl into bed before starting all over again.
 
Okimo said:
Is your school doing anything to address the hours that interns and residents are there? I'm just curious because more and more schools are instituting rules like this for their students, which is great, but they seem to neglect to realize that the interns and residents are working even longer hours. I'm down from about 120 hours as an intern to about 60-80 as a resident, depending on the week. This comment isn't intended to take away from how appropriate it is for you guys to have an adequate work/life balance.
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We're working on using the SAVMA guidelines to apply to house officers as well as students (as much as they can). It's still kind of in the infant stages.
 
Okimo said:
Is your school doing anything to address the hours that interns and residents are there? I'm just curious because more and more schools are instituting rules like this for their students, which is great, but they seem to neglect to realize that the interns and residents are working even longer hours. I'm down from about 120 hours as an intern to about 60-80 as a resident, depending on the week. This comment isn't intended to take away from how appropriate it is for you guys to have an adequate work/life balance.
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I believe they are, but I haven't been tuned into those rules as much as for the students. If they've announced anything it was probably just between the faculty, residents, and interns.
They've really been trying to hire more clinicians I believe, but its really hard to draw specialists into academia from private practice. Rumor on the street is that we've finally managed to snag a radiologist after almost 2 years of not having one. And some.of our services are limited on the number of residents they can take because of a lack of boarded clinicians. We just had to send a second year resident to another school to finish their residency up because we lost a clinician. But they're definitely trying what they can to make sure that **** just isn't rolling back onto residents and interns because of the new limits on students
 
The laughing react actually fits my reaction to the idea of the majority of people in academic vet med caring about whether **** rolls back onto the residents and interns by the way.
 
nyanko said:
The laughing react actually fits my reaction to the idea of the majority of people in academic vet med caring about whether **** rolls back onto the residents and interns by the way.
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Well I care about you all. Keeping the residents happy makes my rotations alot smoother :laugh:
 
I'm actually quite fortunate in that the faculty members in my service do care quite a bit about us and our well-being. The same can't be said for other faculty elsewhere in the hospital though.
 
That sucks. I can see it happening if you scheduled all your heavy-hitters in a row, but even then, ridiculous. Part of it also depends on your rotation mates making sure to share responsibilities and take turns on the tough cases or emergencies. Make sure to stand up for yourself when it comes to lazy rotation mates, too🙂
 
nyanko said:
The laughing react actually fits my reaction to the idea of the majority of people in academic vet med caring about whether **** rolls back onto the residents and interns by the way.
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I mean, I'm well aware that we're a cheap labour source to exploit but it's nice to think that someone, somewhere cares 🙂
 
Began my last in hospital (at least the MSU hospital) rotation today. Get me the heck out of here!

I really need to get on top of setting up my externships for the spring semester, it's going to be here before we even realize.

Keep charging onwards colleagues! Our incubation period is almost complete!!
 
Teepster87 said:
Began my last in hospital (at least the MSU hospital) rotation today. Get me the heck out of here!

I really need to get on top of setting up my externships for the spring semester, it's going to be here before we even realize.

Keep charging onwards colleagues! Our incubation period is almost complete!!
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Dang you get to be off campus so much!
 
awesomenessity said:
path stuff
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@WhtsThFrequency can correct me if I'm wrong and I obviously defer to her on anatomic stuff, but if you're thinking of pursuing an academia career in anatomic pathology, I think a PhD is still an expected/highly desired component in addition to ACVP board certification. Perhaps you could work on the PhD part while they sort out the red tape of a 'real' residency and get a jump on it that way? I know clin path is changing and it is relatively common to seek non-PhD clinical track positions, but I don't know the state of anatomic path on that. There are path internships at a couple schools in the states (Kansas, I think Cornell) to expose you more to anatomic and clinical path, but those wouldn't address the need to stay near your dad.
 
JaynaAli said:
@WhtsThFrequency can correct me if I'm wrong and I obviously defer to her on anatomic stuff, but if you're thinking of pursuing an academia career in anatomic pathology, I think a PhD is still an expected/highly desired component in addition to ACVP board certification. Perhaps you could work on the PhD part while they sort out the red tape of a 'real' residency and get a jump on it that way? I know clin path is changing and it is relatively common to seek non-PhD clinical track positions, but I don't know the state of anatomic path on that. There are path internships at a couple schools in the states (Kansas, I think Cornell) to expose you more to anatomic and clinical path, but those wouldn't address the need to stay near your dad.
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Yeah, I know the Canadian schools offer the anatomic residency as an MSc or a PhD depending on where you go. I believe my school is leaning towards making it an MSc, which I think at the end of the day is the red tape it's caught up in... In order for them to start a new MSc program, they have to get approval from the governing body of the university or something. I'm not 100% clear on the details but there are discussions with our dean happening currently. I'll talk to them about your suggestion though, that would be a great work around! Also interesting to know there are internships out there... I only ever hear about the residency programs so that might be another good option for an in-between thing. Thanks Jayna 🙂
 
JaynaAli said:
@WhtsThFrequency can correct me if I'm wrong and I obviously defer to her on anatomic stuff, but if you're thinking of pursuing an academia career in anatomic pathology, I think a PhD is still an expected/highly desired component in addition to ACVP board certification. Perhaps you could work on the PhD part while they sort out the red tape of a 'real' residency and get a jump on it that way? I know clin path is changing and it is relatively common to seek non-PhD clinical track positions, but I don't know the state of anatomic path on that. There are path internships at a couple schools in the states (Kansas, I think Cornell) to expose you more to anatomic and clinical path, but those wouldn't address the need to stay near your dad.
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This was going to be exactly my suggestion @awesomenessity
Of course I only have the limited exposure of my own school but all of our anatomic pathologists also have PhDs which were either combined with their residency program or were separate, and if it sounds like your ideal residency program isn't going to have the PhD integrated in, I think it would work well to work on that while you wait for them to get things put together.
 
@awesomenessity Sorry about your family stuff 🙁 Personally (and the others who’ve gone through path residency can correct me if it’s no biggie) I would be worried about hanging my hat on a residency that hasn’t yet materialized, even if they’re trying to make it happen. It could be years from now, you could still have to compete against other highly qualified applicants, it’s an unproven program in regards to board prep and you’d be the guinea pig...or it might never come to fruition.

I think the idea to work on the PhD is a solid one, but I’d also consider sitting down with your dad and talking things through. If he has to move even if you’re in-province, is there a way you could have him move in or closer to other family? Could he lease the property he has? Find a care giver? Because I think one of the better options is to apply broadly to residencies including in the US. I completely understand your concerns about leaving your dad behind, but I’d hate for you to get stuck doing something you don’t like, or having your home program not work out for whatever reason and you have regrets.
 
that redhead said:
@awesomenessity Sorry about your family stuff Personally (and the others who’ve gone through path residency can correct me if it’s no biggie) I would be worried about hanging my hat on a residency that hasn’t yet materialized, even if they’re trying to make it happen. It could be years from now, you could still have to compete against other highly qualified applicants, it’s an unproven program in regards to board prep and you’d be the guinea pig...or it might never come to fruition.

I think the idea to work on the PhD is a solid one, but I’d also consider sitting down with your dad and talking things through. If he has to move even if you’re in-province, is there a way you could have him move in or closer to other family? Could he lease the property he has? Find a care giver? Because I think one of the better options is to apply broadly to residencies including in the US. I completely understand your concerns about leaving your dad behind, but I’d hate for you to get stuck doing something you don’t like, or having your home program not work out for whatever reason and you have regrets.
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Yeah, that’s why I’m hesitant to wait on my home school as well. The issue with my dad and moving is a bit multifaceted haha. We currently have 5 horses that need somewhere to live, so it limits our options regarding where he can go (since they currently live at home with him). He is also not the most attentive horse owner ever, which adds to my concern because they are basically my children lol. If I stayed here, we would end up buying a new place with room for the horses etc so we’d all live here together. If I go elsewhere, it wouldn’t make much sense for him to move to another place when we already have a good horse set up... I guess if I knew for sure I was returning to this area he could move, but that’s not a guarantee either. I have debated finding somewhere to pasture board them all, but that will end up being $1000/month at least. Also only one of them is really saleable for a number of reasons, so not like I could really downsize easily. It’s a complicated issue but I think you’re right, I just need to sit down with him and figure this stuff out. He seems to want to sort it out after I figure out where I’m going, but I think that might be a bit too late, lol.
 
JaynaAli said:
@WhtsThFrequency can correct me if I'm wrong and I obviously defer to her on anatomic stuff, but if you're thinking of pursuing an academia career in anatomic pathology, I think a PhD is still an expected/highly desired component in addition to ACVP board certification. Perhaps you could work on the PhD part while they sort out the red tape of a 'real' residency and get a jump on it that way? I know clin path is changing and it is relatively common to seek non-PhD clinical track positions, but I don't know the state of anatomic path on that. There are path internships at a couple schools in the states (Kansas, I think Cornell) to expose you more to anatomic and clinical path, but those wouldn't address the need to stay near your dad.
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WildZoo said:
This was going to be exactly my suggestion @awesomenessity
Of course I only have the limited exposure of my own school but all of our anatomic pathologists also have PhDs which were either combined with their residency program or were separate, and if it sounds like your ideal residency program isn't going to have the PhD integrated in, I think it would work well to work on that while you wait for them to get things put together.
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It's still quite common to have a PhD in addition to residency since many programs are combined, just as you said. You wouldn't need a PhD is you wanted to go into pure diagnostics (e.g. state dx lab, IDEXX, etc) but for an academic position (i.e. assistant/associate/full professor) you will almost definitely need one. Industry is 50/50. It's still way more common/expected than it is in clin path.

@awesomenessity you said the school you are talking to is thinking of "starting a residency" - do they not already have a program in place? Would you be the first resident? Or did you mean creating an additional position to a program they already have? I would be wary of being a guinea pig in a brand new residency program, especially for path. Path boards are a BEAST - it's a very difficult residency that requires a LOT of programmatic support, organization, a very diverse and dedicated pathology faculty, etc. Especially if you were the *only* resident in a brand new program.....yeah, I wouldn't touch that. Nope. I was lucky enough to attend a large program with a solid history, intense organization, and excellent board pass rate..... and it retrospect I realize how essential that was to my success compared to friends of mine who struggled in smaller, newer, or less-well-organized residencies.

Things move very, very, veeeerryyyy slowly in academia. Honestly you don't even have a guarantee that they will even start a program, and no guarantee they would take you, and no guarantee of program quality even if the first two things happened. That type of uncertainty does not bode well. I hate to say it, but I wouldn't wait around on them.
 
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awesomenessity said:
Stuffs
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I know this is hard to separate yourself from and think about because I have recently had to do this as well, especially with everything being so recent. But, your dad is a grown, mature, adult he needs to have some responsibility for himself. You can not and should not put your life aside or your life plans aside just because your dad will be "lonely" and refuses to move or seek options to be rid of that loneliness. Besides, you alone can't prevent him being lonely. You being around will help, but he needs to have friends and people of his age to talk with and relate to. At some point you do have to expect your grown father to find or attempt to find a resolution to his own life problems.

You don't want to miss out on something you want out of life because your dad refused to attempt to take care of himself and you gave up everything to support him. At some point, you will feel resentment.

I know because I recently had the same with my own father. He lost his job, then lost his leg due to diabetes complications. Lots of things out of his control but there was so much in his control that he just refused to do and continues to refuse to do. At first I was all, that is ok, I will help them, I can help them. And I did. But as time built up and he basically wasn't trying at all I stopped helping. It isn't worth risking my sanity and well-being to assist someone that refuses to assist themselves. It is hard to separate those emotions, but remember you have to live your life as well.

When my grandmother passed, my grandfather went to a spousal grief support group rather immediately after she passed and that has helped my grandpa tremendously. I would recommend you suggest the same for your father. He needs to talk with others that have been through something similar and find something else to do or at least some friends to do things with.
 
LyraGardenia said:
Just scheduled my NAVLE for November 25th! I'm annoyed that the closest testing center is in Topeka, an hour from here.
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Since ours is the same for either OKC or Tulsa, I stayed the night before so I didn't have to get up early and drive. If you can, I highly recommend it. I stayed with a classmate taking it the same day to save some $$.
 
Lupin21 said:
Since ours is the same for either OKC or Tulsa, I stayed the night before so I didn't have to get up early and drive. If you can, I highly recommend it. I stayed with a classmate taking it the same day to save some $$.
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That's what I was considering!
 
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