Class of 2021 . . . how ya doin?

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Coopah said:
Also, as a fun aside: I have to get things scheduled more than a year in advance. I tried to schedule an externship in freaking June, and they said they were full through 2020! I'm hoping to land a 2021 date when they open their calendar but holy cow, that's ridiculous.
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Was this the Spay/Neuter Alliance? That's the earliest one I scheduled since they're so popular
 
I discovered today that I have plans every single weekend from now until after VMX in January and while almost all of it is fun, I’m exhausted just thinking about it!
 
Coopah said:
Our externship deadline was Oct 4th and most of us don't have dates set up yet, but we guessed and will have to change the schedule later. Unfortunately, they didn't give us a great heads up (2weeks) about when the deadline was, so more than half the class either doesn't have externships or only has one or two. It's times like this I'm grateful I'm neurotic and planned out all my externships before being given any information. Otherwise, I'd be screwed.

Also, as a fun aside: I have to get things scheduled more than a year in advance. I tried to schedule an externship in freaking June, and they said they were full through 2020! I'm hoping to land a 2021 date when they open their calendar but holy cow, that's ridiculous.
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Have you contacted them recently? I contacted them back in September I think and they hadn’t started booking for 2021 but told me to fill the form out again early November.
 
I’m personally struggling to decide if I want to do the humane alliance or not. It sounds awesome but they say you only get like 15 surgeries in those 2 weeks and I feel like I would get more either on our shelter med bus or at the shelter at home.... and I only get 3 free blocks unless I want to use vacation blocks.
 
SkiOtter said:
I’m personally struggling to decide if I want to do the humane alliance or not. It sounds awesome but they say you only get like 15 surgeries in those 2 weeks and I feel like I would get more either on our shelter med bus or at the shelter at home.... and I only get 3 free blocks unless I want to use vacation blocks.
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It’s a great rotation but numbers wise is about right. You pick up some great training tips to make surgeries quicker but if you can get more experience elsewhere....

plus cost of living, travel, etc
 
SkiOtter said:
I’m personally struggling to decide if I want to do the humane alliance or not. It sounds awesome but they say you only get like 15 surgeries in those 2 weeks and I feel like I would get more either on our shelter med bus or at the shelter at home.... and I only get 3 free blocks unless I want to use vacation blocks.
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There were only two fourth years on the shelter bus last block. They got a boat load of surgeries compared to that.
 
SkiOtter said:
They told me the tentative “live date” for the 2021 scheduling was November 1st and I talked to them end of September
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They told me they were giving themselves wiggle room and they'll let us know. I just checked the website again, there isn't even a spot to resubmit the form.

Originally they told me the "go live date" was Oct 14th
 
Coopah said:
Last I spoke to them was October sometime.
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SkiOtter said:
They told me the tentative “live date” for the 2021 scheduling was November 1st and I talked to them end of September
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Update, just checked their website and they say December 1st now AND you apparently get to straight up schedule your 2 weeks instead of waiting for them to contact you after filling out that google form.

E78BEE4A-B204-4573-906C-9D99D97A58D0.png
 
Coopah said:
They told me they were giving themselves wiggle room and they'll let us know. I just checked the website again, there isn't even a spot to resubmit the form.

Originally they told me the "go live date" was Oct 14th
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Yeah I wasn’t even told that they’d let me know. I was just told I needed to check myself and resubmit the form early November (now December 1)
 
It feels like 8 pm right now and I dont even know what to do with myself. Lol
 
Coopah said:
They told me they were giving themselves wiggle room and they'll let us know. I just checked the website again, there isn't even a spot to resubmit the form.

Originally they told me the "go live date" was Oct 14th
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@Coopah they just emailed me and it’s live privately for early 2021 dates for people who previously applied. Go sign up!!!! I assume you got the email too but just to make sure you saw it :laugh:
 
SkiOtter said:
@Coopah they just emailed me and it’s live privately for early 2021 dates for people who previously applied. Go sign up!!!! I assume you got the email too but just to make sure you saw it :laugh:
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Yes I saw, and I did! Very excited I got in. They sent it 6am my time so I'm glad I caught it so early!

Edit: I can't stop freaking out about this, it's just an externship but I've been doing the extremely bad dancing in celebration! I'm telling everyone I know lol. I'm soooo excited!
 
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Coopah said:
Yes I saw, and I did! Very excited I got in. They sent it 6am my time so I'm glad I caught it so early!

Edit: I can't stop freaking out about this, it's just an externship but I've been doing the extremely bad dancing in celebration! I'm telling everyone I know lol. I'm soooo excited!
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Yay!!!! I’m glad you got in!!!!!
 
Re:Humane Alliance.

I did about as many surgeries in like, four days at a random shelter n FL as three weeks (they don't offer that anymore, I don't think) at Humane Alliance. It's nooot high volume by any means.

However, I actually use the techniques taught there in literally every spay/neuter I do, and can forever put that I was trained there on my resume, which is super nice if I ever transition into shelter/higher volume work.

I do think just getting volume is super helpful, and had well over a hundred surgeries when I graduated. But the hands-on, systematic teaching at HA was still so freaking helpful compared to just getting chucked into abdomens for me that I'll eternally push it lol.

Plus Asheville is fantastic (breweries! hiking!) and the hours are great so I didn't feel bad at all using a chunk of vacation block for my rotation.
 
SkiOtter said:
@Teepster87 i think last year said there was a googleable study guide?
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Teepster87 said:
Yeah, I found some quizlets by pasting some of the questions into Google that helped out alot
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Thanks, I ended up just powering through all ~30 modules this morning. Turns out that answering things for public health related modules actually goes by pretty fast when you have a degree in public health lol
 
Trilt said:
Re:Humane Alliance.

I did about as many surgeries in like, four days at a random shelter n FL as three weeks (they don't offer that anymore, I don't think) at Humane Alliance. It's nooot high volume by any means.

However, I actually use the techniques taught there in literally every spay/neuter I do, and can forever put that I was trained there on my resume, which is super nice if I ever transition into shelter/higher volume work.

I do think just getting volume is super helpful, and had well over a hundred surgeries when I graduated. But the hands-on, systematic teaching at HA was still so freaking helpful compared to just getting chucked into abdomens for me that I'll eternally push it lol.

Plus Asheville is fantastic (breweries! hiking!) and the hours are great so I didn't feel bad at all using a chunk of vacation block for my rotation.
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Yeah, I just don’t have many weeks that I’m allowed to schedule it and there are certain rotations at school that can only be scheduled during your 3 2-week free elective blocks, like our shelter med bus. C/O 2022 they’re apparently not scheduling until May now so I can still change my mind in the next 6 months if I choose.
 
vetmedhead said:
Thanks, I ended up just powering through all ~30 modules this morning. Turns out that answering things for public health related modules actually goes by pretty fast when you have a degree in public health lol
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We had to do 50 😢 but I'm sure already knowing the stuff helped lol
 
Bringing back old stuff but...

Re: dog neuters - we learned pre-scrotal for adults in the Spay/Neuter elective, which was more traditional techniques overall, and is also what they wanted us to do on our Community Practice rotation. On the Shelter med rotation though, we did scrotal for everything.

Re: surgeries in general - For us, roughly half the class total ends up doing the Spay/Neuter elective, you do 6-10 surgeries that way. So some people do go into clinics with no live surgeries based strictly on the curriculum, though everyone will have done cadavers. But everybody does Community Practice and Shelter Med during 4th year. 4 surgeries from the former (2 spays, 2 neuters, usually dogs), 20+ from the latter, and that's a variety of cat and dog spays and neuters. If you're "lucky" like me you'll get a pregnant cat and a post-partum flank spay, which is fun.
 
WildZoo said:
Re: surgeries in general - For us, roughly half the class total ends up doing the Spay/Neuter elective, you do 6-10 surgeries that way. So some people do go into clinics with no live surgeries based strictly on the curriculum, though everyone will have done cadavers. But everybody does Community Practice and Shelter Med during 4th year. 4 surgeries from the former (2 spays, 2 neuters, usually dogs), 20+ from the latter, and that's a variety of cat and dog spays and neuters. If you're "lucky" like me you'll get a pregnant cat and a post-partum flank spay, which is fun.
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Wait you don’t have required junior surgery?!
 
SkiOtter said:
Wait you don’t have required junior surgery?!
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Nope. It was discussed but the trade-off would be fewer surgeries for people who wanted to do the elective, so they decided to keep pre-clinical as is and make shelter med a core rotation.
 
batsenecal said:
So, serious question: our class of 2020 has sent out a petition for our school to enact the SAVMA Duty Hours Guidelines, and I was curious on how other schools handle fourth year. Do your schools abide by these guidelines?
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It's been discussed for sure, but we're not there yet lol
 
The place I did my residency at was/is implementing the Duty Hours thing for students. I think it's a good thing, but I really think it needs to be a bottom-up or top-down complete revamp of how the hospitals function to truly be successful. When they first started discussing it it seemed like work would just get pushed onto the house officers when the students had to go home. There are recent duty hour recommendations for house officers too...the school said they planned to implement them for interns first then eventually (2-3 years down the line it seemed) for other residents. In the meantime, it seemed like the already overworked house officers would get even more piled on to them while they "waited their turn" for the hour changes. And what's going to happen when the house officers don't get the work done...the faculty do it? Some maybe, some I feel wouldn't accept that. Shifting work from one group to another up the line seemed like a poor plan to me...I do feel the hours are a step in the right direction if students are routinely staying hours and hours (I will say that I wasn't ever at school for more than like 10-12 hours [usually closer to 10 and if 12 it was because I had 8pm treatments and it was easier to stay than go home and come back] except for very rare cases you knew about in advance when you worked a 5-midnight swing overnight after a dayshift) but I really feel like they need to re-evaluate the clinical program (what do students need to be doing to learn vs what do we make them do for cheap labor, hire appropriate technical staff, make academia paperwork less laborious/redundant, etc) to really make it work.
 
WildZoo said:
Nope. It was discussed but the trade-off would be fewer surgeries for people who wanted to do the elective, so they decided to keep pre-clinical as is and make shelter med a core rotation.
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They being in special shelter animals just for our surgery class. We give them free surgeries, trade off is that students are doing the surgeries. So it doesn't take away from the senior surgeries that are actual client surgeries.

Another trade off is that occasionally these shelter animals are already spayed and no one knows until you open them up. And even more occasionally a male sneaks through and our spays turn into a neuter :laugh:
 
JaynaAli said:
The place I did my residency at was/is implementing the Duty Hours thing for students. I think it's a good thing, but I really think it needs to be a bottom-up or top-down complete revamp of how the hospitals function to truly be successful. When they first started discussing it it seemed like work would just get pushed onto the house officers when the students had to go home. There are recent duty hour recommendations for house officers too...the school said they planned to implement them for interns first then eventually (2-3 years down the line it seemed) for other residents. In the meantime, it seemed like the already overworked house officers would get even more piled on to them while they "waited their turn" for the hour changes. And what's going to happen when the house officers don't get the work done...the faculty do it? Some maybe, some I feel wouldn't accept that. Shifting work from one group to another up the line seemed like a poor plan to me...I do feel the hours are a step in the right direction if students are routinely staying hours and hours (I will say that I wasn't ever at school for more than like 10-12 hours [usually closer to 10 and if 12 it was because I had 8pm treatments and it was easier to stay than go home and come back] except for very rare cases you knew about in advance when you worked a 5-midnight swing overnight after a dayshift) but I really feel like they need to re-evaluate the clinical program (what do students need to be doing to learn vs what do we make them do for cheap labor, hire appropriate technical staff, make academia paperwork less laborious/redundant, etc) to really make it work.
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Bravo
 
Coopah said:
They being in special shelter animals just for our surgery class. We give them free surgeries, trade off is that students are doing the surgeries. So it doesn't take away from the senior surgeries that are actual client surgeries.

Another trade off is that occasionally these shelter animals are already spayed and no one knows until you open them up. And even more occasionally a male sneaks through and our spays turn into a neuter :laugh:
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We are never primary on client surgeries unless it's something like a mass removal, your senior students are? That's surprising actually. For us, spays and neuters are all shelter animals whether it's during 2nd, 3rd, or 4th year. It's more that if all 85 or so of us took Spay/Neuter we would get fewer surgeries simply due to scheduling, and they decided that having fewer people who really wanted to do surgery getting to do more was more important than having everyone do a couple before clinics, as long as everyone learns by the time they graduate.

We had similar things happen with the shelter animals for sure lol Though how anyone ever mistakes a male dog for a female dog is beyond me
 
JaynaAli said:
The place I did my residency at was/is implementing the Duty Hours thing for students. I think it's a good thing, but I really think it needs to be a bottom-up or top-down complete revamp of how the hospitals function to truly be successful. When they first started discussing it it seemed like work would just get pushed onto the house officers when the students had to go home. There are recent duty hour recommendations for house officers too...the school said they planned to implement them for interns first then eventually (2-3 years down the line it seemed) for other residents. In the meantime, it seemed like the already overworked house officers would get even more piled on to them while they "waited their turn" for the hour changes. And what's going to happen when the house officers don't get the work done...the faculty do it? Some maybe, some I feel wouldn't accept that. Shifting work from one group to another up the line seemed like a poor plan to me...I do feel the hours are a step in the right direction if students are routinely staying hours and hours (I will say that I wasn't ever at school for more than like 10-12 hours [usually closer to 10 and if 12 it was because I had 8pm treatments and it was easier to stay than go home and come back] except for very rare cases you knew about in advance when you worked a 5-midnight swing overnight after a dayshift) but I really feel like they need to re-evaluate the clinical program (what do students need to be doing to learn vs what do we make them do for cheap labor, hire appropriate technical staff, make academia paperwork less laborious/redundant, etc) to really make it work.
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The need for technical staff and reducing redundancy in paperwork...1000 times yes. I don't mind having a long day if it feels like I'm doing something important, but there were days on some rotations where I spent hours of time I was supposed to have off doing paperwork. We also have this weird paper and electronic record hybrid that gets really, really annoying.
 
WildZoo said:
We are never primary on client surgeries unless it's something like a mass removal, your senior students are? That's surprising actually. For us, spays and neuters are all shelter animals whether it's during 2nd, 3rd, or 4th year. It's more that if all 85 or so of us took Spay/Neuter we would get fewer surgeries simply due to scheduling, and they decided that having fewer people who really wanted to do surgery getting to do more was more important than having everyone do a couple before clinics, as long as everyone learns by the time they graduate.

We had similar things happen with the shelter animals for sure lol Though how anyone ever mistakes a male dog for a female dog is beyond me
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Yeah, we’re only primary in surgeries on community practice, but that’s also up to the clinician on with you and sometimes even then they won’t let you be primary. Anything on one of the actual surgery services though a student is just assistant and maybe puts a few ligatures and closes skin +/- maybe subq too. Tbh I would be pissed as client paying $5k+ for a surgery and having a student be primary on it lol
 
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JaynaAli said:
but I really think it needs to be a bottom-up or top-down complete revamp of how the hospitals function to truly be successful.
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Agreed.

Our school is actually planning adopting the SAVMA guidelines, but it's going to be a while and probably wont benefit 2020 much at all. The school simply doesnt have the solid infrastructure currently to do it off the bat; we dont have enough techs right now to get it done. Our surgery, internal med, and ER students regularly have 14-16 hour days, or days of on call where they are at school for 14 hours, get home, get called in, and dont get back home till 3, 4, or 5 in the morning, and are expected back at 7 am. We're also responsible for handling isolation watch, and are on call for ICU or ER shifts if either service gets overwhelmed.
 
WildZoo said:
The need for technical staff and reducing redundancy in paperwork...1000 times yes. I don't mind having a long day if it feels like I'm doing something important, but there were days on some rotations where I spent hours of time I was supposed to have off doing paperwork. We also have this weird paper and electronic record hybrid that gets really, really annoying.
Click to expand...

We didn't have to write soaps on all our rotations, but when I bust my ass writing a 6-8 page breakdown of problems and pathophysiology and rule outs (like they've instructed us to do), and no one even bothers to look at it... **** this broken assed system.
 
Teepster87 said:
We didn't have to write soaps on all our rotations, but when I bust my ass writing a 6-8 page breakdown of problems and pathophysiology and rule outs (like they've instructed us to do), and no one even bothers to look at it... **** this broken assed system.
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Sounds awesome. Where do I sign up?
 
WildZoo said:
We are never primary on client surgeries unless it's something like a mass removal, your senior students are? That's surprising actually. For us, spays and neuters are all shelter animals whether it's during 2nd, 3rd, or 4th year. It's more that if all 85 or so of us took Spay/Neuter we would get fewer surgeries simply due to scheduling, and they decided that having fewer people who really wanted to do surgery getting to do more was more important than having everyone do a couple before clinics, as long as everyone learns by the time they graduate.

We had similar things happen with the shelter animals for sure lol Though how anyone ever mistakes a male dog for a female dog is beyond me
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Male cat for a female cat actually.

We get to be primary on the community surgery rotation so it's all basic surgeries like mass removals, spay/neuter or other basic procedures.
 
Coopah said:
Male cat for a female cat actually.
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That's more reasonable. It's really hard to tell sometimes! Especially with the little ones.

Coopah said:
We get to be primary on the community surgery rotation so it's all basic surgeries like mass removals, spay/neuter or other basic procedures.
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Gotcha, that's pretty cool 🙂
 
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