Does watching a surgery on an animal by human surgeons count as vet experience?

[bumble-bee]

I am shadowing a veterinarian at an animal lab. I watched the veterinarian prepare the animal for surgery, but for most of the time, I watched the surgery by human, non-veterinary surgeons. The vet would still explain things to me from time to time. Would this count as veterinary experience?

Also, if I sat in a lecture listening to veterinarians talk, does that count as veterinary experience, though I didn't do anything? This was at a summer camp.

Thanks for your time!

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[battie]

The first is an interesting one, which I would be inclined to call vet experience. I'll tag @that redhead and @KCgophervet to see their perspectives.

The second one, I wouldn't consider that one vet experience. You're not experiencing the life of a vet in a career setting.

 

[that redhead]

A lot of surgery in lab animal is done by non-vets. All of the procedures go through review by the IACUC, which includes at least one vet. I think if you observed the vet prepping the animal(s) for surgery and observed the surgery with vet commentary, you could count it as veterinary experience. I would be careful not to plan to devote too many hours to this particular category though.

 

[bumble-bee]

I see, thank you so much for your insight. It is just sometimes hard to differentiate vet experience from non vet experience

 

[Gangar#094]

If it was a summer camp where you experienced this all together, I’d recommend a single experience and decide if it’s vet/non-vet based on what the campus was (e.g. STEM, Pre-Med, Vet, etc).

A rule of thumb for veterinary experience is supervision under a veterinarian, specifically: “Veterinary Experience includes any veterinary clinical, agribusiness, or health science experiences that took place under the supervision of a veterinarian.”

The exception is veterinarian research, which should be listed as a research experience.

If it’s a broad summer camp with STEM, I’d recommend extracurricular as a single experience.

 

[WhtsThFrequency]

Eh, you could *maybe* swing that first one all the way over to vet experience, but vet experience is typically in a clinical setting, or at least a clinical-ish setting. I would almost count that first experience more as a research - I assume the reason that the surgery was done by non-veterinary surgeons was because it was a research project. I can see how you could make the argument either way, though. It depends on if your overall experience during the shadowing was more focused on the lab animals themselves under the supervision of the vet, or if it was being involved in the research project(s) themselves.

And no, listening to a lecture is not veterinary experience at all. That's like saying I have engineering experience because I sat in on an engineering lecture.

 

[webhill]

I personally think that shadowing a lab animal veterinarian in the clinical setting of working with lab animals is definitely veterinary experience, unless as WhtsThFrequency said you were actually working for the research side of things.

 

[supershorty]

I personally think that shadowing a lab animal veterinarian in the clinical setting of working with lab animals is definitely veterinary experience

It is - no one here is saying that it isn't. But OP watching non-veterinarians doing surgeries on research animals (advised by a veterinarian), which is the question at hand here, is more of a grey zone/leaning toward not veterinary experience.

OP, I had pre-vets and vet students in the OR with me when I was doing surgeries on my research animals and I would have strongly discouraged them from calling it veterinary experience because I am not a veterinarian. They could very easily call it research experience and that would be accurate.

 

[vfischeri]

A lot of surgery in lab animal is done by non-vets. All of the procedures go through review by the IACUC, which includes at least one vet. I think if you observed the vet prepping the animal(s) for surgery and observed the surgery with vet commentary, you could count it as veterinary experience. I would be careful not to plan to devote too many hours to this particular category though.

Hi, 2nd year vet student here and interested in lab animal medicine. I don't know a ton about the field, so out of pure curiosity - is there a particular reason why a veterinarian would be advising human surgeons rather than doing the surgery themselves? Apologies for my lack of knowledge here, but very interested to learn more about this!

 

[eleanor713]

Hi, 2nd year vet student here and interested in lab animal medicine. I don't know a ton about the field, so out of pure curiosity - is there a particular reason why a veterinarian would be advising human surgeons rather than doing the surgery themselves? Apologies for my lack of knowledge here, but very interested to learn more about this!

I work in lab animal practice now and from the projects I’ve seen it’s most normally a PhD or MD conducting the research. The veterinarian is there to make sure the project is done in a humane way and to provide assistance in forms of medication, anesthesia, and overall wellness of the animal being used but it is not the veterinarians research so they don’t do the actual surgery. We have had one case where we did all of the work and the researcher just collected the data, but other than that every research team comes in with the surgeons and support staff they need.

 

[supershorty]

Hi, 2nd year vet student here and interested in lab animal medicine. I don't know a ton about the field, so out of pure curiosity - is there a particular reason why a veterinarian would be advising human surgeons rather than doing the surgery themselves? Apologies for my lack of knowledge here, but very interested to learn more about this!

[I am not a lab animal vet] Researchers generally do their own procedures, in part because it's simply not feasible for one veterinarian to do all of the procedures at an institution, but also because it's not the research being done by that veterinarian, may be experimental procedures, etc.

 

[genny]

[I am not a lab animal vet] Researchers generally do their own procedures, in part because it's simply not feasible for one veterinarian to do all of the procedures at an institution, but also because it's not the research being done by that veterinarian, may be experimental procedures, etc.

This. Plus at the institution where I worked, it cost more to have the vet do the procedures rather than have the researcher do it.

 

[WhtsThFrequency]

Yep. It's not even human surgeons most of the time (if ever....I can't imagine a practicing/primarily clinical MD surgeon wasting their time doing that all the time when they could be making way more money in practice, lol).

It's usually the PIs themselves (PhDs, maaaaaybe MD/PhDs or DVM/PhDs depending on the lab), postdocs, lab managers, and grad students doing the surgeries depending on the complexity.

 

[that redhead]

Yep. It's not even human surgeons most of the time (if ever....I can't imagine a practicing/primarily clinical MD surgeon wasting their time doing that all the time when they could be making way more money in practice, lol).

It's usually the PIs themselves (PhDs, maaaaaybe MD/PhDs or DVM/PhDs depending on the lab), postdocs, lab managers, and grad students doing the surgeries depending on the complexity.

Definitely MDs involved in some of the studies I’ve worked with, just depends on what they’re doing obviously. For us, higher level surgical stuff (transplant, etc) that everyone else is nowhere near capable of.

I still think this could be veterinary experience if the surgery itself isn’t the only thing they observed, and worked alongside the vet to learn about anesthesia, analgesia, surgical techniques, planning, recovery, etc

 

[WhtsThFrequency]

Definitely MDs involved in some of the studies I’ve worked with, just depends on what they’re doing obviously. For us, higher level surgical stuff (transplant, etc) that everyone else is nowhere near capable of.

I still think this could be veterinary experience if the surgery itself isn’t the only thing they observed, and worked alongside the vet to learn about anesthesia, analgesia, surgical techniques, planning, recovery, etc

Oh yeah, for stuff of transplant caliber absolutely! I was more referring to smaller scale stuff - subcutaneous implants, vessel or intestinal loop ligation, etc.

And yes, agreed as well on your second point too.