Job description....

[katryn]

Ok, this will be ever so slightly similar to the "Good, Bad, and Ugly" forum, which was wonderful(oh by the way 😀).

Basically, one of the things my interviews critiqued me on was not having good depth of knowledge on various fields you can go into with a vet degree. The aforementioned thread did a good job of explain what's good, bad and ugly about each field, but I think a short "job description" would be nice to have just for information's sake.

Example-General Practice-Seeing patients for preventative medicine, vaccinations and routine surgeries. Diagnosis and treatment of common illnesses and triage/treatment of injuries. Some room for species specialization or generality--most common species treated dogs, cats, small mammals/rodents, birds, and other household pets.

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[bunnity]

Shelter:
This is just based off one shelter so take it with a grain of salt.

High volume spay/neuter - we did about 30 a day.
Other routine surgeries for shelter animals.
Treating shelter animals that are sick - the vet techs did a lot of this but they would bring animals over the vet area to look at or prescribe meds for.
Check ups on foster animals - a lot of the sick (URI etc) animals would be in foster and the fosters brought them in before or after clinic hours for checkups.
Clinic - basically a regular general practice outpatient only clinic.
Dealing with infectious dieases - through treating them, designing protocols to minimize spread (separate areas for sick and healthy animals, foot baths, cleaning healthy animal areas first, etc). If we got a dog in that tested positive for parvo the vet would have the whole place closed for the day and bleached.
Administrative stuff - the one vet where I worked did a lot of budget and administrative paperwork.
Running monthly extra-discount s/n clinics.
Doing s/n for a TNR program - usually 1-2 ferals a day.

 

[sumstorm]

With a grain of salt, based of a few small county supported zoos.

Small Zoo - Morning rounds of animals keepers are concerned about (mostly observational), provide treatment for animals in hospital/quarentine (including assessment of new acquisitions), possible monitoring of animals with special conditions, scheduled routine procedures (hoof trimming, lump biopsy, dentals, etc...which aren't really routine when dealing with wild animals), routine sampling for parasites (generally areas of a zoo or species in a zoo are tested for parasites on a rotational basis), possibly physicals (again, generally requires knocking an animal out), consults with other zoo's vets (might call a vet who specializes in sloths if you have a sick sloth, or you might return calls from vets and other zoo staff regarding an area you specialize in), consult with breeding registrar, keepers, curators, directors, government officials, possibly give presentations for community organizations/colleges (donation/research venues), administrative meetings (city/county budget defense, record keeping), review/write reports and potentially articles, perform necropsies, on call & emergency care. Many small zoo vets also run thier own practices.

There is a lot of other stuff. Some more 'unusual' skills that might help a small zoo vet is having a 'public persona' that is appealing to the community and good with media, public speaking ability, fundraising ability (while not a prime responsability, many vets do help out), darting skills, skilled at dealing with politics.

May have to relocate to obtain employment, often required to live relatively near the zoo (and possibly in teh sponsoring county/city.) Also have to be able to handle high stress crisis situations such as large predator escapes or public at risk due to inappropriatly entering animal areas (which includes dealing with trigger happy officers.)

 

[4paws]

Emergency/Critical Care-

Each characteristic can be a pro/con, depending on what you prefer,

*variety in cases (although you will have shifts where every single patient has bloody diarrhea).
*variety in surgeries (the most common are laceration repair, foreign body removal, gdv, and c-section)
*long shifts (~14 hours), but many vets are compensated with several days off (ex: 7 days on, 7 days off rotation).
*you often "treat and street". you see a patient once and send them on their way. you develop few long-term client relationships. (pro or con depending on the client)
*some days are very busy and stressful, which keeps you on your toes and keeps you from getting bored. it teaches you how to prioritize and be efficient.
*there are also days when you sit around for hours, as you cannot schedule someone's dog to get hit by a car.
*emergency staffs tend to get paid more, but those costs tickle down to the client. money determines (or compromises) the treatment plan a lot of the time.
* you develop working relationships with many general practice vets (since they refer their clients for over night care)
*this varies with some clinics- no preventative care, no vaccines, no baths, no nail trims
*it's almost a guarantee that you would be filling a niche if you specialized (or had a remote interest) in exotics. many emergency vets are limited in what they know and what they can do for exotics.
*exotics tend to be a big 👎. if they're sick enough to come to the emergency room, they have a 99.09% chance of dying. (that figure may be skewed by my dislike of birds).

 

[Meggie1985]

There are LOTS of different careers in Public Health for veterinarians, but here's just one to begin with (description taken from the USDA's website).

USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) Public Health Veterinarians

Veterinarians supervise other public health professionals to ensure establishments under our jurisdiction comply with sanitation standards and properly implement systems that control hazards from entering the food supply.

Most but not all FSIS veterinarians work in meat and poultry plants. Veterinarians enforce federal meat and poultry inspection procedures:

• During live animal transport and handling, including humane slaughter oversight;
• Throughout the entire establishment, including processing operations;
• During transportation and distribution of meat, poultry and egg products to markets and retail stores.

FSIS veterinarians advise academia, industry and professional groups on the effectiveness of food safety controls.

In addition to working in inspected establishments, veterinarians are employed as epidemiologists, pathologists, auditors, risk analysts and biosecurity experts. Veterinarians in FSIS are executive leaders, international liaisons, and program managers. FSIS veterinarians investigate outbreaks of foodborne illness in collaboration with local health departments and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). They assess State inspection programs; design new inspection systems and procedures; evaluate agency programs to assess their effectiveness in ensuring the safety of meat, poultry and egg products; create and deliver training and educational programs; and perform other challenging tasks that ultimately protect you and your family from foodborne illnesses.

 

[katryn]

*there are also days when you sit around for hours, as you cannot schedule someone's dog to get hit by a car.

Is it bad this this made me LOL for real?