programs w/ 2 years of clerkships?

[eep29]

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I noticed that for vet school the normal practice is 3 years lecture/1 yr clerkships. For med schools, it's 2 and 2.

Besides Florida, are there any other vet programs that are 2 and 2?

Can anyone explain the rational for the 3 and 1 format? I'm assuming I know why but you know what assuming does 🙂 What are the pros/cons for both formats in vet education?

 

[RazorDoc2010]

I'm not really familiar with the med school terminology, but I'll assume that clerkship = clinical rotations...in that case, I know Missouri does 2 + 2, but am not sure about other schools. The rationale....who knows, probably bc of the multi-species approach, but I don't know.

 

[kate_g]

I noticed that for vet school the normal practice is 3 years lecture/1 yr clerkships. For med schools, it's 2 and 2.

It seems (from what I've read on the med forums and what I've gathered so far about vet schools - I'm only just accepted for this coming year myself) that at most schools the third year is a bit beyond lectures and the fourth year is a bit beyond clerkships.

That is, the third year is kind of a transition - you've finished with the basics, and though you're still in a classroom most of your courses are electives and you're learning practice-related stuff like radiographic anatomy. Also third year is when you do surgery labs, where you learn to spay and neuter shelter animals and, depending on the school, you might also learn more advanced surgeries in a controlled lab environment. This is something med school lacks - for obvious reasons. 🙂 (The third year of med school, by contrast, you're learning a lot of this same stuff by observation.)

The fourth year is the last year of education for most vet students since internship & residency are not required for licensure and practice. So whereas fourth year in med school you're interacting with patients and maybe getting taught some basic procedures but still *mostly* observing, I get the idea that fourth year vet students are actually taught to do more, hands-on, with whatever cases come in the door. It also seems common to have on-call assignments where you're responsible for basic care and treatment of whatever is in the hospital that night (presumably there's a "real" vet on call in case things get to be more than you can handle). So this is a little more like the physician's intern year - which makes sense when you think about it.

 

[Tsuki]

I noticed that for vet school the normal practice is 3 years lecture/1 yr clerkships. For med schools, it's 2 and 2.

Besides Florida, are there any other vet programs that are 2 and 2?

Can anyone explain the rational for the 3 and 1 format? I'm assuming I know why but you know what assuming does 🙂 What are the pros/cons for both formats in vet education?

Mississippi, Missouri, Florida and Western do this..

 

[Azawakh]

My impresssion has been that the standard for medical and veterinary school is 2.5 preclinical years and 1.5 clinical years where you lose your last summer before 4th year to rotations.

There are some exceptions (i.e Duke only has one pre-clinical year etc.) However, I believe most veterinary schools that I am aware of split the third year between didactic lecture and clinical rotations.

 

[ReinaDeLuz]

Florida is set up where your first two years are lecture/lab only, and clinics start the summer after your sophomore year and continue through the fall. I believe in spring you have lectures again, then that summer you go back into clinics then i think in the fall you go back into some elective courses, then clinics again in the spring. *i think* this is how they do it, i'm only a lowly first year and focusing on getting through this year sane ;-). But the point is that it's not purely two years lecture and two years of clinics, the last two years are a mixture with *mostly* clinics but also lecture.

 

[alonepear]

Mississippi State seems to be an even 2 years classroom/lab learning, 2 years clinical learning.

The third year is clinical rotations through 7 set departments, with the class divided into a few groups that rotate together. The fourth year is an entire year long, and based on clincial electives of the student's choice.

 

[kate_g]

There's also Minnesota, which has the standard 3/1 curriculum (the "fourth year" including the summer after third year, which is also standard) but seems to make a special effort to get you doing hands-on clinical stuff right from the start. The first-year clinical skills classes seem pretty extensive, and you do "clerk" shifts in the hospital, where you assist the techs on duty with treatments and whatnot. They also start surgery labs in second year, I think, so you get to do some clinical stuff mixed in with your didactic stuff rather than it being completely separate.

FWIW most schools do seem to have at least some amount of clinical exposure in the first two years, whether that be through "clinical skills" courses where you practice blood draws and restraint techniques, or through clerking or shadowing in the hospital a number of times per semester, or other arrangements. In contrast, I get the impression that the first two years of med school are *entirely* classroom instruction.