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Veterinary Science Graduate Programs from U. of I.
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Squeaksmom said:
Oh hi there, anxiety attack about absolutely nothing. Haven't missed you too much! My heart rate just plummeted from 138 to 47... wonder how high my blood pressure is? <sigh>
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Dizziness, shakiness, shortness of breath, racing heart... I have to hand it to you, random disease... you sure had me fooled for a bit! (ffs... every time I'm actually home with my family!)
 
I did the cliché thing this new year and am trying to lose weight due to a number of reasons. I did the same thing last year and tried to take up running again, only for classes to eat my life away until I couldn’t sustain a workout routine during the week. Hopefully that doesn’t happen again.

This year, I’m trying to re-teach myself to eat better and doing some intermittent fasting as well. Add to that, I’ve figured out that I HATE treadmill running and need something else to do during the winter months. I decided to try out a HIIT group class on Tuesday. Interval training has a lot of research behind it for weight loss, so I thought it would be a good thing to try out. It’s 2x a week for an hour each and would work with my spring schedule.

Holy. Hell.

I did so many squats that standing up / sitting down since then has been a chore. I basically looking and sound like an elderly person when going to sit or stand. My abs and arms are sore as well, but basically my quads/hams/glutes are destroyed. Stretching is very very difficult to do, but I’ve been doing it to try and alleviate some of the pain. Also my lower back and sides are weirdly sore and that’s never happened to me before. Needless to say, I have some work to do. Planning on going again next week, but skipped today because OWWW.

On a positive note, my SO has been incredibly supportive of me and we’ve switched up our meal planning to be far more healthy (aka less carb-heavy).
 
johnnaboo said:
I did the cliché thing this new year and am trying to lose weight due to a number of reasons. I did the same thing last year and tried to take up running again, only for classes to eat my life away until I couldn’t sustain a workout routine during the week. Hopefully that doesn’t happen again.

This year, I’m trying to re-teach myself to eat better and doing some intermittent fasting as well. Add to that, I’ve figured out that I HATE treadmill running and need something else to do during the winter months. I decided to try out a HIIT group class on Tuesday. Interval training has a lot of research behind it for weight loss, so I thought it would be a good thing to try out. It’s 2x a week for an hour each and would work with my spring schedule.

Holy. Hell.

I did so many squats that standing up / sitting down since then has been a chore. I basically looking and sound like an elderly person when going to sit or stand. My abs and arms are sore as well, but basically my quads/hams/glutes are destroyed. Stretching is very very difficult to do, but I’ve been doing it to try and alleviate some of the pain. Also my lower back and sides are weirdly sore and that’s never happened to me before. Needless to say, I have some work to do. Planning on going again next week, but skipped today because OWWW.

On a positive note, my SO has been incredibly supportive of me and we’ve switched up our meal planning to be far more healthy (aka less carb-heavy).
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Congrats on starting a commitment! There's an SDN gym encouragement group on snapchat, ping me on snap if you want to be added!
As for getting bored while on the treadmill, I have the same issue, so I usually put on a show on my ipad or something. (Binge watched GoT over the summer like this)
 
Melchizedek said:
As for getting bored while on the treadmill, I have the same issue, so I usually put on a show on my ipad or something. (Binge watched GoT over the summer like this)
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It‘s not the bored part that gets me. It’s the lack of wind in my face, which in turn means I overheat very quickly, as well as the fact that I start to fixate on numbers instead of just enjoying the run.
 
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johnnaboo said:
It‘s not the bored part that gets me. It’s the lack of wind in my face, which in turn means I overhear very quickly, as well as the fact that I start to fixate on numbers instead of just enjoying the run.
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You could use your fixation on the numbers to your advantage by doing some pyramid interval runs. As someone who gets both bored and obsessed with staring at the stats, I find them very satisfying.


Also, if I want to run a single pace and not be number fixated, I bring one of those smallish gym towels and drape it over the numbers on the machine. Can't be fixated if I can't see 'em!

Sent from my SM-G892U using SDN mobile
 
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So many contact designs @cubsrule4e @Stagg737 @Barkley13 @Ms Procrastinator etc

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FYI ...

As many of you already know, veterinarians and vet techs have been going to Australia to provide medical assistance to animals burned/injured in the wildfires - thank you very much to the vetties! 😍

If anyone enjoys knitting, crafting and sewing, there is a need for Joey Kangaroo pouches and wallaby pouches.

For more information, feel free to click on:

Animal Rescue - Kangaroo and Wallaby Pouches - Australia Wildfires

Kangaroo Pouches.jpg


* A big shout-out to Dr. Jamie Peyton, DVM from UC Davis SVM ... AND many other amazing veterinarians who are helping wildlife burned in these fires. You're amazing!
 
Stroganoff said:
47 bpm hr is #goals though. I don't think I've been that low like ever. #outofshape
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Well yeah, but ideally not as reflex bradycardia due to a soaring bp.... (I'm not that fit either!)
 
Can anyone recommend a good website blocker extension for safari? I was using waste no time but it is no longer supported. I can't remember what thread or who I talked to about this previously but I think @vetmedhead was involved? sorry if wrong on that lol. This also seems like something @Stroganoff would know 😛
 
ziggyandjazzy said:
This also seems like something @Stroganoff would know
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Nope, sorry. A few years ago when I wanted to force an SDN hiatus, I blocked SDN at the [edge] router/firewall level, which is stronger than just one browser on just one phone/tablet/computer. Almost not worth the time, since if you really needed a fix and blocked it in Safari, there's nothing stopping you from taking 1 second and opening up Chrome or Firefox or whatever.

I'd at least look at OS level blockers (iOS, iPadOS, macOS, Windows, etc.) instead of just browser level like Safari.
 
RespectTheChemistry19 said:
*sigh* Oh, Walmart.
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Where I live even Target is this ghetto. :hardy:
I saw some empty beer cans in the toys section and was like "Wow, great job."

(And don't ask what I was doing in the toys section! I like board games! I..I was cutting through the aisle to Electronics and hate people so cut through! It's like... I always end up cutting through half the store and I'm like "oof, bras bras everywhere" but it's only because it's a shortcut and I get to avoid people!)
 
Stroganoff said:
Where I live even Target is this ghetto. :hardy:
I saw some empty beer cans in the toys section and was like "Wow, great job."

(And don't ask what I was doing in the toys section! I like board games! I..I was cutting through the aisle to Electronics and hate people so cut through! It's like... I always end up cutting through half the store and I'm like "oof, bras bras everywhere" but it's only because it's a shortcut and I get to avoid people!)
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Mommy! I want that toy! 😆
 
Stroganoff said:
Oh crap, 2 seconds before Mommy says no, then lil' snotnose throws a temper tantrum and screams, then Mommy starts dropping f-bombs loudly. ABORT ABORT! LEAVE THE AREA.

(Maybe it was Mommy that drank that beer.)
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Hell, sounds like she needs it having to deal with that brat.
 
I think we all focused on the wrong part of this post.
Stroganoff said:
Where I live even Target is this ghetto. :hardy:
I saw some empty beer cans in the toys section and was like "Wow, great job."

(And don't ask what I was doing in the toys section! I like board games! I..I was cutting through the aisle to Electronics and hate people so cut through! It's like... I always end up cutting through half the store and I'm like "oof, bras bras everywhere" but it's only because it's a shortcut and I get to avoid people!)
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Strogg's afraid of bras 🤣
 
mizchiefmanaged said:
DUDE SQUISHIES ARE BOMB!
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Wikipedia said:
Health issues

The Danish Environmental Protection Agency tested 12 squishies and found that they all release unacceptable levels of harmful substances, such as dimethylformamide, leading to their removal from the Danish market and the recommendation that all squishies be discarded and that they can safely be disposed as household waste.[3]
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*breathes in deeply*
 
mizchiefmanaged said:
Welp there are worse ways to go :laugh:
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I just remembered that my memory foam pillows and the mattress topper all had instructions to air them out for a day or two before use since they tend to release lots of gross fumes. Not that I dare question Wikipedia (*gasp*), but it's possible the Squishies just hadn't aired out all their souls fumes yet, and after sufficient time they're benign.

My grant application is pending. I'll let y'all know.
 
Stroganoff said:
I just remembered that my memory foam pillows and the mattress topper all had instructions to air them out for a day or two before use since they tend to release lots of gross fumes. Not that I dare question Wikipedia (*gasp*), but it's possible the Squishies just hadn't aired out all their souls fumes yet, and after sufficient time they're benign.

My grant application is pending. I'll let y'all know.
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Please pick me to be your research slave!
All my other research projects keep going belly up, or my PI just starts acting like I don’t exist. I need research if I’m ever going into cardio or plastics.
 
johnnaboo said:
Informal research question for those in veterinary practice (either as vets or techs or assistants):

What do you find to be the biggest contributing factor to the poor mental health in vet med?
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It's the trifecta of perfectionism, pets that will eventually die no matter what, and unreasonable clients.
 
johnnaboo said:
Informal research question for those in veterinary practice (either as vets or techs or assistants):

What do you find to be the biggest contributing factor to the poor mental health in vet med?
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current student so I’ll speak to the almost 4 years I worked as a tech.

I worked in a small hospital and reviews were everything. In a review, the truth often doesn’t matter to someone doing a cursory look of 100 reviews that add up to a score out of 5. If you see that one hospital has a 4.8 and another has a 4.6, you may be compelled to go to the one with a 4.8. You want the best for your pet, so you go for the best rating if you don’t see any other differences. I can’t count the number of clients who, when asked why they chose us, they said that the reviews were very good. Or that they didn’t go to our competitor because they read some bad reviews.

With this in mind, we did everything we could to please every single client. Most of the time it wasn’t a huge deal to do this, as the average person is sane enough and not out to ruin your life. However, there are plenty of clients who, despite everything, are never totally pleased. You can go out of your way to give them discounts, squeeze them in for “emergencies” (read: coughing for a couple days but just wanted to make sure the pet is okay), let them talk your ear off when there are other things you should be getting to, etc. Despite all of that, the one time they don’t completely get their way then they go off on you. They leave a bad review about how the vet is only in it for the money and that the staff are unwilling to help or whatever. Now all of a sudden you’re trying even harder to make up for that one bad review outweighing 4+ good reviews.

In essence, small GP hospitals are treated like any other consumer establishment where the customer is always right. This results in all of the staff, including the doctor who owns the practice, bending over backwards. One or two bad reviews can really kill business if there are multiple other hospitals in the area. So staff are constantly on edge about their customer service to the point that little things that happen stick with you and you’re terrified that someone is going to go home and write about it online. You feel like nothing you do is good enough and you’re just waiting for the other shoe to drop.

This is just my view of things, and what was an overarching theme during my time as a tech.
 
johnnaboo said:
Informal research question for those in veterinary practice (either as vets or techs or assistants):

What do you find to be the biggest contributing factor to the poor mental health in vet med?
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RVT here. I’d have to say stress, if you want one specific factor. Obviously there’s a multitude of reasons why everyone is stressed. You have patients that can’t speak and the client behind them with expectations that aren’t sometimes achievable. You have cases where there is nothing that can be done, or cases that the owner lacks funds. Then we get the lovely “you don’t actually care, you’re just in it for the money” (aside from the regular “why is everything so expensive”). My place of employment has some of the best and most compliant clients in the area. That doesn’t mean that I’m not regularly snapped at, spoken down to, etc. Just lots of contributing factors to make everyone run down.

From my experiences and others I’ve heard, there also is a lack of back-up from management. Not turning away clients that treat employees poorly, minimal wages, inadequate time off, long hours, etc. So all of the stress leads to anxiety and depression which is why there’s such a high turnover rate and has put vets in the number one spot for suicide.
 
I'm an outsider here, but I love you guys. Can I throw out a rando list of stuff? I'm curious if there's any 1 or 2 factors that if you had the power to make disappear or change, would have the most quantifiable, causative decrease in the suicide rate. I'm sure everyone's different, but what are the top couple things that you could change if you were a deity with magical powers?

Sorry if this is crossing a line or too blunt. Over the last decade and half, I've watched more people than I'd like burn out, make permanently tragic decisions, or being cynical/bitter or turn into huge negative jerkwads, and I'm learning that vetmed has similar overlap with human med and apparently a higher rate in some decisions...


Training/Personal
* Many years and tens of thousands of hours pre-professionally, professionally, post-graduate, etc before finally starting a "real job" as [chosen vet specialty]
* Exorbitant cost of education + years of lost income and growth from investments
* Conflicting personal goals including but not limited to building a marriage +/- kids
* Social monitoring and comparing yourself to friends/peers who "got a real job" years earlier and are "further ahead" in life i.e. homeowners, less debt, actual vacations, etc.
* Social monitoring and comparing vetmed to human med/dent (e.g. being in the same ballpark in ambition/intelligence but feeling underappreciated either income-wise or prestige-wise)
* Perfectionism and unrealistic personal standards, Type A gungho personality, etc.

Clients
* Clients with unrealistic demands (or maybe too little, too late)
* Non-compliant clients
* Clients who mean well but simply don't have the funds to do ____

The Business and/or The Practice
* Administrators
* Corporate bureaucracy
* Incompetence (at any level or job function)
* Private practice/being your own boss: Front desk babysitting and turnover
* Idiotic Scheduling
* Burnout
* Government regulations?
* Lack of challenge? Lack of enjoyment? Losing the magic that drew you in? Realizing it's just a job?
* Underappreciation from colleagues, the public, clients?
 
@Stroganoff my big hope for this profession is that as people start to feel that pets are family rather than property, and owners start having insurance more commonly, spending will increase. That then means that GP’s can feel more comfortable making recommendations in line with best medicine and owners will be more receptive to it. That would increase revenue and vet salaries. That’s really the only way I can think of salaries increasing, which would alleviate some of the anxiety around having so much debt and having to push off starting a family and enjoying life. I’m young so I can’t remember the ins and outs of vet med 20 years ago to draw a comparison, but it does seem like the average person is more inclined to spend a lot on their pets than they used to be.

There’s definitely a different mindset in specialty medicine than in general practice. I’ve noticed it a ton form only being in the teaching hospital since September. I now frequently hear things like “we can’t be their accountants. I can only make recommendations and they can choose to accept or decline.” This is the polar opposite of what general practice is like. It seems a little bit that specialty medicine is more similar to human medicine than general practice is, in a good way (financially). The doctors are more disconnected, at least in an academic specialty hospital, from the finances than in a GP clinic. I understand that in a private specialty hospital it’s pretty different.

Anyway I forget where I was going with this and where I started and it’s late and my brain isn’t fully functional. But my point is that if anything could reasonably change for the better it would be that people would start spending more in GP hospitals to increase salaries for everyone there. That relieves the strain of having to play the accountant at least a little bit and allows vets to just practice best medicine as often as possible. Maybe unrealistic as of right now but it would be nice.
 
This is an interesting conversation to me as I've mostly worked in a municipal shelter and so clients have basically never been on my radar because we don't see them in the traditional sense. We do work with members of the public but it's largely because they are either 1) adopting an animal from us or 2) we gave them citations for something

1 is handled mainly by shelter and kennel staff and 2 is mainly handled by our animal control officers, so really my "client" interactions have mainly been with occasional fosters or if the person happens to be present at a scene I'm working on after warrants are served
 
Stroganoff said:
I'm an outsider here, but I love you guys. Can I throw out a rando list of stuff? I'm curious if there's any 1 or 2 factors that if you had the power to make disappear or change, would have the most quantifiable, causative decrease in the suicide rate. I'm sure everyone's different, but what are the top couple things that you could change if you were a deity with magical powers?

Sorry if this is crossing a line or too blunt. Over the last decade and half, I've watched more people than I'd like burn out, make permanently tragic decisions, or being cynical/bitter or turn into huge negative jerkwads, and I'm learning that vetmed has similar overlap with human med and apparently a higher rate in some decisions...


Training/Personal
* Many years and tens of thousands of hours pre-professionally, professionally, post-graduate, etc before finally starting a "real job" as [chosen vet specialty]
* Exorbitant cost of education + years of lost income and growth from investments
* Conflicting personal goals including but not limited to building a marriage +/- kids
* Social monitoring and comparing yourself to friends/peers who "got a real job" years earlier and are "further ahead" in life i.e. homeowners, less debt, actual vacations, etc.
* Social monitoring and comparing vetmed to human med/dent (e.g. being in the same ballpark in ambition/intelligence but feeling underappreciated either income-wise or prestige-wise)
* Perfectionism and unrealistic personal standards, Type A gungho personality, etc.

Clients
* Clients with unrealistic demands (or maybe too little, too late)
* Non-compliant clients
* Clients who mean well but simply don't have the funds to do ____

The Business and/or The Practice
* Administrators
* Corporate bureaucracy
* Incompetence (at any level or job function)
* Private practice/being your own boss: Front desk babysitting and turnover
* Idiotic Scheduling
* Burnout
* Government regulations?
* Lack of challenge? Lack of enjoyment? Losing the magic that drew you in? Realizing it's just a job?
* Underappreciation from colleagues, the public, clients?
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<3

You may get the best responses over on the Veterinary side (vs pre-vet). I think all of the things you listed are probable contributors, but it's hard for people who haven't worked in the field for a long time to say what they think affects those who have been out there in the trenches, so to speak. (This is not to discount the experience of vet students/vet tech students who are struggling, so I apologize if it comes across like that).

One thing I would unfortunately add to your list is medical colleagues looking down on vets as if they are not also doctors (and looking down on techs as if they are not nurses). Fortunately not something I have personally experienced too much at this point -- though I still get the classic "wow, so it's almost like medical school!" comment from extended family all the time -- but something I have seen friends have to deal with a lot.
 
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@ajs513 interdasting. I'm cynical and pessimistic and see insurance companies and the billing/coding/reimbursement game in human med and the lobbying to keep them in power between patient and doctor as a massive inefficiency. The secretive BS where you bill $1000 for something that's literally $100 then adjust downwards to "pre-negotiated group rates" and do all sorts of quid pro quo back scratching... it just makes me disgusted quite frankly.

What I've seen (and personally experienced) with the Direct Primary Care model (look it up!) in human med is that by eliminating insurance companies and administrators and lots of overhead, the doctor actually takes home more and the patient can spend less, and they both have more time per visit. At least in a primary care/GP setting. And often times rates for office visits, labs, imaging, etc. are cheaper than the traditional "insurance company is gatekeeper god" model. Like $200 MRI vs. $1000 MRI. Everybody wins except the insurance company, the billing and coding and compliance administrators that you no longer have to pay to comply with gov't suffocation, etc.

There's a human med surgical center in Oklahoma (?) that has all their procedure rates public on their website. Up front. No BS games.

Where I'm going with this rambling is while I sympathize and wish more clients would see their pets as family members, I don't see the finances of middle and working class Americans improving in the coming years but either stagnating or getting worse. While on the surface I'm sure group plans and group risk sharing that comes with insurance in the traditional definition (like car insurance, life insurance, i.e. for BIG events) can increase revenue (as opposed to the human med definition where insurance is the end-all, be-all, even for routine office visits and immunizations), I worry that if vet med follows the same pathway as human med, it'll lead to the same clusterfudge issues in human med where massive, greedy insurance megacorps insert themselves between patient/client and doctor, hurting both. Do y'all have to swim through CPT codes and ICD codes and hire more administrators to play those games?

I do see tuition, room & board rates on similar levels to human med and human dental med rates leading to very similar levels of massive six-figure debt. I almost wonder if it'll be more feasible for the federal government to stop providing such "easy free money" to students that'll force schools to actually lower tuition rates and fees. I don't see this happening except through an act of Congress that forces Congress to re-think how they create more base money/currency via creating federal loans out of thin air.

On second thought, the pessimist in me thinks we're too far gone for even that approach, since student loan creation out of thin air is another way to increase base money.

So this post focused on just two factors:
1. Lower debt up front: Lowering the ease of federal loan money inflating the real cost of education - requires Congress, the Federal Reserve, and universities to all play ball?
2. Increase revenue/income on the back end: Either by a change in mindset in the middle and working class to spend as much on pets as they do on family or lowering overhead by getting rid of excess... but doesn't vet med already have the luxury of largely not being grabbed by the proverbial balls by insurance companies and administrators?​

Any of y'all know any old/retired vets in their 60s or 70s+? Decades ago school didn't cost nearly this much. If we plotted vet med tuition over time and plotted suicide rate over time, is there any correlation between just those two?


Is time and feeling overworked from a large census a major factor? In other words, are there less vets per capita in 2020 than in 2000? 1980? If there's a shortage, would increasing the supply of vets allow to more breathing room in one's workday --> less stress, burnout, and depression?

Sorry for rambling and bringing this all up, especially if there's already 500 threads talking directly about this stuff.
 
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The current state of insurance in vet med is a reimbursement model. Pet owner almost always has to pay up front then gets reimbursed by their insurance company. A few companies do pre-approvals for faster payouts and one I know of will pay the vet directly, but my dog’s insurance company (a popular one) pretty routinely takes 30 days (occasionally more) to reimburse me. While I do think that that is a positive for the vet/clinic since they get their payment for services up front, I think that’s a limitation right now against pet insurance for the masses. While I don’t think I want it to go the ways human med is now, it still means that today, someone with pet insurance still needs to have several thousand dollars available in savings or on a credit card or as care credit or something to pay until the insurance comes through. If we get to a point where all the companies pay out within days (not 1-2 months) or routinely pay vets directly that could change, but I have family members that could maybe afford premiums but they don’t have that emergency fund to pay the bill up front and wait for reimbursement.
 
Stroganoff said:
I'm sure everyone's different, but what are the top couple things that you could change if you were a deity with magical powers?
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I think the best thing for vet med would be to increase the ability to say no. There are many reasons that doctors and veterinary staff feel like they don’t have any control, and a lack of control is a huge factor in depression. If things are bad, and you feel powerless to change them, suicide becomes a way out of that spiral. So increase control by empowering veterinarians to say no.

No to crushing debt. It is impossible to get a veterinary degree coming right out of college without a ridiculous amount of debt unless your family is wealthy. The student loan system is broken and needs to be fixed.

No to unreasonable hours. People expect veterinary care when they want it - they don’t want to take off work if they can just schedule outside of normal hours. And practices want that money, so vets work Saturdays, Sundays, holidays, or late on weekdays. This erodes a vet’s quality of life. Try finding a job that doesn’t require hours outside of 9-5, it’s impossible.

No to unreasonable clients. Vet med is a service industry, and there is a lot of pressure to make clients happy since they can just go somewhere else when they’re not. But if we as a whole decided to train clients to act better by saying no to the unreasonable ones, we would have better client interactions overall. I’m not talking about clients with no money - I have had reasonable clients with no funds that I have worked with to get them the best care possible for their pets, which isn’t the gold standard level they teach in academia but still gives a good quality of life. I’m talking about the clients that always want discounts, complain about everything, get upset if they call at noon and you can’t get them in for an appointment until tomorrow, ran out of their pet’s medication yesterday and it’s one that we have to order rather than have in stock, or those that are abusive or rude to support staff when they’re only trying to help. We need to be able to tell those people that they are being unreasonable, and management needs to back up those decisions. Which is probably something you would hear from anyone who has worked in a service industry since the invention of “the customer is always right”.

No to people who ask us to do things for free, without getting bashed for it. I think this is probably the one that makes the most impact in my life, when I think about blocked cats I could have saved if their people had only had the money to get them unblocked. It’s hard when the owners are making that complaint, but it’s even harder when it’s my own conscience at 3am keeping me up, going over how I should have asked them to relinquish their cat and paid his bill myself. Even though I already have way too many cats and I know rationally that I just can’t save them all.
 
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