I think you are unlikely to gain much hands on experience in a surgical externship, but you would likely be able to get a lot of good experience by working at a shelter or spay/neuter clinic. i'd get in contact with the local humane societies and places near where you have friends and family you could stay with. my classmates who did this got lots of good basic surgical experience with things like spays, neuters, exploratories, cherry eyes, etc.
Truth. I did one in northern Minnesota. It's a small deal - they take one student every rotation. It's two surgery tables - you get one, the doctor gets the other. You start at 7:30 or so for intake, and then you just cut cut cut all day long. She gave me first dibs at any case - small dog, big dog, cats, whatever - and if there were special procedures (hernia repair, cryptorchid, amputation, enucleation are probably the most common) you got first dibs on those, too. She was SUPER to work with; her style was very much "Tell me how much guidance you need and we'll go from there." I had her watch my first procedure and then ..... we just worked at our tables the rest of the two weeks and spent the days cutting and chit-chatting. The techs there are so comfortable with high volume that they have it down to a fine art - it takes them a day or so to get the feel of the student, but once they've got your pace locked in, they have your next case ready to drop on your table the second the one you're working on comes off. You have just enough time to stand up, stretch your legs, re-glove, and get going again. It sounds kinda like Humane Alliance (I didn't do that one), but with just one student/doctor.
It may be almost entirely spay/neuter, but it's still abdominal surgery and soft-tissue handling and learning to keep your instrument tray organized, move efficiently, use your instruments well, etc. It's a GREAT place for someone wanting to do surgery to start.
Without that rotation, my first two months in practice when I got my first solo GDVs and FBs would have made me break down and cry.
🙂
As comparison ... for my in-house spay/neuter rotation at UMN I got about 10 total procedures .... and maybe 6 of them were spays. At my offsite spay/neuter externship, I got well over 100 procedures: really, my speed was the only limiting factor (and I am a slowwwwwww surgeon).
A lot of surgery is just DOING it and seeing what works. I mean, you need to balance that with safety/welfare of the animal, obviously, and having someone experienced to give you tips for improvement is invaluable, but at the end of the day you just need to do it a lot and get a feel for things. High volume is the way to go for that.
Footnote: If the techs ask you "which case would you like to start with" on a high-vol spay/neuter rotation, do NOT say "oh, I don't care, you pick." That landed me a big fat old Great Dane as my first spay of the rotation. Techs are evil in a really fun way.
Seconding what jmo said. Professors at my school discouraged me from doing two surgery electives (in addition to my surgery core) for fourth year because of how hands-off those rotations would be. I subbed one of them for a shelter medicine rotation.
Also truth. At least at UMN, the surgery rotation is
RIDICULOUSLY hands off. You're there for one and only one purpose - to manage the case flow for the important people - the residents. Your job is to meet with owners, call owners, provide pre- and post-operative care on the patient, do SOAPs, write discharges, discharge patients, etc. You might get a little hands on .... hold a tibia in place during a TPLO wheeeeee! suture up an incision after the surgeon is done wheeeee! .... but building actual surgical skill and confidence is the <last> priority for the rotation. Actually, it's not even the last. It's just not a priority at all. We had a brachy dog in for nose and palate work who was getting spayed at the same time ... a fourth-year didn't even get to do the spay, for crying out loud, because there was an intern on our rotation and so she got to do it. I mean, it was just silly. Looking back, I really don't know that I learned much on that rotation other than getting to see some of the surgeries that are available on referral. In that sense, it feels a little like one of those deals where you go stay at a condo and they rope you into sitting through a whole afternoon of sales pitch for buying into the condos. That's how I felt. I paid for the rotation, didn't get to DO anything, didn't learn much, but got to sit there and watch (from an awkward spot at the table) all the cool procedures I'll never do that UMN hopes I'll refer to them down the road. They really should make that rotation not-required but available to people who are considering a surgery internship or eventual residency. It had VERY little value for me. Sucks, cause the staff docs and the residents we had were really fantastic people. It's just ... the rotation isn't built around teaching fourth-year students things they need to know. (Of course, they'll never make it not-required because then they'd have to hire people to do all the scut work the students do. I am NOT AT ALL opposed to scut work .... but I am opposed to paying for a surgery rotation only do do scut work. If that's what I'm going to do, you should be paying me.)
