Hey y’all! I will be starting veterinary school in January of 2019. I am looking for ways to practice veterinary sutures. I have looked on amazon at the practice suture kits but I’m not sure which is the best or most similar to animals. Thanks for any feedback!
Suture practice!!
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All you really need are needle drivers, forceps, and some type of suture (I learned mostly using pds). Use fruit (bananas and oranges work great) or buy a whole chicken and put sutures in the skin before you de-skin and cook it. However, also keep in mind that without direct instruction from a vet or someone qualified you could teach yourself bad habits that will be very hard to unlearn later. So do keep that risk in mind. Not every youtube tutorial is a good one (though there are lots of good ones out there).
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Pig's feet are great for learning sutures too.
I agree with SARdoghandler, I would wait until school starts/suture labs to practice suturing unless you have a vet that would be willing to walk you through it.
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An Inexpensive Suture Practice Board
I am making a bunch of boards for my clinical skills professor with some modifications to allow practicing intestinal resections and repair of severed tendons. I'll try to remember to post the pictures when I finish building them. That said, you probably won't be doing much suturing your first year.
I am making a bunch of boards for my clinical skills professor with some modifications to allow practicing intestinal resections and repair of severed tendons. I'll try to remember to post the pictures when I finish building them. That said, you probably won't be doing much suturing your first year.
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A piece of cardboard with foam stapled onto it works great for basic suturing skills and is significantly cheaper than professional ones. It's not a perfect simulation of tissue (tears too easily) but is more than enough to get good at simple interrupted/continuous, cruciate, and other basic patterns. You can even place multiple layers of foam on the board to simulate skin/subq/muscle layer if you want to make it more advanced.
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Those microfiber cloths + a clip board and big chip clip works beautifully.
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An emdroidery ring with your choice of fabric. Super cheap and fabric scraps are cheap as well. It doesn't mimic live tissue of course, but I found it helped me pay better attention to my tension.
That being said, I agree with Ash/SAR that a vet should walk you through suturing first. It's one thing to watch a youtube video and try it, it's another to understand what each pattern does, when to use it, what suture to use, etc.
A lot of schools are starting to put underclassmen through skills labs, so it depends on where you go. We suture quite a lot starting our first year.
That being said, I agree with Ash/SAR that a vet should walk you through suturing first. It's one thing to watch a youtube video and try it, it's another to understand what each pattern does, when to use it, what suture to use, etc.
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I know this isn’t what you want to hear, but I’d probably just wait until school starts. Our school gave us a little practice dummy and hosted wet labs and had actual course labs for teaching us what to do, how to hold instruments, etc 
Thank you for the feedback! I do have a veterinarian that would walk me through each step but I was just watching videos to familiarize myself with the techniques. Is there anyway you can post links to some of the better videos you have watched?
That is awesome! Thank you for the information!
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There are lots of US vet schools and med schools that have videos on youtube. Those will be more reliable (though again, don't count on 100% and there are always technique differences) than random videos by others that you don't know their credentials.
Another thing to keep in mind before I forget is to be aware that some vets (I don't want to say many, but possible) do not suture the way you will be taught. Often there are faster ways to achieve functionally the same suture or pattern that clinicians will use that will fail you in vet school. I've had a great mentor who always prefaces me watching his suturing with "don't do it this way while you're still in school". So again, just be prepared that you may have to unlearn some things if your school wants things done a very specific way that is different to how you teach yourself now
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so so so true. When I was shadowing an emergency vet this summer at the end of one of the surgeries he said “now in school they would teach you to do X, Y, and Z. And you should definitely do it...
... but this dog’s been down for 2 hours now, it’s 3 am, and I’m going to do it this faster way instead.”
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Are you wanting to practice suturing so you won’t “be behind” when you start school? Cause I can tell you, most of my class had no idea how to suture first year. It’s really not a big deal. By the end of our intro surgery class first semester, pretty much everyone was at the same level.
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It is very difficult to unlearn any muscle memory you develop from bad habits. Starting now also won't serve to really get ahead in class.
Would 100% not recommend starting suturing before proper labs. It seems fun, makes you feel like a real doctor, etc. But you're likely only going to make it harder for yourself later so I'd consider the long term implications you're trading for a bit of fun now.
That's my hard truth opinion on the matter.
Would 100% not recommend starting suturing before proper labs. It seems fun, makes you feel like a real doctor, etc. But you're likely only going to make it harder for yourself later so I'd consider the long term implications you're trading for a bit of fun now.
That's my hard truth opinion on the matter.
