Graduated a year ago.
i'm a current student - just starting second year - and personally comfortable without terminal surgery labs. we had terminal clinical skills labs in my vet tech school, and those didn't sit well with me.
2018 NCSU CVM grad here. We also completed terminal swine labs prior to my graduation. I personally found them very helpful, as these were likely the only exposure most students were going to get with advanced procedures (where the student is the primary surgeon) prior to graduation. Given vet med's lack of a requirement for residency prior to practicing, I hold the opinion that terminal procedures have an important place in a vet student's education. I'm grateful that this was available to me during my training. I'll also mention that many medical trainees also complete terminal swine labs as part of their advanced surgical training. I completed an externship at an academic facility that also housed a medical school. Lab animal veterinarians managed the swine anesthesia, while attending trauma surgeons induced various abdominal wounds outside of eyeshot of the residents. The residents' task was then to quickly assess the location of the injury, and successful repair the lesions- under a time pressure. These labs were intense. The pigs were well cared for, and the trauma residents gained excellent exposure to real world scenarios. A win-win in my book. Just another perspective to consider. If I were on the faculty of a veterinary school, I would push hard to continue the inclusion of these labs in the curriculum for the reasons I mentioned.
It’s interesting to hear how other schools do things.
We’ve had cadaver labs to learn basic skills and had our first spays (on shelter and owned dogs and cats) at the end of 2nd year. We’re all required to rotate through community practice and shelter med during clinics (6 weeks total) where we have the opportunity to do many spays and neuters. I don’t feel uncomfortable with the amount of live animal surgery experience we get, but I’m also not intending on going into small animal practice of any sort (or really do anything surgical if I can help it). I hope the only surgeries I’ll be doing are horse castrations, enucleations, and minor laceration repairs. The small animal trackers at my school may feel differently though
Our current state is an animal rights dream. Compared to twenty years ago, there are close to no terminal surgeries and the ones still hanging by a thread in curricula are on research or food producing animals (which we raise and slaughter en masse for, well, bacon). They've pretty much achieved their goals, ha. Obviously there are loftier ones for research animals in the general animal rights discussion, but pretty much every veterinary school that does research is going to be a target there.
I made this thread in response to an animal rights veterinarian claiming on the APVMA Facebook page that all but 3 schools perform terminal surgeries as required coarse work. When peeps would respond that x school does not have terminal surgeries, she would ask when this changed if the person knew. She obviously had very outdated information she was spreading to prospective students.
Sidebar:
I'm an applicant so I can't speak on personal experience. I have worked with a good handful of vets, young and old, that are upset by the loss of terminal surgical opportunities. I worked with 3 new grads (like had graduated the month I met them) and they said they felt incompetent in their ability to perform a surgery other than a spay/neuter and simple mass removal. This had a significant negative impact on their confidence, and one was ready to leave the field within months. I know that is not entirely unusual, but I do wonder if the lack of terminal surgeries, or heck just hand on surgical experience outside of routine things, is affecting veterinary retention. These same veterinarians also said they got very limited tech skills in school, and I genuinely felt bad for their struggles as it was eating them up. They all three attended different schools. They're great veterinarians and I believe they have (as expected) settled in, but I did witness firsthand why so many leave to work for the USDA, public health, or labs.
