Dr. Velting and I are officially on primary call, which means we get to field after hours emergencies on the road.
For the past three months, we have accompanied Drs. Hammond, True, Stanford and Anderson on emergency calls to learn how they manage emergency care and to develop and gain confidence with our own management. During this past month we’ve gone to the next step of taking the emergency call from the answering service, discussing the case with the secondary on call vet and speaking with the client. With cases that we have experience dealing with and that are relatively routine, Dr. Velting and I will go out and treat the patient. With cases that are unusual or are less routine, we will be accompanied by our secondary on call veterinarian—we always have the best interest of the patient in mind!
Beginning primary on call is a really exciting transition for any intern; it begins the culmination of putting all the skills and knowledge that we learned in school and during our early months of internship into practice. While four years of vet school, may sound like a long time, it flies by and it’s very difficult to fit in everything we need to know to be fully fledged, confident veterinarians.
Not only do we learn about horses, we also have to learn about all the other species that veterinarians see: dogs, cats, goats, sheep, pigs, cattle, chickens, and even exotics like reptiles and ferrets. Our first year is where we learn all the “normals” (anatomy, physiology, biochemistry, genetics, developmental biology, histology) then we progress to second year, which adds in the “abnormals” (pathology, infectious and metabolic diseases, pharmacology, common intoxications, and epidemiology.) Third year begins the process of learning how to fix everything and fourth year is putting it all into practice with the supervision and support of interns, residents and senior clinicians. At the end of those four years, we have seen a lot of cases but that doesn’t always mean that we feel ready to treat every case. An internship, which has been very popular in equine medicine for decades and is becoming more and more popular in other fields, is an additional year of mentorship where new graduates have exposure to lots of cases and to the numerous ways that different veterinarians manage them; it’s often said that 1 year of internship is comparable to 3 years of working in private practice. WEC and practices like it, are great places for internships because they offer a variety of specialties (surgery, sports medicine, reproduction, dentistry, and preventative/general wellness), a busy case load, and veterinarians who love to teach.
Dr. Velting and I in the past 3 months have seen a variety of cases that have ranged from routine vaccinations to colics that needed immediate surgery. Each patient presents a unique opportunity to learn and to hone our skills; we are so grateful for the incredible mentorship of the doctors at WEC, support of the staff, and for clients who have been so encouraging and accepting of us.
We look forward to seeing patients out on the road but hopefully not too often 😉 Stay healthy and safe out there Woodside horses!
Drs. Abby and Katy