Large Animal Block- A quick recap

So for January and February, I was in "Large Animal Block", which is designed to help the transition from all classroom work into clinics. Even though it's a little late, I thought I'd recap these courses here!

Courses that I took:
Large Animal Medicine
Large Animal Reproduction
Large Animal Pathology and Toxicology
Poultry Production
Dairy Nutrition

We’ll start with Medicine, since it takes up the most time! We’ve gotten lectures on everything ranging from cardiology to neonatology, and lectures on animals like camelids and swine. Our labs (2 hours every other week or so) have included Equine Dentistry (where we floated a horse’s teeth), Equine Cardiology (where we did echos as well as auscultation to diagnose horses with murmurs), Equine Physical Exam, Neurology (where we diagnosed a neurologic defect in a horse), Opthamology (where we looked at normal horse and goat eyes), Bovine procedures (including placing a orogastric tube, doing epidurals, and taking blood), and Swine labs. Every week we also work on written clinical cases, learning how to go from a problem list to a treatment plan.

Reproduction is our other big class. We only have a few lectures in this course, mostly centered on reproduction in certain species, but we have labs all day once a week. Labs are 3 hours each and include Bovine Palpation, Mare Palpation, Obstetrics, etc, etc. This class has been a ton of fun, and we spent a lot of time in the barns interacting with the teaching animals. Highlights included:
· Collecting semen from a variety of animals, including a pig (who has a ridiculously long, corkscrew shaped penis), a sheep, a dog, a bull, and a stallion
· Palpating (per rectum) mares and doing breeding soundness examinations on them. In addition to finding ovaries, we did uterine cultures, uterine biopsies, and vaginal speculum examinations.
· Learning how to perform fetotomies.
· Diagnosing pregnancy in sows (pigs) via ultrasound
· Rectally palpating lots and lots of cows!

Pathology has been another class with interesting laboratory sessions. The lectures have been a whirlwind of “everything that kills in two hours”. While some of the labs have just been small group lectures (not fair!), we also spent some time in the path room watching necropsies, observing abnormal specimens, and doing our own equine necropsies. Note: The Greek origin of autopsy is “to see oneself”. For animals, we often use the word necropsy or “to see the dead”. To imagine these labs, think of Dexter, and then multiply it by a lot! We also got a tour of the toxicology laboratory, which was impressive if only for the ridiculously expensive machinery in a pretty dingy lab space!

Poultry medicine was another class I’ve taken, which was also pretty fun. I promised Mom I would learn as much about chickens as I could while in clinics, so chicken class it was! This ended up being a really interesting class. Each week, we had a short lecture followed by necropsies of birds from local farms. We got our own dead chicken (or duck) each week, which sounds gruesome (and it is), but was also really interesting. We also did a field trip to a “local” poultry farm, which ended up being half a mile from my parent’s house. Imagine rows of birds going down a hallway as far as you can see, and you pretty much have it. It was impressive how clean and organized the facility was.

Finally, I took Dairy Nutrition. We didn’t get any field trips in this class, but we did have some computer sessions where we worked on developing rations. It wasn’t the most exciting class we had, but it was in the most comfortable classroom AND we had a K-cup machine right upstairs, so the coffee was much better than the stuff that came out of the vending machine in the normal classroom. We take what we can get…

Clinical Rotations: What I'll Be Taking

While I wait for my schedule to actually be set in stone, I figured I would share the list of rotations that I'll be taking next year. Again, in April I'll get my complete schedule, but this at least gives a sense of what my life will look like!

You'll note that a few of the rotations are already scheduled (the ones at the bottom). I'll be heading to Tri-State Bird Rescue in July for two weeks. I just got back from the Food Animal Medicine and Surgery rotation at Ohio State University (more on that shortly) and am about to leave for Nebraska for Beef Cattle Calving.

Welcome to the ninth year of vet school!

Since I am, in essence, dropping off the face of the earth for next year and a little bit, I thought it might be a good idea to fill everyone in on what I’m going to be doing and where I’m going to be. It’s self indulgent, for sure, but since I am already missing my friends and family, I thought it might be a good way to stay in touch. As you know, I’ve been a combined degree veterinary/PhD student for the past 7 or so years. I started out doing two years of the veterinary curriculum, supplemented with lab rotations during the first two summers. I then transitioned into PhD-land full time, finishing rotations, developing a thesis project, going through a prelim exam (quite possibly the worst period of my life), and then working on my thesis project for the next few years. I’m now finishing up that project and transitioning back into the veterinary curriculum, which is going to keep me busy for the next year or so.

How the vet schedule works:
Halfway through third year, students leave traditional classes and start transitioning into clinics. January through February is set aside for Large Animal Block, which is an intensive group of classes and labs held at New Bolton Center. From March through the first week of May is Small Animal Block, which is basically the same thing but in the small animal hospital (VHUP). After that point, all the students enter clinical rotations. Basically, the entire year (May to May) is made up of 2 week rotation slots. There are 25 rotations in the year, with an additional two week holiday rotation. There are a number of CORE rotations that every student has to take. These include: Small Animal Medicine (4 weeks), Small Animal Surgery (2 weeks), Large Animal Medicine (2 weeks), Large Animal Surgery (2 weeks), and Large Animal Emergency and Critical Care (2 weeks). There are also rotations required for each major. Major options are Small Animal, Mixed Animal, Large Animal, Equine, and Food Animal. In addition, students can take many elective rotations as well as extramural rotations (rotations at other veterinary schools or private practices). Some students elect to skip either Large or Small Animal Block, and start rotations early instead. In my case, I’ve decided to take Large Animal Block and skip Small Animal Block.

My schedule for this spring looks like this:

• January 2012 and February- Large Animal Block at New Bolton Center in Kennett Square PA
• 1st week of March- Thesis Writing
• 2nd and 3rd weeks of March- Food and Fiber Animal Medicine at Ohio State
• 4th week of March- Thesis defense- March 28th at noon
• 1st week of April- Beef Cattle Calving in Nebraska
• 2nd two weeks in April- Large Animal Emergency and Critical Care at New Bolton
• Last week of April and first week of May- Small Animal Radiology at VHUP

While I’ve submitted our rotation requests for my 4th(9th) year, I don’t get my actually schedule until sometime in April. There are a few rotations that I’ve chosen that are already scheduled, but the remainder will be filled in whenever they fit!