VetSpeak E3: From Student to Baby Doctor, Practice Owner and Beyond
Hello everyone!
Welcome to Vet Speak with Dr. Karie. This is episode three. It's called From Student to Baby, doctor, practice Owner and Beyond. I always wanted to be a veterinarian. This episode is very much my journey.
I volunteered and interned at the Humane Society in Champaign County and it was a great experience and I made a lot of great connections there as well and met a lot of great people. Shelter medicine is basically general practice, but for a whole herd of animals and so different mindset and different perspective. I decide I want to be a shelter medicine veterinarian and do spays and neuters and save all these lives of animals who don’t have homes.
Then third year comes around, I am shocked at how I dislike surgery. It's so repetitive. It's the same thing over and over again.
I decided to look into other avenue where I could be helpful with skillsets that set me apart. And so I took a bereavement course, which led me to volunteering for the grief hotline that Illinois had at the time. The pet loss hotline helped me understand the depths of this human animal bond.
And so I have these things that I love. I'm making my fourth year schedule. End of Life Care and hospice started moving up the ranks, which I honestly was not really expecting. I decided to do one of my externships in Tampa, Florida with Lap of Love. It was just so eye-opening to see in-home euthanasia and hospice care work.
It hit my heart and I was like, I wanna be one of these people. But it's not something I wanna do all the time and every day. I also learned of my passion for behavior during my fourth year and just how much it affects the human animal bond. Aggressive animals are many times fearful and there are so many ways we can help them if we are patient.
I figured out some pieces of my puzzle of what I wanted my veterinary career to look like.
Fourth year students you truly have to put everything your whole heart into fourth year and figure out where your passions lie, and find that purpose. Find those things that you're good at and that you want to do, and focus there and then go into the real world and do that. Do what you are most passionate about. I utilized my fourth year to hone my skills. I asked my specialty doctors with every case- If I was in general practice, what would I do for this case? Pick their brain. Ask the questions. You’ll come out a better doctor for it. And I feel like that's the only way that I was able to get my mobile practice up and running 6 months out of school is because I took fourth year extremely seriously.
Then I graduate and I'm baby doctor now. Baby Dr. Karie had Danyahl at her side always. I would check in with the senior veterinarians and asking if they agreed with my plan. Get that quick validation that you are going down the right path. Get that reassurance. Know what you know and what you don’t know. Learning your style is super important right out of school. It’ll turn into how you practice medicine.
I started up my own practice which is very difficult. Make sure you set boundaries not just for now but for later in life too. You don't have to do it all. Take care of yourself and take care of your family first. You need to be able to have that balance. And now my job with Purina, I have great work life balance.
That is how I went from student to baby, doctor to practice, owner and beyond. I'm still a practice owner. It just looks a little different now. I have my full-time job with Purina and we have all these different aspects of life and veterinary medicine that people don't think of.
We're all human and we all love pets, and we all want what's best.
Help me build this trust in Vet Med. Help me translate care. Tell your friends, tell me what topics you wanna talk about. Let's do this you guys. Let's all work together as a team. Thanks so much.
-Dr. Karie
VetSpeak E2: The Challenges of Vet School
Hello everyone!
Welcome back to Vet Speak with Dr. Karie. This episode is called The Challenges of Vet School. So I really wanted to do this episode because I feel like pet owners clients don't truly understand what we go through to become a veterinarian. It's hard, it's tasking and definitely not for everyone. And so you get into vet school. You get that acceptance letter. Let's go become a veterinarian. It's incredibly difficult to get into veterinary school. All have been working towards this forever. Then, you walk in to first year super excited to be there. I'm just going to talk only about University of Illinois because that's the only school that I went to and that's what I'm familiar with.
At Illinois, structure and function is literally all you do the first year.
It is anatomy, animal dissection, and lots of memorizing. A bunch of different species: dogs, cats, horses, cows, goats and pigs. And you have to memorize all these different species entire body anatomy. What each part does, where it is, and how it functions and works. All of vet school, I feel like is taking all this knowledge in incredibly fast. You are drinking water from a fire hose. I really had to change my study habits and learn the best way that my brain absorbs information.
We come from this mindset going into vet school that we have to be perfect. We have to get straight A's to get into veterinary school in the first place. We have to be the perfect person, perfect applicant, and then when we get there, you don't have to be perfect anymore. Veterinary students, you do not have to be perfect anymore.
Another thing is…. in vet med you can't be squeamish. You can't be unwilling to get dirty. It's a very dirty job and first year throws you straight into that. First year is just structure and function. You're learning everything that's normal and healthy.
Second year is pathobiology. Toxicology, parasitology, pharmacology, all the -ologies. So we just went from everything healthy and how everything functions when appropriate and healthy to second year where everything is sick. And then you go into third year and you're like, oh, I know this. I know healthy, I know unhealthy. I know the structure and function. I have the pathobiology of all these disease process. And third year is called surgery and medicine. So basically putting everything that you have learned over the past two years into practice- Case studies.
What are you supposed to do when a dog eats a toxin? What are you supposed to do when a dog gets a parasite? What does the symptoms in that animal look like when they get the parasite? What does this horse look like when it gets colic, and what do you do about it? And it really is putting all of that information together, which I loved.
You’re putting these puzzle pieces together of diseases and how to treat them. We are talking medicine. We are talking surgeries, where to cut and how to cut. You also do your spay and neuter during third year with the supervision of veterinarians assisting you after very heavily covering how to do them right. You also learn how anesthesia works and affects the body during surgery along with timing of drugs and medications. People don't think of all the stuff that goes into everyday veterinary medicine. You have to know all the things for all the specialties. You don't get to pick and choose. You don't get to cherry pick. You have to know it all, and you have to know it for all the animals too.
Then we go into fourth year and we have rotations. Every two weeks you switch rotations, into different specialties, different species. These are specialists now, so this is like high level stuff. This is like the details. This is the best care that this animal's going to get because we are at a specialty center. But you also have to learn the real life medicine, general practice, what we actually can do with what we have at a general practice clinic.
So not only that, you're doing that right during the day and then you go home and research at night to discuss and ask questions the following day. Fourth year is very mentally taxing because you're constantly on. And then physically taxing because your body is also constantly on. Your brain never switches off and you don't have a lot of time to relax. No relaxing beacuse that time needs to be spent studying for boards. Your NAVLE.
Fourth year you take your NAVLE. Most pass on the first attempt, but you have three attempts for boards prior to graduation now (used to be two).
Fourth year goes by in a flash because every two weeks you do are doing something different and then you graduate. You're a baby doctor! Congratulations! You did it now you get to go work in the real world with some good mentorship from senior veterinarians.
Veterinary school is hard. We're not just focused on one specialty. We're focused on everything and we have to be everything for everyone.
Thank you guys so much for joining me today on Vet Speak. Let's translate trust in VetMed and work as a team. So tell your friends. Rate this on your favorite platform. Send me topics, you guys on what you wanna talk about. Let's do this. Take care.
-Dr. Karie
VetSpeak E1: Dr. Karie, my story
VetSpeak: Episode 1: Dr. Karie, My Story
Hello everyone!
This is the VetSpeak podcast, where we translate veterinary medicine and care to bridge the growing gap of trust between owners and veterinarians. I'm your host, Dr. Karie, a veterinarian with a love for the human animal bond. I'll be introducing myself to you lovely people listening. Whether you're a veterinarian, veterinary student, or a loving pet owner, I hope everyone can learn more and be more understanding and trusting of one another.
So why the heck did I start this podcast up, right? Well, I noticed something missing in vet med, something that really bothers me, and something I wanted to change.
Trust, or should I say lack of it.
Pet parents not trusting their veterinarian, us not working together as a team to help your pet, keep them healthy and do what is absolutely best for them. And that is what this podcast is for. I really want to increase transparency, increase trust and translate vet speak into a language that pet owners can grasp and understand.
Education is power and I hope that by showing owners the challenges we as veterinarians face when it comes to our career, show them a day in our life, they can be more patient, more trusting and more understanding. I also hope that I can show owners a bit of the inside of our brains and how we think as veterinary professionals and why we say and do the things that we do.
Sometimes we don't have time to fully communicate our thoughts. Sometimes we don't think it's a good idea to go down a rabbit hole with you. Sometimes we don't want you stuck on a certain word or phrase and worry you before we have to. I hope I can address owner's concerns and help change the way veterinarians speak or approach communication, including spectrum of care, translating our vet speak back into normal words to enhance understanding for more informed decision making.
Every veterinarian is different, but many of us think the same. We are type A perfectionists. We want to do the very best that we can. We always want to advocate for what we think is very best for your pet, but we also aren't you the owner who knows them best. I hope this podcast really helps everyone understand and maybe changes the way we approach each other and trust each other.
Come on this journey with me and let's translate and trust in veterinary medicine as a team. Tell your friends, write on your favorite platform, send me the topics you want to talk about. Let's get started. Thanks guys.
Love,
Dr. Karie