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
