The San Francisco SPCA offers students a chance to experience a large-scale, busy, full-service, general practice facility.  We are unique in that our public medical services integrate with our shelter and community programs introducing veterinary students with an interest in rescue and welfare to a modern, progressive shelter model. We have a medical staff of 20+ DVMs, including a veterinary behaviorist and an internist, both board certified.  

At the Mission Campus of the SF SPCA externs are scheduled according to their interests within the following modules, based on availability:

Preventative Care, Emergent/Urgent Services, & Surgery/Procedures/Dentistry

Our Mission campus hospital serves patients seven days a week from 8am – 6 pm. We provide preventive care, emergency/urgent care, dentistry and surgery to over 25,000 patients per year.  In addition, we offer public behavior consults, with a board certified behaviorist and internal medicine specialist appointments on site.

Students will be paired with a specific doctor each day depending on particular interests.   However, case load can vary from day-to-day, so they will have the opportunity to follow cases that interest them. Depending on  level of experience, they may be asked to obtain patient histories, complete physical exams and discuss treatment plans with a staff veterinarian. They will be expected to attend cage-side rounds, which occur at 6:15 pm daily.

Please note that per the California Veterinary Medical Board, Business and Professions Code section 4830(e), only University of California at Davis or Western Health University students can participate in diagnosis and treatment as part of their externship program. This means that only students from the California schools are allowed to perform surgery, and only on shelter-owned animals. However, there are opportunities for all visiting students to scrub in on a variety of surgeries.

Spay/Neuter

The Spay/Neuter Clinic performs sterilization procedures 5 days per week currently. We sometimes perform other procedures on SPCA animals. These may be enucleations, amputations, mass removals, etc.

Community Cares Program

Our Community Cares Program offers a mobile vaccine clinic to underserved animal populations on the 2nd and 4th Saturday each month.  This is a excellent opportunity to participate in community outreach.  We also provide feral cat services.   The CCP team welcomes students participation at the vaccine clinics.

Shelter Medicine and Adoptions

The shelter medicine department cares for over 5000 dogs and cats each year. We work closely with SF Animal Care and Control and other shelters/rescue groups. At any given time, there may be over 400 animals in the care of the shelter. Shelter medicine houses the newly arrived animals in quarantine, as well as those needing medical or behavioral intervention on their way to adoptability and spay/neuter surgery.  Once the animals have a clean bill of health, they are ready to head to our Adoption Center.

Students on a shelter medicine career path may spend time at the shelter observing intake procedures, learning about our ringworm treatment program, observing intake assessments, participating in shelter rounds, or attending public dog training classes.

There are other departments and progams availabile to visint students including infectious disease programs and wards, shelter medicine behavior/enrichment programs, and intake procedure shadowing.