The externship program, at Arbor View Animal Hospital, focuses on providing our externs with large amounts of hands-on practical experience working directly with our veterinarians and their patients. We customize our externship experience towards areas our externs want to further their skill sets. Our veterinarians know there is a lot to learn in vet school and applying this knowledge in the real world can be a daunting task. We believe veterinary students who complete an externship with us will have more hands-on experience and will be better prepared for life after they graduate. Many veterinary school programs lack a high caseload in exotic pet medicine, which is something Arbor View Animal Hospital excels at. We have 8 veterinarians on staff dedicated and passionate about exotic pet medicine. In fact, more than 38% of our clients are exotic pets (not including wildlife cases) and the remainder are canine and feline clients. Our clinic also treats and rehabilitates local injured wildlife. Our externs are responsible for triaging, developing treatment plans, and performing diagnostics on our wildlife patients, under the guidance of our veterinarians.
On average, Arbor View has between 300-500 wildlife cases brought to our clinic each year. We also have a working relationship with a local wildlife rehabilitation center, which works with us when medical care is needed for their wildlife cases. Arbor View also provides medical care for their education ambassador raptors and mammals. As we mentioned before, all of our doctors are very knowledgeable about exotic/wildlife medicine and are eager to teach others about their passion for exotic pet medicine.
Our clinic is also the only clinic in Northwest Indiana that sees exotic pet emergencies after hours, which if you’re interested in ER medicine this is a great way to get additional experience with exotic pet emergencies. Participation with after-hour exotic pet emergencies is not required for our externship but it is available if you’re interested.
What an extern can expect:
- M-F 8-5pm Schedule (can be adjusted by extern request)
- Hands-on Surgical Experience (amount dependent on year in vet school, extern comfort level, health status and species of patient)
- Time management skills
- Exotic Pet Husbandry and Handling Education
- Client Communication
- Diagnostic Test Acquisition and Interpretation of Results
- Developing Treatment Plans In Dogs, Cats, Exotic Pets and Wildlife
- Understand Equipment and Staff Training Needed To Appropriately Treat Exotic Pets
- Fear Free Focused Training
- Business Ownership/Management (if interested)
- Responsible For Wildlife Cases (including diagnostics, treatment, prescribing, diagnosing)
Arbor View Animal Hospital in Valparaiso, Indiana, is a full-service companion animal hospital. We are located less than 45 min from Chicago in Northwest Indiana. Arbor View Animal Hospital currently has 8 veterinarians at our practice. We are accredited with the American Animal Hospital Association (AAHA) and it is our goal to provide high quality evidenced based medicine. We operate by appointment only and focus on developing lasting relationships with our clients and their pets. We treat a wide range of animals including canine, feline, avian, exotic, reptile, small pocket pets, and other exotic/non-traditional pets and wildlife patients. Arbor View is open for appointments 5.5 days a week. We currently have a in-house lab equipment, access to outside labs daily courier pick-up, digital radiographs, digital dental radiographs, ultrasound, endoscopy and all the specialized equipment needed to safely practice on exotic pets. We employ 6 registered veterinary technicians and have approximately 20 additional highly trained veterinary assistants to support our doctors.
Students who come to our hospital for an externship can expect:
- Typically, our externs are working with our doctors 8-5pm Mon-Fri but these hours can be customized if needed. Dr. Herbert reaches out to our externs prior to their visit to go over their goals, what are their strengths and weakness’. She then creates an externship experience catered toward the information they provide her.
- At our externship you will get hands-on experience working with exotic pets, including in depth husbandry discussions, handling skills, learning the appropriate tools and medications to work with exotic pets and wildlife, and potentially hands-on surgical and treatment skills. The amount of hands-on learning when dealing with exotic patients is based on the patient species, clinical signs, if they’re stable and overseeing veterinarians comfort level with an externs skill set.
- Depending on the externs comfort level (and desire) hands-on surgery experience in canine/feline patients is also offered
- We see a large amount of wildlife and our externs are responsible for triaging incoming wildlife and developing treatment plans, performing diagnostics, interpreting these diagnostics and following these cases as if they were the overseeing veterinarian. Our staff and veterinarians will provide as much support as needed to our externs when it comes to wildlife cases. Our wildlife caseload does vary throughout the year and tends to be heaviest in the spring, summer and early fall for those interested in wildlife medicine.
- Our externships are typically 2-6 weeks long, are year round and our externs choose how many weeks they would like to participate in
- Free onsite housing is available to our externs
- We only allow 1 extern at a time to maximize their hands-on experience
- Weekly stipend available for each completed week
- Externship is open to any vet student currently enrolled in an accredited veterinary school
Externs have the option of utilizing our onsite living quarters and this is at no cost to them. This includes a private bedroom with attached full bathroom on the second floor of our clinic. The staff breakroom is on the same floor as our extern living quarters, which includes access to a refrigerator, microwave/convection oven/airfryer, dishes/silverware and kitchen sink. Externs have access to free clinic wifi, clinic computers and private internet ready smartTV (local stations available, externs can login into any subscription services they may have) in the extern suite.