For the students joining us at VCA University, they will be given shadowing opportunities based on their areas of interest/focus. Our medical bench is diverse, so we are able to offer our externs experience in General Practice wellness, urgent care and also exotic medicine with avian, pocket pets and rabbits. Most of our anesthetic cases are routine spays, neuters and dentals - The student will be able to observe and assist in these procedures, including dental radiographs and extractions.
We are a Primary Care hospital - We do mostly wellness, some urgent care and some stable hospitalization overnight. We have standard equipment found in General Practice hospitals, including dental machine, digital dental x-ray, digital radiographs, ultrasound, one-table surgery suite. We have a technical team of two RVTs and 11 Veterinary Assistants (with 6 VAs being long-time employees and 1 being a VT student at the local Technician program).
As for our team of Veterinarians, we have 5 total - 2 have worked previously in busy GP/ER hospitals, 4 out of the 5 doctors have been in practice for at least 5 years or longer, and we have 1 new graduate.
We are open from Sunday through Saturday, from 8a to 7p so the students would be expected to have open availability to shadow with a mentoring Veterinarian within those hours. Schedule would be dependent on what the student's interests and/or primary focus is. The student should anticipate being in the hospital, actively shadowing a Veterinarian for 40 hours a week. There is no expectation for the student to "work", but rather to focus on learning from their mentoring doctor by participating in each case, asking questions, voicing thoughts, etc.