Externships are available to veterinary students in any year of school. Student externs gain broad experience working in the Emergency department of a busy emergency/referral setting. Externs work in the ER department primarily unless a specialty focus is prearranged.
Externs shadow veterinary interns and emergency and critical care staff veterinarians, as well as learn from our experience technical staff. Externs are expected to be interactive with the staff, attend DVM rounds when available, proactively discuss cases, and actively contribute to the general workload as appropriate. Hands on experiences are dependent on the individual, caseload, and supervising veterinarians.
Availability permitting, externs can gain exposure to additional specialties during their externship or specialty externships can be arranged with critical care, surgery, oncology, dermatology, neurology, cardiology, ophthalmology, and/or internal medicine.
Our Waukesha hospital is both a VECCS Certified Level 1 hospital and a recognized American College of Veterinary Emergency and certified level 2 trauma center. Services at WVRC include 24/7 ER, critical care, surgery, internal medicine, neurology, ophthalmology, oncology, cardiology, and dermatology. A branch of Zoetis Reference Laboratories is in the lower level of our building, giving us the benefit of reference quality results within a few hours, 6 days a week. Our clinic is equipped with a complete in-house lab for point of care & after-hours results, digital radiology, cage side ultrasound, telemetry, mechanical ventilation, MRI, and CT. We have a long-standing robust internship program and frequent veterinary externs from the midwestern veterinary schools.
Veterinary student externships are generally 1-2 weeks in one department for first through third-year students and 2-4 weeks (1 or 2 departments) for fourth-year students. Special exceptions may be made to the schedule based upon the staff’s availability to accommodate longer/shorter requests.
Externs can expect to begin work by 8am, 12pm, or 4pm, depending upon the department, and may be called upon to put in an 8-12 hour day. As our hospital is a 24hr/365-day facility, externs will be expected to work at least one weekend when on the ER service to maximize case exposure and experience. Most students plan for approximately 40 hours of clinic time per week and we do have flexibility to work with alternate schedules.
Students are able to shadow and assist with cases/procedures as appropriate. Those that are proactive and seek experiences will find plenty of interesting cases and things to learn!
There is an intern office in our administrative space with a twin bed that externs/residents may use during their stay. There is a bathroom w/shower and full kitchen adjacent that the staff uses as their break room.