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Hey folks... a couple of you know me but for those who don't I'm a third year at the OVC in Guelph, Canada. I think my class has reached our breaking point - I sit at the back and the more I screenwatch, the more I see people on facebook or playing internet games and the like instead of paying attention. Then again I feel like facebook is one of the few things that makes days with 3 hours in a row of horse joint conditions bearable... (No offense to actual horsey people of course)
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Mar 4, 2012 03:42
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| # ¿ Apr 27, 2024 19:44 |
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PutinOnTheRitz posted:Hello, new best friend. I'm not sure how much I can really help you with that stuff... They've revamped the admissions process somewhat, so take what I say with a grain of salt. Just looking at the admission averages from the last little while there still is hope for sure even if you're sub-80%, but it definitely means you're going to have to shine with your reference letters and experience. It sounds like you've got quite a bit of valuable experience, too, so that should at least help quite a bit. They don't lie when they say the BIF is half of what gets you in, marks aren't everything by a long shot. If you're seriously considering tanking the semester though, be really careful. Because of the application process, if you're applying after 4th year, this semester WILL count, as will your first semester of fourth year (unfortunately)... but dropping a course this semester means they're going to use your 1st semester of this year average in lieu of it and any courses you take this semester will not count for any purposes at all. I actually applied from Mac and got very lucky because 2 of my semesters got dropped, but they contained courses I didn't need to get accepted. If the semester I took Cell Bio for instance had been discounted, I would have been hosed and they don't like granting special consideration at all. So yeah, I don't really have a lot of advice beyond weighing your options carefully. If you're just getting destroyed this semester by fluke courses and there's nothing special it could well be worth it to just drop an elective and write it off. Just make sure you do the math carefully and take into account the OVC's myriad stupid regulations for what you can and can't do in a semester. If it comes down to it though, don't gently caress over your degree just to put a polish on your OVC application. Your worst case scenario is you have to reapply and they look only at your fourth year. One girl in my class was on her last shot at applying and managed to get in, it's not the end of the world if you don't make it first time around.
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Mar 6, 2012 05:25
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Khelmar posted:1. How many tries did it take you to get in? I got in first shot, lucky me. At the time OVC was doing something like 40/40/20 grades/background/MCAT... I had good grades partly by fluke and a solid MCAT so I got in pretty well even if my vet background was a little shaky (I'd only really started gunning for it in 2nd year of undergrad.) I've actually been on both sides of the interview divide! My year was the final year the OVC did 2 faculty:1 applicant interviews, then they moved to MMIs, where they've got faculty and students interviewing applicants. For my own interview, the questions were very heavily research based when it came to the veterinary stuff, because given my degree that's really what I knew about. I only really remember one off the wall question, and I think they were looking to stump me because I still haven't a clue what the answer is. It was 'given the current regulatory and political environment, what role do you think the veterinarian has to play in helping make pharmaceuticals more accessible and affordable for people?' Other than that we mostly talked about fencing (I did 4 years on my school's varsity team). I can't talk a whole lot about the other side of the fence though, unfortunately; we signed confidentiality agreements with respect to assessment. Of all the downsides of vet school I hate the internal politicking with a passion. It happens in the class (It really is just like high school), between different classes, between the professors and between the school and the professors. Sometimes I feel like what's best for the students gets lost with all the faculty going 'I want to see things done THIS way.' I wish I'd known exactly how much work it all is. Everyone warned me but I just feel like you can't really know till you go through with it exactly how little of a life you get to have sometimes because you need to spend every weekend frantically cramming for next Monday's midterm. All in all though, I don't think I'd change what I did. I arguably took the more difficult road - instead of going through my school's vaunted pre-med program, I decided I wanted a practical degree with much more hands-on work so I took a plain old B. Sc instead and it got me where I wanted to go. Through that though, I learned a lot and I don't regret it one bit... hell it actually got me a job for a summer when I was financially struggling. My average wasn't the greatest because of what I did (They pad the pre-med averages to hell and back, god forbid someone coming out of that program has less than an 85 average) but I feel I learned more about the real world anyway. The only thing I'd probably change would be that I'd have tried to convince my mom to let me get a dog... I had like no experience with dogs up till second year undergrad!
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Mar 6, 2012 22:59
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On an unrelated note One of the biggest suppliers of injectable generics is closing down temporarily (could be months to years). These guys are one of the biggest suppliers of common vet drugs like hydromorphone, diazepam, fentanyl, glycopyrrolate and naloxone, to name a few of the big ones. Has anyone else here been affected by this? The OVC is already starting to stockpile some of these drugs so our Jr. Surgery protocols are getting worked over pretty thoroughly to avoid their use.
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Mar 6, 2012 23:13
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... Are you saying your practice doesn't normally premed?
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Mar 7, 2012 03:20
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I think I'm actually the only OVC student in here. Most important question is, is VMRCVM your state school/do you get a discount for going there? Because while Guelph is a nice school it is expensive as hell in terms of tuition for international students, and nobody likes walking away massively in debt. (Tuition for non-Canadians is $56k a year, plus living expenses etc.) For small animal though, we do have a pretty solid program, and the hospital is really open. If you're diligent you can hobnob with some of the top people in their fields, and a number of the educators are really passionate about not only their field but teaching as well. One of our surgeons, for instance, was actually a teacher for a number of years. We do have some of the top people in their fields working around the OVC as well, for instance I've had a fair few chances to interact with and learn from Karol Mathews (The lady who wrote what is essentially the emergency and critical care bible.) I won't say it's perfect and there's always issues with some profs but I enjoy where I am. The biggest downside right now off the top of my head is we've just built a big fancy primary health care centre and it's just starting to mature, so a lot of students feel like they're not gaining much from it right now. We're required to spend about 25 hours a year there on top of a full course load so at times it can seem like a bit much.
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Mar 11, 2012 06:12
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Carebear posted:We have a lot of clients that won't pay for pain meds. I'm not sure I agree with clinics that make pain meds optional. I feel like it should be built in to the cost of the surgery.
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Apr 2, 2012 00:27
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Asstro Van posted:You can include pain meds in the cost of surgery but you can't force a client who doesn't "believe" in them to administer anything after they're discharged. True enough but you can give the ones that are iffy about spending money no choice whether or not they spend the extra twenty bucks on meloxicam or whatever. My point is that it shouldn't be considered an 'added' cost, it should be part of whatever you're doing. Whether or not the owner USES it is a whole nother kettle of fish but at least that's one less obstacle to getting them to consider it.
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Apr 2, 2012 16:29
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I think the rules thread is pretty clear on it... There's no VPCR, so we really don't have any business commenting on stuff like that, vet or not. Especially considering it's something a little more serious than kitty pooping outside the box. Even a full-fledged vet shouldn't be commenting on that panel because s/he does not have a complete history. I am not the mod though so if I'm wrong in this interpretation please correct me!
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Apr 10, 2012 05:27
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Our surgery profs don't have too many great quotes... One did all of his lectures in a skin tight bike kit for charity though! Shame he's kind of old though, dude's pretty buff.
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Apr 11, 2012 01:33
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Baika posted:How often will you have left handed veterinary students in surgical classes? Are they forced to learn to use right handed tools and surgical procedures or are there some kind of accommodations provided? I am in fact left handed! I don't know about anywhere else, of course, but I learned it both ways. The school was handy about providing me an ambidextrous set of needle holders (The Mathieu type) during surgery as I prefer suturing left handed... Worst case scenario, though, I just work the box lock wrong-handed on a mayo-hegar or olsen-hegar. I know a fair few left handed surgeons and the lesson I've learned from every one of them individually is it's important to learn how to use both of your hands regardless. There's times where it's often more convenient to do something 'wrong' handed and us lefties are actually at an advantage in some ways because we're more used to being able to adapt to swapping hands. As an aside, best of luck to everyone who's writing finals now or soon! I know I need it for my equine medicine and surgery final tomorrow... Solis fucked around with this message at 04:24 on Apr 11, 2012 |
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Apr 11, 2012 04:03
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So for you guys that don't know, I'm actually about to go into my fourth year, meaning I have to pick rotations. And the OVC is a bitch and I only -just- got my schedule, and I've still got 4 weeks to fill. I'm kind of interested in doing an external a couple places in the US if I can hack it, but I'm not sure who the heck I'd talk to. I know there's a couple people in this thread from UC Davis, and I'm hoping someone from there would be able to PM or IM me who to get in touch with there? Otherwise, I don't even know which schools or places I should be looking at for this stuff. Can anyone give me some advice?
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Apr 13, 2012 16:29
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Khelmar posted:What do you want to do? It's easier to tell you where to look if we know the kind of thing you want to do. For example, if you want to hate yourself, UC Davis is a good place to go. Haha, yeah I should probably specify that! Honestly, SA surgery, anaesthesia and emerg are my favourite things, but I feel like I'm kind of loading down my rotation list already with them... I'm doing two weeks at the referral practice I spent the summer with, plus an extra of each at the OVC SAC on top of 2 weeks that they require for core. I kind of want to get a lot of experience with different places and methodologies in general, as well as maybe scoping out something for an internship. The OVC... doesn't honestly provide us with a lot of guidance for these things so much as just says 'here's what you need to do, go nuts.' My networking really hasn't been all that great either, it's only recently I've been going out to conferences and trying to get acquainted with people more in the field that aren't, like, right next door to me. (IVECCS 2011 was bloody awesome though, well worth the trip) So yeah, I kind of feel like I don't quiite know what I'm doing at all. As an aside, anyone catch the VIN rounds tonight? It was well worth taking the hour plus off from staring incomprehendingly at my notes on lab animals.
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Apr 16, 2012 04:37
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(I hate California)
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Khelmar posted:If you want to do ER, Penn is an obvious choice (yes, yes, Pennwes, we know). If you want something exotic, you might talk to Matt Beal at MSU about doing an ER / interventional radiology rotation. Thanks Khelmar! I'll probably start calling/surfing around after my last exam Friday.
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Apr 17, 2012 16:30
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Asstro Van posted:
You have to buy or rent your own full pack? We got given some crappy hemostats, needle drivers and foreceps for free and the school supplied us with instruments for actual surgery. If it's for just practice, don't be afraid to cheap out and buy 'floor grade' stuff off of ebay. It's not THAT horrible and you can get a bunch of different things so if you find out like me that you hate Olsen-Hegars, you're only out 3 bucks.
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Apr 18, 2012 03:51
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The time has come for a surgical pack!
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I don't know how we SHOULD be educated but there are parts that are definitely absurd. Case in point: I am behind horribly in studying for my small animal medicine and surgery exam tomorrow morning that involves 120 lectures, and only had 18 hours to study for. The vast majority of the material on this exam was covered already in previous midterms and so is only worth one point per lecture. So basically, 100 lectures each only have a single question apiece. Some of these lectures spewed vast amounts of information at us (I'm looking at you respiratory diseases), while others didn't cover so much, and yet each is worth exactly the same. A lot of the times, if our previous M&S exams are any indication, they will ask you a really small detail that they considered important... God help you if it's not a big part of the overall picture because if you miss it you might as well just not have bothered studying that lecture in the first place. I've had exams where I stare at the questions and think 'It makes no difference whether or not I studied, I would have never remember this.' On the converse, I've also had exams where even if I should have known the answer and didn't, there were ways to figure out what was the right answer by stepping back and looking at the big picture and saying "Well, Addison's causes a drop in aldosterone production which can lead to hyperkalemia which leads to PQ prolongation. That makes sense." A lot of the time we aren't GIVEN that background though. Like... cisplatin toxicity in cats. Cisplatin is toxic to cats. Why? What does it do? Can you ever use it anyway? Who knows, our onco professor mentioned it and it is so. DKA causes hypomagnesemia? Yep. What does that even mean clinically and why does it happen? Who knows, just supplement with MgPO4 if it's low. There's no stepwise process or background to those things. They just... happen. They try for a systematic approach, sure, but a lot of the time it just falls flat as 'well just memorize this crap' and to me that's a drat shame because the processes behind this stuff are fascinating and if you don't get why it's happening you're missing out on a lot of stuff. E: I realize that this is often not possible and yes we're going to have to memorize lists of viruses and things that are basically 'you need to know this.' but a lot of the time I feel like the lack of background is to our detriment when we could be learning by working through it rather than just spewing facts. Solis fucked around with this message at 04:12 on Apr 19, 2012 |
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Apr 19, 2012 03:58
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Haha, in a delicious twist of irony half the onco questions were on chemo drugs rather than tumour behaviour or anything like that... And one of them was on cisplatin, asking what kind of toxic effects it has! So I guess this thread got me a point (out of 130) on my final. Yaay 
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Apr 19, 2012 18:53
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Enelrahc posted:Today Topoisomerase and I fisted cows. I can't say I felt all the things we were theoretically supposed to and it was scary to dive in (basically literally) and just do it, but it was still awesome and I know I'll get better with practice. LIVING THE DREAM. I can truthfully say I did this once for the experience, then promptly decided I was never going to do it again. Thank god for optional labs.
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May 3, 2012 01:48
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Ours was the first year it was optional, and we didn't have to do semen collection at all except as a theoretical (thank god)
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May 3, 2012 04:27
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6-Ethyl Bearcat posted:At my work experience today we did cherry eye surgery on a bulldog. I think I've mentioned it before, he came in a couple of months ago, vomited on induction and was very close to dying. So they didn't do the surgery. Nothing to do with the owner as he had been fasted as per normal. After 14 hours you can still get food in it... Gastric emptying isn't really a perfect process and sometimes it takes a lot longer than you would think. In my experience, after an overnight fast it's still not unusual to have an animal regurg intraop with food particles; we had a few of those with our surgery beagles this year after a 12 hour fast. If he'd had food particles after 3 days then that's kind of worrying but it's not like post-op vomiting is an uncommon thing, and brown runny liquid could just be glandular secretions + residual crud in the stomach/duodenum. Bulldogs in particular are notorious for aspirating on recovery just because their airway is so horrible.
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May 3, 2012 16:33
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Our anaesthetists at school always say that you should wait till brachy dogs are pretty much chewing on the tube before they get extubated both because of the aspiration risk and to just help them breathe/recover better. Never seen one of them running around with it in though! Poor guy...
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May 4, 2012 16:55
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Official Bizness posted:Request for some honest input! If I were to undergo Penn-Foster's vet assistant course, is that really on the same level as a diploma from a brick and mortar school? What is it, an online degree or something...?
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May 7, 2012 02:59
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I can't see an online course being anywhere near as good as a program with hands on experience... There's just so many skills a tech needs that require actually doing them to learn. That's just my opinion though, I obviously haven't dealt with anyone who's gone through that particular course.
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May 7, 2012 04:01
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I don't mean to crow here but I survived and I am totally in for my clinical year! I don't know about other schools but OVC tries to kill us all at the end of third year...
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May 18, 2012 21:13
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Saw a really interesting case today... a congenital traumatic diaphragmatic hernia. Poor puppy had a nearly completely dysplastic diaphragm so like 80% of it was a wispy thin membrane that'd probably break if he sneezed. The surgeon had to pretty much make a new one out of Prolene. My wrists ached at the end of it from holding the retractors. Worth it for the close up view though! I also heard back from Penn, they're offering me a shot at either an emerg or ICU external rotation... I can't decide which! Solis fucked around with this message at 02:16 on May 24, 2012 |
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May 24, 2012 02:14
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The diaphragm was so weak the vet thinks it just jumped off of something or coughed and it tore. ETA: Yes I know that makes the hernia not congenital but I couldn't really think of a better way to put it that still sounded cool Solis fucked around with this message at 03:00 on May 24, 2012 |
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May 24, 2012 02:56
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Well, this rather exciting (short!) week ended with only a TPLO and casting a radius fracture. Over the course of 4 days I saw: that neat diaphragmatic hernia, 3 TPLOs (2 with severe meniscal damage), ventral slot cervical distraction, a massive gastric ulcer resection and cystotomy, a gastrocnemius tendon repair and an extracapsular cruciate repair. Not too bad. I am going to be pretty drat tired at the end of the year if they're all at this pace though.
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May 25, 2012 23:59
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Khelmar posted:The semester ends and you all disappear? WTF? I am stuck in the middle of Texas for 8 weeks with very little time and no internet access. I fear I may wither and die.
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Jun 28, 2012 03:12
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Crooked Booty posted:You got here just in time for record high temps! 109 here yesterday. I'm in Alvarado at the mixed animal clinic up here. Middle of nowhere. It's way less hot than I thought it would be though...
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Jul 4, 2012 03:38
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Shnooks posted:Omg thank you for your help guys. I got a call from TWO clinics today offering me a position as a tech. I'm so excited. Congratulations!
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Jul 31, 2012 02:57
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I'm doing a 2 week extern at U Penn's ER and I have to say... holy crap is it nice to be in a city again! The campus is gorgeous too and the people are really friendly. I think I really want an internship here, but maybe it's just the whole 'new place' thing getting at me.
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Aug 29, 2012 06:23
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MrFurious posted:The part I can't wrap my head around is how someone can believe in homeopathy, but not believe in vaccines. The same fundamental theories are at play. You underestimate the amount of cognitive dissonance required to be a vet and believe in loving homeopathy in the first place
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Aug 29, 2012 19:04
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Anyone going to IVECCS this weekend?
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Sep 4, 2012 18:18
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The worst is being tested on things that don't technically have a right answer. I'm looking at you anaesthesia
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Oct 31, 2012 19:17
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Enelrahc posted:I'm on LinkedIn left over from when I was an engineer. I think it's pretty useless for the vet stuff so far. This is unadulterated brilliance, right here. (Or perhaps brilliance diluted to <1ppb)
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Nov 12, 2012 04:53
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Last year was my worst year academically in my whole life. This year somehow I'm managing to pull 80s and 90s when it no longer matters for internship applications. gently caress vet school forever is what I'm saying.
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Dec 11, 2012 00:39
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I guess American culture is very different from up here because I don't really think ANY of the faculty are like that. Sometimes they try but I don't think it ever really comes off well. They're profs, it'd feel super awkward going to dinner with one
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Dec 12, 2012 02:57
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As someone international who may be looking for work in the States next year... what's so wrong with Banfield? Also I feel like I'm becoming paranoid with respect to my own pets. My cat's been acting somewhat strange lately, went from super friendly to 'don't touch me leave me alone'... I can't figure out if she's just pissed at my kitten being home for the holidays or genuinely in pain when I try to pick her up. She actually tried to bite me and that NEVER happens. Managed to get some pain meds just in case before the holiday but I am going to feel like such an idiot if she's just being a drama queen.
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Dec 25, 2012 21:46
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I'm currently biting my nails waiting for February 5th. Match day is gonna suck. When do you guys find out about NAVLE results? The Canadian board is notoriously slow.
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Jan 18, 2013 15:00
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| # ¿ Apr 27, 2024 19:44 |
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Enelrahc posted:I'm sure you'll rock it! And the day after I post that I find a CVMA envelope waiting for me in the mail! I'm now eligible to be licensed as a vet anywhere in North America and very very happy to not have to write that lovely test ever again. It's only me here tonight but damned if I'm not gonna crack open the good booze to celebrate.
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Jan 18, 2013 23:11
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