Class of 2022...how you doin'?

Veterinary Science Graduate Certificate from UofI
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I passed!! Of course I got my email right after leaving my house to run errands :p
I got mine at 1:54pm, for future lurkers
 
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SkiOtter said:
Congrats to everyone who passed. For those that didn’t get good news today, I’m rooting for you and sending all my love💜

SAVMA's The Vet Gazette - Main - A letter about the NAVLE

This month's Wellness Spotlight was written by our past SAVMA president, Matt Holland, offering su...
thevetgazette.com thevetgazette.com
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Best line of all times: "The NAVLE is just a huge pain in the ass that the nerds invented to take whatever is left of your soul after 3.5 years of vet school"
 
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Basically just a rant/feeling the need to talk about my situation and not really wanting to discuss it with my classmates:

My current rotation (anesthesia) has been going pretty rough. I've always been somewhat scared of anesthesia and due to working mostly ER and some internal medicine in the past 4 years I haven't had many opportunities to get more comfortable with it. This rotation is a pretty popular one at school where people always rave about how much better they feel about it after taking it. I was very excited for it, since anesthesia is so important and I wanted to get comfortable with it and stop being so scared of it.

Due to a combo of bad luck on caseload (caseload is wayyyyy down compared to normal so I've barely had any cases) and bad luck on cases (have gotten a number of critical things or horses where students definitely play less of an active role, and then the few cases I've had that are stable I haven't had enough practice to be able to do with any competence) my confidence is completely shot. I am significantly more terrified of it than when I started the rotation, and have ended my last few days in tears. It doesn't help that it is pretty obvious that the anesthesia techs think I'm an incompetent idiot.

Also annoyed that I made it through all of the rotations that are known to break people without crying, but this rotation that almost everyone enjoys has turned me into a wreck lol. You could shove a shocky dying GDV at me in the ER and I would be significantly less stressed than if my stable anesthetic patient suddenly had a spike in heartrate or became light.

And yes, I've reached out to the faculty about this. On the first day I ended up crying two of the faculty made a plan to make sure I get assigned more elective-type cases where I will theoretically be able to call the shots without someone needing to take over from me. After yesterday when my elective went even worse than my procedure the day before I asked one of the faculty if I could do a case with just her and me and no one else involved (mostly because she is very nice/calm/supportive and just lets you figure things out in your own time unless you are legitimately about to kill the patient) which she said she would arrange. I had one case like that with her last week and it was the one case this rotation where I really felt like I could do it and was doing well so I would like another opportunity like that. One of my close grad student friends has been available to come give me a hug when I need comfort and don't want to be crying in front of my classmates. To this point I've been enjoying and doing well on clinics, so this is the first time I've really had to struggle or be below average this year which I'm sure is playing a role with the perfectionist tendencies we all have. I really hope next week will be better. Part of me just wants the rotation to be over, but another part doesn't want it to be over because I know if I leave this rotation the way I am now I will never be willing to go near anesthesia again in my career (which isn't realistic in the slightest).
 
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Now to give some positives to balance out the negatives:

1. I had a lot of anxiety and discomfort around intubations/checking tube placement and refused to do intubations on ER this past summer. I'm now confident in this and I would be willing to jump on intubation next time I'm in a code situation. This is something I'm grateful for because it has been bothering me for well over a year now.

2. I'm confident in my theoretical approach to hypotension intra-op. That being said, none of my recent patients have had this as a complication so I haven't been able to deal with it in procedures and reinforce that I know it.
 
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@TheGirlWithTheFernTattoo I think you’re recognizing one important part of the scenario, which is that it sounds like you’re a great student doctor who isn’t used to struggling! You’re approaching it the right way, so kudos to you for that, and big hugs because it’s sucks when a rotation makes you cry.

I recently worked with two of my techs on anesthesia. One thing that helped them was making a list of the most common scenarios - i.e bradycardia, hypotension - and all of the parameters we routinely monitor and what to do if it was elevated or decreased. There’s unfortunately no substitute for real-time, real-life cases where you’re forced to assess the situation, make a plan and execute it with some level of speed required, but if you can give your brain a default to fall back on, it will help immensely! You’ve probably already gone through those suggestions but if not, make a cheat sheet and keep it in your pocket. The common problems are common, the way to deal with them usually follows a pattern…you’ll get it! Hang in there.
 
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Update: This week is going significantly better. I’ve so far been strictly assigned cases with one of the clinical associates who is known for being lovely/patient and letting the students do as much as possible. It’s been a completely different experience from the last few weeks and I legitimately enjoyed my case today and learned a lot, even though the anesthesia itself had some complications.
 
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I was already dreading my ECC rotation for many reasons. I found out today that they're doing a huge, high risk sx next week which just made being on ECC 100x more miserable and dreadful. :help:

At least it's my last in hospital small animal rotation?
 
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Really feeling grateful that match rankings are finalized!! Also really thankful I was lucky enough to win the NAVLE Study Package Grant! It's been a rough couple of weeks and I'm feeling a bit emotionally drained so really trying to be appreciative of the good things in my life.
91 days left of clinics, then a week after is graduation!
 
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Anyone around here know anyone involved with the USDA vmlrp apps? I emailed them last week but havent recieved a reply. They're supposed to host a webinar in february...but its the 22 at this point...so yeah. I have questions I'd really like answered😬
 
Applied for graduation and passed my final OSCE today… now just waiting on match to know where I’ll be headed!
It’s crazy to think how fast everything’s happening at the end of the year 🥲😳
 
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After a very fun 2 weeks on an external rotation I’m not particularly looking forward to going back into the teaching hospital.

Only 6 weeks left! And the next 4 weeks is all horses, which I like despite not wanting to do equine medicine as a career. Match results next week so I can actually put together some solid plans for my life going forward.

Also now visiting a friend in Hawaii right before graduation. Was extremely sad to cancel New Zealand, but I’ll go in the future and it is nice I’ll at least get to go see my friend and enjoy some tropical island life as a celebration to finish school.
 
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I've had two dreams of not being able to open my VIRMP results. Anyone feelings stressed out for tomorrow?
 
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I ate some smoked trout tonight that I accidentally left out of the refrigerator for a day or two last week. I figured since it was in the packaging I was safe but we shall see if I managed to give myself food poisoning on the eve of Match. If so, there goes my plan of taking a bunch of melatonin and trying to drug myself into sleeping the last few hours.

I wasn’t really stressing that much until today. But now I am, so maybe this hint of nausea is that and not the bacterias. Yet to be determined, stay tuned. :laugh:
 
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JustPaws said:
Wow! I have 54 days... 29 days of clinics technically!!
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MOOSEygoosey said:
Jeez y'all! We have 69 more days of clinics! Then we get 4 days off and graduate on the 5th day
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Technically 56ish days til graduation just 28 on an actual rotation! The decision to put 2 vacation blocks towards the end was a wise one. I think we are also technically done the Wednesday before graduation so less than 56 clinical days left here. It's coming to an end very quickly.

I may be panicking about getting housing in my new town 😬 then I'll panic about being an adult doctor😅
 
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76 days till graduation… but only 30 days of actual clinics!
We have 2 weeks between our last day of clinics and graduation, Then another 1.5-2 weeks until I start working.
We are almost there y’all!!
 
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MixedAnimals77 said:
Technically 56ish days til graduation just 28 on an actual rotation! The decision to put 2 vacation blocks towards the end was a wise one. I think we are also technically done the Wednesday before graduation so less than 56 clinical days left here. It's coming to an end very quickly.

I may be panicking about getting housing in my new town 😬 then I'll panic about being an adult doctor😅
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Always something to panic about 🤣
 
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Only 2 weeks of rotations left. :eek:

I've started cleaning out my apartment since I'm moving out by the end of my next rotation and oh man the amount of stuff I've accumulated in 4 years....

(And then 8 weeks between finishing rotations and actually graduating which is making getting my veterinary license for internship a huge hassle)
 
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How's everyone doing finding housing at your next stop?

After tons of looking we finally had a house under contract we were excited about. It fell through on the sellers end through a series of unfortunate developments. So we now have 15 days to find a new house to be able to close on time🙃

For reference there are a total of 12 properties available currently in the entire county and are either garbage or won't work for us for one reason or another so that's fun.

Rentals are scarce, overpriced, and the majority are not pet friendly.

I keep telling myself it'll all work out and be fine. We have a plan B,C,D,etc. But would really prefer not to end up in those scenarios.😐
 
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jaboo said:
OK, serious question for those of you in SA GP in the US. How necessary is getting USDA accreditation?
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Really depends on how often your particular practice is doing health certs. We do them with some frequency so I've used mine quite a bit.
 
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jaboo said:
OK, serious question for those of you in SA GP in the US. How necessary is getting USDA accreditation?
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It's really not too hard to get level 1 certified (small animal only), but I know it takes time and some effort.

I would say that if you're going to be in a major city that has an airport, you'll likely need to be accredited. Or, on the other hand, if your practice is the only clinic within like a 30 mile radius.

For general advice to others as well, definitely do not try and sign a health certificate without being accredited. We do check, and even if your accreditation was once current but is now expired, the system will flag you and we will not endorse the certificate.
 
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Trilt said:
Or don't be accredited so you don't have to do health certificates, because they suck. :laugh:
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☝️☝️☝️☝️☝️

I don't need to right now because of my internship but I'm going to have to be once I'm set up in a shelter full time because of the nature of transports across states, and I dun wanna
 
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jaboo said:
OK, serious question for those of you in SA GP in the US. How necessary is getting USDA accreditation?
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I am not certified and love it. We have a doc that does certs because she wants to. I also want to eventually be ER full time. So not useful there.
 
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@jaboo I was never accredited in SA GP because I didn’t want the hassle! We had two docs (out of 7) who were and did all health certificate appointments - which had a higher charge and longer time allotted because people are special.

I got accredited for my current work with monkeys because I sign like ten per week :laugh: It really isn’t that bad to become accredited, just some extra work to do.
 
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Trilt said:
Or don't be accredited so you don't have to do health certificates, because they suck. :laugh:
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This was my approach. No regrets. They almost always suck and no one knows the requirements so there’s a lot of looking stuff up and people mad that they can’t leave next week with their pets.
 
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vetmedhead said:
my friend had some people show up wanting a health certificate so they could take their cats to Japan the next day

so yeah that didn't work out so hot for them
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Sometimes they show up at our office HOURS BEFORE THEIR FLIGHT

The audacity of some people 🙃
 
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