Offsite Electives

Welcome to VCA ARECA surgery department! We are very excited to have you visit us for your externship. We want you to
learn, grow and participate in daily life as a surgeon, resident, or intern. With this in mind we have listed a few expectations
while on our service. Most importantly, we want you to enjoy your time with us, so please let us know if you have any special
needs or skills that you wish to improve. Thank you and see you soon!
Hours:
• Arrive no later than 7am for your first day
• On future days you can check with surgery intern, rotating intern and/or resident on duty to see if you need to come earlier
or later depending on in-patients and timing of morning rounds
Attire:
• Scrubs or professional attire- if you choose to wear professional attire please ensure that you have scrubs available so
that you can scrub into surgery
Hands on Experience in the Surgery Service
• Physical and orthopedic examination of patients
• Scrub into and assist in orthopedic and soft tissue surgical procedures
• Assist technicians in IV catheter placement and surgical prep as needed
• Assist in bandage placement for wound management, soft tissue and orthopedic patients
• If able (radiation badge??) help technicians with radiographs to understand proper positioning and techniques for good
quality/diagnostic radiographs
• Prior to coming on service come up with a list of 3-5 things (ortho exam, neuro exam, basic fractures, GI surgery...) that you
would like to review and work on while on your externship and we will try to discuss on slow time or make sure to focus
on during cases
Surgery Service Expectations and Case Responsibility:
• General
» Learn WoofWare (medical record) basics to help input SOAPs or communications to help with paperwork
» Learn to critically evaluate patient physical and orthopedic examination findings as well as diagnostics
including laboratory findings and imaging findings
• Each morning
» In the morning prior to rounds, evaluate surgical patients and transfers with surgery resident, surgery intern and rotating
intern, discuss case, changes to treatment sheet and SOAP patients
» In morning rounds be prepared to discuss in-house patients and transfers, potentially present the cases in rounds and
discuss the case with senior clinicians
» Read up on consults for the day (MPL, TPLO, shunts, fractures....) to be prepared to discuss case and what options
are available to treat patient
• During the day
» Participate in patient examination, consultation and record keeping and be prepared to discuss case findings,
diagnostics and treatment plans
» Participate and scrub into surgeries and non-surgical procedures
• Prior to leaving for the evening
» Check treatment sheets before leaving to make sure dosing of all medications is correct and treatment sheets are signed.
If you have any concerns bring to surgery intern, resident or surgeon to evaluate.
» Help surgery resident, surgery intern and rotating intern with any pending paperwork or tasks
(SOAPs, discharges, treatment sheets...)
» Read about consultations for the following day and review referring vet records and diagnostics
» Read up on surgeries for the next day to be prepared on surgical approach, anatomy, techniques
» Become familiar with postoperative care of patients to know what medications/treatments we will use for patients
and why (IV fluids, pain medications, GI protectants, antibiotics if indicated...)

We are a private practice companion animal hospital that allows students to learn under three veterinarians. We offer advanaced diagnostics, surgery, and hospitalization. We focus heavy on internal medicine and advanced surgery. 

Suburban Small Animal (mostly cat/dog with some exotic pets) general practice.  Outpatient wellness and treatment of disease.  Soft tissue surgical procedures and dentistry.  AAHA Accredited practice. AAHA Accredited Practice of the Year 2013. 

Arizona Veterinary Emergency & Critical Care Center (AVECCC) is offering clinical externships for veterinary students interested in pursuing experience in small animal emergency and critical care medicine. 

Externs have the opportunity to work alongside a diplomate of the American College of Veterinary Emergency & Critical Care (DACVECC), experienced emergency clinicians and current interns.  Together they will provide supervision of the extern while on emergency and/or ICU shifts. Externs have the opportunity to participate in daily cage-side rounds (7 days a week, including holidays) with a DACVECC and/or ECC resident present. Additional time is given for the opportunity to participate in weekly didactics (journal club, weekly topic seminars, morbidity & mortality rounds, etc). 
 

Externs are encouraged to be involved in cases and perform and interpret diagnostics alongside their mentoring veterinarian. If opportunity allows, students are encouraged to scrub in and assist with surgery and other procedures as deemed appropriate by the mentoring veterinarian. We have extensive diagnostic and treatment capabilities including an in-house laboratory (CBC, biochemistry, blood gases, coagulation analyzer), basic and advanced monitoring equipment (direct/indirect arterial BP, ETCO2, CVP, ECG, pulse oximetry), mechanical ventilator (both anesthetic and long-term ventilator), dialysis machine for total plasma exhange, defibrillator, digital radiography, ultrasound, echocardiography, CT, MRI, stereotactic radiation and endoscopy. 

AVECCC offers additional learning opportunities, as we have access to board-certified specialists in surgery, internal medicine, cardiology, ophthalmology, oncology, dermatology, radiology and dentistry.  Our emergency doctors perform a variety of surgeries and manage complex medicine and critical cases. Doctors have twice daily cageside rounds, which provide the opportunity for externs to learn and ask questions about case management. Some of our most common surgical emergencies include GDV’s, dystocias, pyometras, foreign bodies (gastrotomy and enterotomy), hemoabdomen, and bite wound explore/repair. Other common emergencies include blocked cats, diabetic ketoacidosis, pancreatitis, anemia, trauma, toxicities, heat stroke, and rattlesnake envenomation 

Cargil Protein offers interns the opportunity to visit our turkey production facilities on the East Coast and the Lower Midwest. They will experience the full range of turkey production from breeders through processing. Interns will participate in all aspects of clinical medicine that are of concern during the visit, including disease diagnostics & therapy, food safety, welfare, and management/husbandry.

Students externing with Hy-Line North America will have the opportunity to experience poultry medicine in a field setting.  Focuses will be on preventative medicine and epidemiology in both flocks and hatcheries.  Hands on experience will be evaluating vaccination protocols, reviewing historical health data and issues in a flock, developing treatment plans, and enhancing the understanding of the intersections between health management and husbandry.

Rotation working with Lincoln Premium Poultry's (Costco) Veterinary team and Live Production team working on raising chicken at our state of the art facility where we specialize in raising welfare focused, rotisserie chickens.

1. Students will be travelling to off-site farms through the state of Iowa to observe commercial poultry sites. 
2. Learning Competencies: 
   At the completion of this course students are expected to be able to demonstrate the following:
   • Basic bird handling and husbandry
   • Organization of the poultry industry and understanding of each management system
   • Antemortem and post-mortem examination, interpreting records, biosecurity plans, immunization programs, infectious and non-infectious diseases, and moderate management practices to prevent poultry diseases are addressed.

Advanced Small Animal Clinical Nutrition is a three week rotation with an emphasis on small animal nutrition and providing information that will be useful to students going into small animal or mixed animal practice or advanced training such as internships and residencies. The rotation consists of didactic lectures, labs, a field trip to tour a pet food manufacturing plant (COVID currently prevents us from touring plant), journal article reviews and a secret shopper activity in the field to provide students with insight into what their future clients are hearing about pet nutrition. The students will also be provided the tools needed to be able to address a lot of the misperceptions and misinformation clients read about pet nutrition on the internet, through marketing or social media sites. Some of the topics and activities covered during the rotation include corn, by-products and grains, cats and carbohydrates, raw diets, prebiotics and probiotics, the use of nutrition to maintain health and manage diseases, an naso-esophageal tube placement lab, a body condition scoring and muscle condition scoring lab, and pet food wet lab, as well as application of information through case-based learning.

Three days of the week, the student will be observing and assisting the mobile ultrasound service, for a total of approximately 24 hours per week. This will include discussing cases (with radiologist and referring veterinarian), helping to prepare patients, and performing abdominal ultrasounds. Two days of the week, the student will be engaged in assigned readings and case reviews.