Today was my first day in the Specialist clinic, which is a three-part business - there's a separate company for Medicine, Radiology, and Surgery, and each department is completely separate, down to the level of supplies, wages, and personnel. There's also an after-hours vet that uses the premises, and looks after overnight patients as necessary, but students aren't required to spend time there. I was working in the Medicine department today, and I'll be back there tomorrow and the next day, to complete my first rotation.
They're a referral clinic, so they only see really sick patients, or animals that are in need of fairly major surgery - the Surgical department does a lot of TPLO's - Tibial Plateau Leveling Osteotomy - which is a surgery to stabilize dog knee joints in the case of damage to the cruciate ligament. Radiology also does echocardiograms and ultrasounds, and Medicine looks after animals that require intensive nursing, or who are suffering from conditions that can't be easily diagnosed or treated elsewhere, such as radioactive iodine treatments for hyperthyroid cats, and chemotherapy for some types of cancer.
Today was pretty quiet as things go, so it was a nice easy start into the practical work for this year. I have two other people in my group, and we were working with three other nurses and one vet, for the main part. Today, we had a schnauzer with a degenerative motor neuron disease, megaoesophagus, and aspiration pneumonia, who was recumbent and unable to urinate or defecate unaided, who we gave nursing care to throughout the day (that involved turning her every four hours to help her breathe and prevent pressure sores, IV fluids all day, lubricating her eyes since she had difficulty blinking, and making sure she was comfortable and clean at all times), a miniature schnauzer who was undiagnosed by the time we left (we'd sent bloods to the lab, but no word back as yet), and a West Highland Terrier in with cardiac arrhythmias and other heart problems. We also had a brief visit from a pitbull, who needed chemotherapy, one of the receptionist's cats, who needed to have a geriatric check, and we had a stray that one of the vets brought in, who was hopefully being rehomed despite being FIV+ - he was a really beautiful cat (silver tabby with white markings, and a white splotch on his back), and super friendly, so fingers crossed that he finds somewhere really nice that can look after him.
One of the procedures that I got to do today were a jugular blood collection on the pitbull. It's the first time I've taken blood from an animal, so I was ecstatic to get a large, well-behaved dog with nice short fur. One of the nurses held for me, and another guided me through the process, so I managed to get the vein and take the sample after one failed try. I also helped with an electrocardiogram for the Westie, which was really interesting to see the printout and compare the normal beats with the abnormal beats, though the dog himself was fairly unimpressed with the whole procedure. Other than that, we also checked catheters, measured temperature, pulse, and respirations of all the animals (this is a TPR check) and generally assisted with a variety of small things done by the vets, or helped the nurses with any tasks they set.
I had heaps of fun today, and I feel like I learned quite a lot during the time there. All of the nurses that work there were spectacularly helpful, and answered all of our questions with well-thought-out, precise answers and a wealth of detail. Since it was quiet we also got to have a bit of a demonstration on making, staining, and reading blood smears, which can be an important part of ensuring chemotherapy patients are well enough to have their next treatment. Even though it was a long day with lots of new things, I think I performed at the level I would expect myself to be at right now, in regards to practical competency, and general knowledge. I'm back again tomorrow, so we'll see if that's equally successful.
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