Nutrition was a fun rotation. We had a lot of guest speakers who talking about interested topics (and bought us lunch), and we went on a field trip to the Purina plant. I learned a lot of stuff about therapeutic diets to help treat diseases as well. As we all know in humans, nutrition is a very important component of health and living disease-free as long as possible. In animals, the same applies. I should mention, though, that I learned a lot about the dangers of feeding animals raw meat diets. It seems that everyone (including me in the past) assumes raw meat must be best because it is what the wild animals eat. Unfortunately, there are many things that happen in the wild that we would not want for our long-living domestic animals, so the comparison is not apt. I also learned a lot about obesity management in pets, which is as much of an issue for our pets as it is for us in America. I think the obesity rate is the same for both people and dogs of America, around 50%... how sad. We both have too much food and not enough activity.
We had a great weekend in FL with the Beal and Geaslin families this past weekend. I, unfortunately, left my camera's memory card at home and had to borrow Brendan's camera for any pics I wanted to take. I'll upload them soon and post them.
-Shirin
Me and my classmates at the Purina plant. We toured the plant and had to wear hard hats and vests.
My class posing around the new bulldog statue donated by the Class of 2009.
5 comments:
I realize that most of your loyal readers can't get enough Cyrus videos, but I have been waiting for an update on your professional life and was very interested to read about your rotations. In my mind they were more like student teaching, but I can see now that my mind was misinformed. I will, of course, be especially interested in your rotation in Rock Hill!!
- Auntie Em
Yes, we still need to do our "Fat Cat" consult visit with you. Don't forget what you've learned please.
No, Martha, I think you had it right. Most of the rotations are like student teaching, only in the UGA Small Animal Vet Teaching Hospital. The format is that we usually have our own patients to take care of, we write up all their medical records, submit requests for their diagnostic tests and prescriptions, call their owners with updates, etc. We are like little mini-doctors with bigger real-doctors following behind us and quizzing us on all our rule-outs as we go.
The Nutrition rotation was a seminar format, which is very different than the normal rotation. We were in a boardroom attending classes, essentially. That is not the typical experience and is even known as the most fun rotation to take senior year where you get really well fed. On other rotations in the hospital, some of my classmates report not being able to eat or use the bathroom all day due to all the work and patient care required of them.
I will try to keep updates on my clinical training coming. I do like to talk about it, but sometimes throwing up a few Cyrus videos for the fam is a lot easier than writing a real post. Thanks for being interested, though. :)
-Shirin
Where are the black vet students?? Your diversity club should do more outreach to African Americans fo' shizzle.
We're already aware. The administration is definitely trying, but it's harder to find a lot of black students with top notch grades that want to be veterinarians. It's historically not a field they choose. There are a lot more African-American MDs, though. But, we're trying to diversify.
-Shirin
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