Hello clients!
A teaching hospital is a bit of a weird environment compared with your neighbourhood vet clinic. It's a world of extremes. We have general vaccine and well puppy/kitten checks, and the most dire of chemotherapy and complicated surgery. We have tiny birds and huge draft horses. And it's the most experienced knowledgeable specialists combined with the larval forms known as senior students.
The senior student may be the first person you meet after reception. They may seem like they're reading off a script while they ask for a history because they are determined not to miss a detail. They will probably take copious notes and ask you to repeat things so everything is correct. Please be patient with us. We are learning. We haven't developed that sixth sense and intuition yet. Your regular vet may take 10 minutes to do a physical, but the senior student might take three times that. It's because we're double and triple checking in our own heads. As I am examining your animal, this is what's going through my head: Is that a crackle in that lung? Are those gut sounds increased? Are these gums pink or a little pale? Is that a murmur or just the hair on the stethoscope? Oh crap, forgot to check the joints. Temperature is 38.1, what's normal in this species? 37.2 to 38.5? Something like that? Wait, but it's a neonate, what's normal in them?
You might think we're inept. And we kind of are. But I promise you, that doesn't mean we're stupid or uncaring. Once we have consulted with our rotation clinician, 99% of us will rush off to read EVERYTHING we can get our hands on about that disease. Its mechanisms, the drugs that treat it, the side effects of those drugs, management of the disease, diagnostic tests, prognosis and complications. We'll look up differentials for that disease. We will spend hours pouring over your animal's tests results. So don't worry, and try not to be too critical of us to our faces; we may pee our pants in terror.
On the first day of this rotation, the senior clinician asked if anyone was afraid of dealing with clients. I said I was. I probably won't ever forget her advice to me: "Clients just want to know that you care." And we do. We are pet owners too. We will spend our free time grooming your animal. We will come in when we don't have to to see how they're doing. We fret about them when they aren't doing well, and we celebrate when they improve. Every morning on my large animal medicine rotation, the greeting between students isn't, "Morning, how're you?" Instead, it's, "Morning, how's your patient?" If it's a food animal or a new foal and it comes in without a name, we will give it one because we just feel connected to them (there are usually long drawn out conversations of, "Does this calf look like a Jenny or a Phoebe to you?"). If it has a name, it'll get a cutesy nickname. We treat them like they're our own.
So next time a senior student is in front of you and stumbling through the history and pestering you about vaccine history and what dewormer you used last, take a breath and be patient with them. They won't let you (or your animal) down.
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