Weekend! / Shelter conference

At long last, another weekend has arrived.

This seemed like a really long week. There weren't actually that many horrible academic stresses, but I got myself so worked up before Tuesday afternoon's Therio exam that I sort of felt like I used up all my energy by that point and wasn't all that motivated to be productive for the last 3 days of the week.

Since spring break, Friday mornings (no class till 10) have turned out to be absolutely essential given that Thursdays are no longer so fun (class 8-9, lab 9-10, break 10-12, PBL 12-1, cardiology 1-4).

So I got to sleep in till 8:15 on Friday, and TEN today. Ahhhh... sleep is awesome.

That's as opposed to last weekend, when I was up at 6:15 am for the shelter medicine conference at the VTH.

(Last Saturday really felt like a 6th day of school. I got up earlier than I usually do, left the house earlier than usual, got to school earlier, sat through 7 hours of lecture, gave a tour, helped with registration and clean-up, and came home later than I usually do.)

The shelter conference was really fun. It was the first time the vet school has had one, so there were some little bumps to be worked out for next year, but overall it seemed to be a success.

There were 150 people registered: I'd estimate about 25 vets, 25 vet students, 25 certified or licensed vet techs, and about 75 humane society workers and veterinary assistants. (It's Saturday morning; I hope that adds up to 150.)

Not everybody showed up, but we did get a good crowd and a nice mix of positions, backgrounds, and perspectives.

The morning started with coffee, OJ, bagels, and pastries from Panera. (Note: Yum!) We had some free giveaway stuff provided by the ASPCA (like cool little magnetic clips for your refrigerator) and the vet school (lanyards). There was also a raffle selling tickets all day, donations being accepted for the shelter club (since there was no cost to attend the conference), and a couple clubs selling merchandise like vet school sweatshirts.

The first lecture was by one of our main internal medicine professors, doing an intro for the day and then talking about four recent research projects and how they are relevant to shelter medicine. He also talked about how he has done research with animals in the local shelter and I think he did a great job of emphasizing to the attendees (especially the shelter laypeople) that "research" doesn't have to be a dirty word.

The second lecture was given by the vet school's shelter medicine resident. She talked about different zoonotic diseases (Salmonella, rabies, ringworm, etc.), how they are transmitted, how you treat them, and how you prevent either animals or people from getting them.

The third lecture was given by our main emergency/critical care clinician and was all about triaging medical emergencies, focusing on ABC (airway, breathing, circulation), initiating shock fluid therapy, etc. He had a bunch of cool videos of animals with horrible gaping wounds, in respiratory distress, cyanotic, etc.

The last morning lecture was by one of my favorite anesthesia lecturers. She talked about assessing and managing pain in shelter settings, so she mostly focused on surgical pain (i.e. medicating animals pre and post spay/neuter surgery) and pain from trauma (i.e. the stray dog hit by a car and brought straight to your shelter). At the end she worked through two case examples and provided cost information for different drugs: for example, giving that 60lb dog you're spaying some morphine pre-op will cost you all of 17 cents. A nice way to show the shelter people that pain management doesn't have to be cost-prohibitive.

Lunch was box lunches from Panera - sandwiches, pickles, cookies, chips, and bottled water. Nom nom!

Over lunchtime, we offered tours of the VTH for anyone who was interested. A lot of the vets in attendance were grads of my vet school, so they found it amusing to go back through the hospital again. There were three tours, one by me and the others by two other guides. Since lunch was only an hour, and our tours are usually 60-75 minutes, we had to try to squeeze them into 30-40 minutes so people would have time to eat.... that was an interesting way to do a tour.

The afternoon lectures were more focused on shelter management than on specific medical issues. They broke it up that way knowing that some people would be more interested in the medical stuff versus the management stuff, to make it easier for those people to only come to half the conference.

The first afternoon lecture was by the director of our local humane society. She talked about different national statistics and statistics from her own shelter relating to reasons why animals are surrendered by their owners. It is "common knowledge" among the sheltering world that behavioral problems are one of the main reasons for surrender, but she explained that her statistics didn't show that. This claim was later challenged by statistics from several other shelter facilities.

The second afternoon lecture was given by the ASPCA's director of shelter training. She gave an interesting discussion of different methods of learning, i.e. some people learn best through visual means, others through auditory modes, and others through a kinesthetic approach. She then gave some examples of ways in which shelters do adoption counseling (talking to adopters, usually right at the time of adoption, about the pet's medical history, environmental/behavioral/housing needs, etc.) -- and how that's really ineffective for a lot of people who are *super* excited to be taking home a new puppy. It was an interesting way to start thinking about how that process can be improved and made more effective.

The last lecture was by another nearby humane society's CEO. She talked about partnerships between shelters and local veterinarians. This lecture turned into an intriguing "discussion" between the shelter people in attendance and the vets in attendance. Apparently there is a lot of tension and not-so-happy feelings between the two sides. Interesting.

Anyway, the shelter conference seemed to go well and I think all the lecturers struck a good balance of information that vets, techs, vet students, and laypeople could all relate to and find useful.

It was interesting for me to reflect on my "growth" up through the field of animal care and veterinary medicine. Three or so years ago, I believe I would have found myself relating far more to the shelter people than to the vets, techs, and students, whereas the opposite was true last weekend. This is something I started to realize several years ago - my priorities for the animals while I worked at the shelter in high school are fairly different from my priorities for animals now. It's an interesting shift in perspective, but I hope to end up back in the middle someday.