Junior practicum schedule has arrived

A couple weeks ago they notified all of us about-to-be-junior-vet-students that we could check out our schedules online for our junior practicum rotations.

(Reminder for those who are confused: at my school, the 3rd year is half "junior practicum" -- a series of week-long rotations through the different departments of the hospital -- and half classes. Rotations all morning, classes all afternoon. We get 13 weeks of core rotations during the year, and 6 elective weeks each semester, to be chosen from about 25 options each semester.)

I'm pretty happy with my schedule. Overall I got almost all of the electives that I really wanted, although there are a couple "interesting" rotations thrown in that, let's just say, weren't too high on my list.

My core rotations are:

1. Surgical Principles Lab - fall, week 1

2. Large Animal Procedures Lab - fall, week 2 - this is possibly the rotation that I'm looking forward to the least, so I'm glad to get it over with early in the year

3. Radiology - fall, week 4 - should be a good rotation; they say that you learn more in a 20-hour, 1 week session of junior practicum radiology than you do in the previous 2 semesters of classes - and I like radiology to begin with

4. Small Animal Procedures Lab - fall, week 5

5. Client Communication Skills 1 - fall, week 6 - this is the infamous rotation where you have to practice expressing empathy and using reflective listening (etc, blah blah blah) while being videotaped and watched by your friends....

6. Emerging & Exotic Animal Diseases - fall, week 8 - no idea what this is?

7. Clinical Pathology - fall, week 13 - I love Clin Path! LOVE IT!

8. Independent Study - fall, week 15 - no idea yet what I'll do for this, but it's nice that it's toward the end of the semester

9. Diagnostic Parasitology - fall, week 16 - parasitology = yuck but learning it = important

10. Anesthesia - spring, weeks 12&13 - this is one of the scariest rotations out there and I am already scared of anesthesia so we'll see how it goes... glad it's not till the end of the year

11. Clinical Communication Skills 2 - spring, week 14 - another dastardly communications rotation... I'm over it already

12. Independent Study - spring, week 15 - again, no idea what to do, but I'll work it out

And, drum roll please, my electives!

1. Community Practice Surgery - fall, week 3 - 2 days of seeing appointments with senior students, and 3 days of assisting seniors with dentals, spays, and neuters; I'm a little bit nervous about this one because rumor has it that the junior student is responsible for running the anesthesia for the senior students' cases...

2. Soft Tissue Diagnostics - fall, week 7 - I'm not entirely sure what this rotation entails although I ranked it pretty high

3. Community Practice Medicine - fall, week 9 - more healthy pet and mildly sick pet appts seen with senior students

4. Junior Surgery Lab - fall, week 10 - I am excited for this one! This is where we anesthetize cull pigs (purchased by the vet school before they were to be sent to slaughter anyway) and practice almost any surgery we want on them; pigs are euthanized at the end of the lab without waking up

5. Small Animal Surgical Anatomy - fall, week 11 - practicing a bunch of fancier surgical procedures on cadavers

6. Small Animal Medicine - fall, week 12 - seeing internal medicine cases

7. Oncology - spring, week 5 - mixed feelings about this one; oncology (cancer medicine) is one of those things that you see every day in small animal private practice, but it's also sort of depressing.... but I think it will be good to get more experience dealing with the sort of issues that crop up in oncology

8. Rabbit & Rodent Medicine - spring, week 6 - I was really quite alarmed at first that this rotation (which I ranked #15/25) made it onto my schedule, but after getting used to the idea, I think it will be good for me to learn a bit more about bunnies, guinea pigs, hamsters, mice, and rats, since I've elected not to take any of the exotics electives so far

9. Evening Urgent Care - spring, week 7 - this sounds like sort of a cool rotation; instead of coming in from 8am-noon, you work 5-11pm and have the morning off; you take care of hospitalized patients and help admit urgent care/emergency cases that come in during the evening

10. Shelter Medicine - spring, week 8 - not super thrilled about this one since I don't know how much I'll learn, but I will get to do some cat neuters, and at least it's not horses or cows, right?

11. Orthopaedic Diagnostics - spring, week 10 - another one I'm not too excited about (ranked #17/25); it's not that I'm not interested in orthopaedic diagnostics, it's just that most of the orthopaedics clinicians I've had contact with so far in the curriculum have really come across as jerks

12. Cardiology - spring, week 11 - I love cardiology! I really enjoyed our 4 intensive weeks of cardiac medicine this past spring, and although cardiology is a required senior rotation, I really wanted to get it as a junior too for more experience (and so I don't forget everything I learned as a sophomore before I'm a senior)

What rotations didn't I get?

I was really bummed to not get neurology, until I realized that no one got neurology - I think they cancelled it as a junior rotation. I can take it as a senior.

I wanted complementary & alternative medicine, and was disappointed to not have that on my schedule, but it looks like they only accepted 9 students for the entire year. That was a rotation I wanted more because I think it would be good to learn than because I'm interested in it. I'm taking the elective complementary medicine class this fall, anyway.

I didn't realize that I'd ranked dermatology #6/25 for my spring electives, but apparently I did... and didn't get it. Not too sad about that one, since I'm not sure why I ranked it so high to begin with.

Advanced surgical techniques - a rotation that sounded really cool but probably wouldn't be that applicable to the type of practice I want to do (things like laparoscopy, laser surgery, cryosurgery, etc.).

Spanish for Veterinarians - I don't like the instructor so I ranked this pretty low, plus I already own some good resources for translating vet med into Spanish.

Food animal / equine / zoo med / exotics / lab animal / wildlife rotations or more independent study - these all went at the way bottom of my ranking lists, and good riddance!

So, all in all, I think that I pretty much got what I wanted. Of the rotations I wanted and didn't get, there's not much of that that I won't get as a senior anyway, so no worries.