All hail the end of Practice Management!

At long (LONG) last, Practice Management has reached its conclusion! Our last morning of lectures was last Friday.

I admit that I learned a couple useful things during our 80 hours of lectures and presentations. However, I'll add that just about every single morning made me feel even more strongly that I never want to own or manage a practice. Their theory on getting us all to be practice owners seems to be:

1. Tell them how far they are in debt and how terribly their meager little lives will be affected by the enormous loan payments that will be heaped upon them at graduation.

2. Show them fancy charts displaying how much more money you can make as a practice owner rather than just an associate veterinarian.

3. Gloss over most of the negative aspects of actually having to own and manage a business. Let's instead focus on things like where on your display shelves in your lobby is the best place to put your most popular items for sale!

I'll say that the most positive aspect of the course, at least for me, was the fact that all of the instructors and the course coordinator seem very receptive to feedback. We're told that Practice Management is the course in the curriculum that changes more rapidly than any other course, based mainly on student input about what they want to learn less or more of.

However, my feeling is that Practice Management should be offered as a 2-week elective course in the Junior Practicum -- i.e. would be blended into the same curriculum as our morning clinical rotations. One of the four weeks of this year's version of the course was a series of mandatory accreditation lectures by the state vets, that is required to get a state license to practice veterinary medicine. So everyone could take that during the first week of the semester, then they could trim the remaining 3 weeks of "actual" practice management topics to a more reasonable 2 weeks, and then stop forcing everyone to take it. After all, I don't want to be an equine vet or a food animal practitioner, and I'm not forced to take elective courses this semester on those topics if I don't want to. Why should it be any different if I just want to be an associate vet rather than a practice owner?

In any case, what's done is done, and I'm looking forward to the opportunity to participate in a focus group to give additional feedback about the course. For now, though I'm on Oncology!

(Yes, that's right: An actual clinical rotation where I am working with clinicians, residents, interns, senior students, real live patients, and real live clients! A rotation where I'm actually learning applicable things and getting to practice some hands-on skills! What a novel idea!)

Oncology is, however, a little depressing, what with the whole "oncology-means-the-study-of-cancer" thing. I've seen a couple neat patients already this week, and I'm sure some of them will be appearing in subsequent blog posts.

But I just can't tell you how great it is to be back on my feet and applying what I've spent 2.5 years sitting in lecture halls absorbing from a didactic standpoint. Hooray for clinics!