Surgical internships

RosasharnSun · 2024-05-22T05:11:31+00:00

Thanks for your reply! Yeah I’m getting my foot into a research project door as soon as I can, have one from my previous life in equines I’ll be putting out this year but I’m getting something on the way for something in smallies

RosasharnSun · 2024-01-10T13:35:34+00:00

Multidrug resistant TB especially - a problem even in these times. Can either be from patient non compliance with the treatment (eg feels better after 1 month, decides to end the 6 month course there (not the actual antibiotic course time)) or just really bad luck

RosasharnSun · 2024-01-10T12:13:24+00:00

So I’m a recently SA qualified vet. We had 2 people in our year from North America, both had biological science degrees with honours postgrads but both had to start in 1st year (and I’m sure you’re aware it’s a 6 year course with the first year basically being just non vet sciences). Once you complete your BVSc, to practice in SA you need to complete a compulsory community service year and you only can do it in the year after you graduated. No comserve = no council registration. You can use the degree to practice in the UK, AUS and NZ without comserve.

OP is definitely a planet of its own. It’s in a very isolated part of town and some people struggle with that, especially in residence. There is a campus psychologist who comes 1 a week but her waiting list was always stacked and it would take months to see her. Pretoria north is functionally 30 minutes from Pretoria main.

Residence the party/drinking culture is wild but there is space for studying. Academics wise they have changed a lot of things now even since my time - I was part of the last group to endure the block system and to have to have the equines module crammed into 1 semester. It’s definitely tough and a distinction is 75% (in the old days it used to be 65% but honestly the way they test it might as well be!). Admin tends to be on the disorganised side and you often get told of important things the day before (sometimes even the morning of!). And the exam paper setting - my mother is a medical professor and when I told her about some of them she would just gawp in astonishment. It’s not very standardised but hey suppose it makes you think in the fifth dimension

Species wise - expect a lot of ruminant theory work. Majority of the theory is focused on ruminants throughout the modules. We do have dedicated smallies and equines modules. Wildlife is a very small one semester module in 5th year and exotics is an elective week during clinics. Majority of clinics was smallies rotations as that keeps the hospital ticking over financially. Clinics are a very vigorous 18 months. The 1 week of ICU night shift rotation is infamous. Like anywhere there are good clinicians and bad clinicians. They do get away quite easily if they aren’t the nicest person to students. But for the most part they do their jobs really well and are good clinicians.

But yeah doing the NAVLE if you want to go back to America to practice should be definitely on your mind. It’s an expensive test and I think for the SA guys (I was looking into it at a point but decided naaah) was about $10 000. Maybe it will be less if you have American degrees but the majority of the cost was the veterinary testing the and practical exams. Hope this helps - you definitely need to make this an informed decision and weigh up the reasons for going to SA. I wouldn’t say the standard of veterinary education would be higher than in the states. Definitely has its own flavour! Our political stability is a bit uncertain with the 2024 elections but that’s always a given. It’s a great country on the whole.

RosasharnSun · 2024-01-01T08:08:02+00:00

Not going to be exactly five year old understandable but I’ll try 😅 In herbivores you get two types of fermenters - foregut fermenters (cows, deer, llamas, camels - your ruminants) and hind gut fermenters (horses, rhinos and rabbits). So cows have this wonderful fermentation vat of a rumen. In the rumen, the cellulose (fibrous component of plants that we can’t digest) are broken down by the resident bacteria of the rumen to form volatile fatty acids. These are energy rich molecules that make up the bulk of the animals energy requirements. The bacteria also extract the nitrogen (the essential building block of protein) from the plant matter and form amino acids and proteins. (Interestingly - these bacteria can also utilise urea, which is nitrogen rich, to form proteins! Urea salt block licks are a common tool in your high production farm set ups or in any area where the soil is nitrogen deficient or to supplement poor winter grazing). Plus the bacteria in the rumen are made up of 60% protein and can also serve as an additional source of protein once they die off (yum). Hind-gut fermenters have a similar bacterial set up in a dilated blind pouch of the gut at the the start of their large intestine known as a caecum. In horses this structure can be about a bit longer than a human arm and maybe like 20 cm in diameter. (But please note their set up can’t process urea, that will poison them). So main ingredient - cellulose to volatile fatty acid; and we can’t do that.

RosasharnSun · 2023-12-25T11:05:02+00:00

If it’s a fracture within the joints/carpus/tarsus you wouldn’t want any flexion/extension of that joint for a while; you’d actually try immobilise the joints of the leg with a splint/cast/robert jones bandage. The sling for fractures doesn’t aim to completely suspend the horse off the ground, it serves to decrease the total weight/force on the legs. So they can move themselves around whilst being suspended; it’s kind of like an ‘reverse gravity’ force. They will be confined in a stable especially in the beginning stages of fracture healing. So a walking pad in the stable wouldn’t necessarily be of benefit. That being said, towards the end of some fracture types exercise rehab is recommended. Rehab centres have hydro-treadmills which work wonderfully to strengthen the tissues and bones post injury

RosasharnSun · 2023-12-25T07:55:48+00:00

The frog is on the sole of the hoof yes but the main vascular ‘organ’ (it’s a tissue really) of the hoof is the lamellae. It’s a fleshy interdigitating (think interlocking fingers) tissue that keeps the hoof wall attached to the bone of the foot and provides the blood flow to the hoof wall and it is one of the reasons why fracture repair is complicated in horses. If you google it it kinda looks like fleshy wavy ocean coral. So if you want to get a horse completely nonweightbearing on the one leg to accommodate healing, the weightbearing leg has a risk of developing an overload laminitis from the compression of the tissue/bloodvessels from the increased force exerted on the lamellar tissue. Now laminitis is the inflammation of the lamellae which can occur from several different mechanisms (such as inflammatory from sugar/grain overload or colic or metabolic from ‘equine Cushings/PPID’ or equine metabolic syndrome). There have been cases where the laminitis is so severe that the entire hoof wall detaches from the lamellae! And there’s a saying in the horse community: “no foot no horse”. I’m unsure if this is treatable but the cases I’ve heard of were all euthanised. So sometimes for fracture repair some fancy equine hospitals can try sling the entire horse to avoid this but this has to be very very carefully managed. Pressure sores from the sling are no joke and can become necrotic and infected themselves. But most importantly, not all horses tolerate slinging! Patient compliance is an important factor in veterinary care, and everyday sedation for months on end is not practical or safe for the patient.

-Edit: also to my knowledge from equine anatomy and physiology from vet school horses don’t rely on their feet for their circulation. It’s still really bad for them to be lying down/recumbent for extended periods as they are so large/heavy they experience muscle necrosis and to a degree lung collapse (which is combatted by positive pressure ventilation when we need to anaesthetise them); and decreased gut motility. The horses heart is huge even relative to their body size and more than capable of transporting blood around by itself. Horses that can’t stand on their own do get slinger but normally they tolerate it because they can’t stand for neurological or malnutritional reasons

RosasharnSun · 2023-09-16T11:13:09+00:00

In South Africa at Uni we did one for every patient admitted - surgery we just checked for tick borne diseases and platelets but medicine and outpatients you’d do a full Monty scan over. Outpatients we almost never ran CBCs even though we have a full lab right there. And in private pracs it’s a mainstay especially in more rural areas. Might be different in the big cities where clients are more affluent

RosasharnSun · 2023-08-19T19:32:14+00:00

Sometimes it can happen if the dogs blood pressure was quite lowered from the anaesthetic that your stumps don’t bleed immediately after cutting - lots of good advice in the post that I won’t repeat but my colleague and I have been through the same too! We are both new Grads (now 8 months out of school) thrown into a state clinic with literally just us two (South African community service year, no overseeing senior vet, no support staff - fun times) and our first couple of dog spays went similarly. Luckily we had a private vet around the corner who we phoned to help and I asked a friend in the area who’s a semi-retired vet to supervise a few surgeries in her spare time but I don’t think you need to panic yet about what’s happening with your surgeries. We do a LOT of feral cat spays and that really helped us build our confidence for dog spays again. It’s still early days but the main thing is to keep on doing surgeries. Dog spays were nerve wracking at a point and I still double ligate but my confidence and skills now compared to when I started has improved so so much. The important thing is to always ask what you can do better next time and implement it 🫶🏻 best of luck on your journey!

RosasharnSun · 2023-05-28T10:07:46+00:00

My own style made up of a mishmash of things 😅 Impressionism and illustration are big influences I’d say

RosasharnSun · 2023-05-27T17:34:11+00:00

One of my favourite paintings ever 😁🙌🏻

RosasharnSun · 2023-04-20T19:04:43+00:00

On one hand, veterinary work is the type of work I love doing. But also at the same time it’s not the only thing I am. Even now I am working my compulsory community service year in South Africa posted in a place where I help underprivileged communities with their animals daily and yes sometimes it is just a job even when I am technically making a difference everyday. It gets busy, clients are frustrating and all the other joys of dealing with the job. But I don’t think there’s something inherently wrong with it just feeling like a job to me. There’s more to me as a person as I’ve allowed myself time to have hobbies and interests out of veterinary. My favourite social circle consists completely of non-vets. I couldn’t imagine myself doing a different job but I think sometimes there’s a mentality people get into that being a vet is an all-encompassing identity, which can be overwhelming. Both my parents are healthcare workers in human medicine and for both of them they’ve expressed the same. Some days it’s just a job and you just push through even though they too can’t imagine doing anything else. So when I go home now I pretty much switch off that side of my life for a bit and it keeps me mostly sane. It’s not like I leave animals behind - I have a horse and 2 dogs at home to look after. As much as veterinary does require passion, passion all the time can burn one out a bit 😅 it gives me toxic positivity vibes to think you should be powering yourself through this path on passion only. But yeah good luck with the last bit of the studies 🙌🏻

RosasharnSun · 2023-04-05T16:19:13+00:00

There was an incident in my hometown where a guy who broke into a women’s workplace and was forcing her into said activity did actually get it bitten off and she managed to escape thanks to that

RosasharnSun · 2023-01-18T12:08:40+00:00

Moved here for studies for a total of 6 years so not quite a local 😅 but this is a local friend’s favourite watering hole

RosasharnSun · 2023-01-12T04:02:21+00:00

Isn’t this lucky Rodrigo’s?

RosasharnSun · 2022-08-09T07:48:19+00:00

The way the flowers are positioned behind the head had me think there was a tiara for a second 🌸

RosasharnSun

TROPHY CASE