When I heard aboutTexas Tech opening a veterinary school with the mission to produce practice-ready veterinarians, I was sold on the program. Having worked at a teaching hospital with interns, externs and fellows, I understood how important this aspect of the curriculum would be to students. Today, I am fortunate to be able to say I have finished my first year in this program and am a quarter of the way toward becoming a DVM. One of the elements I've found to be so rewarding about being a part of the TexasTech School of Veterinary Medicine (TTU-SVM) is that I started building skills in my first year as a veterinary student that I had previously watched interns and externs working to develop after graduating from a DVM program.Through our clinical skills course, we as students have the opportunity to practice and refine our hands-on skills one entire day each week. As a second-career student, I can't stress enough how important this is. This summer, I'm in my first of two externships in which I'm working with a variety of animal species. This morning, I arrived at a ranch and was told, "We have 120 cows and 30 horses for you to check for pregnancy. We need to be done by the end of the day." Luckily, I've had some palpation experience from the multiple bovine palpation labs in our clinical skills course within this past semester, so I had a baseline for what felt like an intimidating task. In our palpation labs, we started with plastic animal models, which helped us orient ourselves anatomically. Next, we moved to more "realistic" models--the "Breeding Betsys" --that can help us get an even better feel for the real deal.Through multiple model palpations and quizzes in which we were assessed on our ability to name the anatomy and determine open versus pregnant, we then moved to live palpation on our teaching herd. During my externship, I got even more practice on their herd. When I was able to show my competence was accurate enough to determine open versus pregnant animals, my teacher, Dr. Rafael Arriola, handed me the ultrasound probe. "Encuentra el bebe (find the baby)," he said.Though we have had multiple thoracic and equine distal limb ultrasound labs in school, ultra-sounding with rectal palpation was something I had never done. There are no words to describe the feeling of reward and excitement I felt when I found a baby on the ultrasound for the first time--a distinct feeling I never had in my previous career. If I am this comfortable using an ultrasound at the end of my first year in veterinary school, I can't wait to see what my peers and I are able to do by graduation.
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