It had been an ambition of mine since the beginning of vet school to do some type of work abroad, whether it be preclinical or clinical, a paid position or volunteer work.
A big reason I undertook an intercalated MSc was for the option it presented for a three-month research period in Western Australia. Sadly, COVID-19 put a stop to that and my research never wandered further than my desk – but, if anything, the pandemic made me feel even more passionate about travelling for my EMS.
Gone to Goa
A friend and I both settled on a small rescue centre in Goa, India, for the placement (neither of us feeling quite brave enough to go it alone) and despite planning it almost a year in advance, the date caught up with us quite quickly. Before we knew it, we were there.
Let the record show that the motivation for this trip was not to escape from the harsh English January weather, nor to fill up on delicious curries, although the temperature did make a welcome change and I’m unsure a takeaway will ever cut it again.
The whole reason for the placement was to gain the kind of surgical experience that just isn’t readily available to students in the UK.
Understandably, vet practices can take a while to warm up to students enough to trust them to carve into somebody’s beloved animals, but this makes for generation after generation of new grads who feel completely out of depth with a scalpel in their hands.
Great(er than our) expectations
The placement’s main advertising pull had been as an opportunity to gain incredible surgical experience, but we had gone into it with some trepidation that it wasn’t going to be nearly as busy and hands-on as we’d hoped. It turned out to surpass our expectations and go right out the other side…
Weekends spent lolling on the beach were well-deserved after numerous 11-hour shifts with numb fingers and thumbs from uncooperative clamps and needle holders.
The surgical side of the trip deserves an article of its own – but suffice it to say that, between the two of us, my friend and I neutered almost 50 dogs and cats, including 15 unassisted but supervised dog spays. It was an incredible rewarding feeling when each surgery finished, knowing we were doing even just a small bit in the effort to reduce India’s stray population.
Learning valuable lessons
Let it be said, I am not the most confident of travellers, and 18 hours of travel across three planes and four airports are not for the faint of heart, but neither is India – and while I have entirely fallen in love with the country, its beauty and its animals, there was a lot of disorganisation that made my poor little control-freak brain spin.
I think that learning to take each day as it comes, and constantly adapting to new situations or pressures has taught me a lot of valuable skills in a very short space of time.
In particular, the vet who taught and supervised us was invaluable in making the placement such a success. She gave us an incredible amount of patience and taught me skills in both surgery and how to face a stressful situation that I will carry with me throughout my career.
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