Vet Times

Tag: Pathology

  • General practice: a boring job?

    General practice: a boring job?

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    I have, on occasion throughout my career, heard people describe general practice as “boring”. “Sure,” they’d say. “There’s stressful bits, but so much of it is the same – anal glands, vaccinations – it just gets boring after a while, doesn’t it?” My first reaction to this viewpoint has always been a double take and…

  • Emotional stress

    Emotional stress

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    I nearly didn’t go… I was locuming at the time and  been away from home a lot. I’d also been working nights – the first time I had tried solely out-of-hours work – and it had been punishing. Why, then, was I coming to shadow a pathologist for a day in a veterinary laboratory? When…

  • Public health: the less recognised role of vets

    Public health: the less recognised role of vets

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    Bovine spongiform encephalopathy, commonly known as “mad cow disease”, hit the news again after an isolated incident was reported in Aberdeenshire, Scotland. In the 1990s, this disease resulted in the mass culling of hundreds of thousands of livestock, devastating the farming community and causing ripples throughout the British economy. Soaring meat prices, a ban on…

  • Millennium baby

    Millennium baby

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    I qualified in 1999 and, because I drew the short straw and was a new graduate, I saw in the millennium with a friendly little Yorkshire terrier as it recovered from a seizure. I’ve spent New Years’ in worse company. Although the idea seems almost inconceivable to me, 1999 was actually a long time ago…

  • Two things you probably already knew about pathologists (but I didn’t)

    Two things you probably already knew about pathologists (but I didn’t)

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    A few years ago, after spending a decade and a half in general practice and possibly inspired by watching a lot of Quincy, M.E. – when I was too young to know any better (incidentally, does anyone know how old we have to get before we do know better about things? I’d like to be…

  • Testing times: reliving the exam nightmare

    Testing times: reliving the exam nightmare

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    Remind me why I’m doing this? I swore I’d never put myself through it again. Amid the bittersweet feelings at the end of my veterinary degree – sadness I’d never pass time in quite the same way with many of my fellow students again, nervousness about a suddenly unplanned future (I’d known exactly what I…

  • The messiness of medicine

    The messiness of medicine

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    My career has taken a very academic turn recently; I’m now a resident in clinical pathology, after (mutter mutter) years in general practice. It’s been a huge change and enormously interesting, and one of the things that has surprised me greatly (and said with caution, given I have general pathology exams looming) is how much…

  • Christmas special: sporties versus foodies

    Christmas special: sporties versus foodies

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    Ho ho hello and welcome to another Christmas edition of my blog. Once again, my editor has cruelly dismissed my “compilation” idea that radio and TV shows seem to get away with at this time of year (picking the best words from my previous blogs, mixing them up and printing the result). As a result,…

  • A defence of generalism

    A defence of generalism

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    Ahh, veterinary medicine. Look at it, stretching out over the horizon – so pretty. Look at all those referral centres. Of course, I remember back when it was all fields. Back in my day, you could be a proper mixed vet, expressing anal glands with the lingering scent of cowpat on your fingers, and an…

  • Role recognition: credit where credit’s due

    Role recognition: credit where credit’s due

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    Bloggers Jane Davidson and Nick Marsh team up to consider how much of each task on a typical invoice for surgery would, and could, be undertaken by a VN or vet. It reveals how, despite its importance, the role of the VN goes unnoticed and unrecognised. When Jane suggested writing a blog together, I thought…