Vet Times

Tag: vet school

  • A fair wage for fair hours?

    —

    by

    Reading up on the legislation regarding working hours and the national minimum wage (NMW) I discovered that, if you work extra hours unpaid and that takes your average wage below the NMW limit, your employer is breaking the law. That said, and with the NMW only recently reaching £6.70 for over-21s, I can imagine there are situations where…

  • Compromise: learning the ‘art of veterinary medicine’

    —

    by

    It was my first day at work. I was nervous as heck, keen to impress, and desperate to prove to myself I could actually function as a veterinary surgeon (and, ideally, without writing my car off in the first week, which is what my university mates had voted me the person most likely in the…

  • Out of Africa: two weeks in the wild

    —

    by

    Wildlife veterinary medicine is more than being a good shot with a dart gun and knowing what anaesthetics to fill the darts with. I know this because I was part of a group from Glasgow vet school that visited the Shamwari Game Reserve in South Africa to find out exactly what wildlife medicine entails. Minimal intervention…

  • What is normal in the veterinary world?

    —

    by

    As veterinary students (and probably later as vets), we have a very distorted view of “normal”. Exam season (for Glasgow) is now over, but during revision, the social media stakes noticeably increase. While many of my non-veterinary friends share photos of their piles of notes captioned “T-minus 2 weeks”, “Revision hell” or the like, in…

  • Value is in the eye of the beholder

    —

    by

    “Price is only a concern in the absence of value” – I saw this pinned to the wall in a practice I visited, and to a large extent believe it to be true. But what is value? Take inanimate objects: their value to us is not only in their functionality, but also in their meaning to…

  • Corporate feminisation

    —

    by

    In a previous blog, I alluded to the feminisation of the profession. Here, I speak very carefully to avoid confusion of this with feminism. I’m not going to preach equal rights or pick holes in generalisations, but the facts are unavoidable: feminisation of the profession is happening and we need to find the best way…

  • Self-confessed expert syndrome

    —

    by

    The world has changed enormously since I qualified as a vet in the nineties, but my first taste of the “brave new world” of technology was when Glasgow vet school installed a 40-strong computer room, all connected up to the internet and the then-new World Wide Web. These computers used NCSA Mosaic to view web…

  • Crash prevention

    —

    by

    Following the devastating news of the Germanwings crash last week, the co-pilot’s torn-up sick note and the early implication of mental health issues (later suspected to instead be eyesight-related), I witnessed a shocking flare-up of defence regarding mental health on social media. My gut reaction was of absolute disgust. Whether said sick note referred to…

  • The unfortunate adventures of Lucky the horse

    —

    by

    Although the UK’s fire and rescue services are not obligated to rescue a cat stuck up a tree or a horse stuck in an overturned trailer, the skills and resources of their firefighting teams lead to the assumption that they are the best people for the job – but while they are excellent at what…

  • Big decisions

    —

    by

    At the end of this month (March), my year group has to submit their choices for final year selectives. Over the coming week we will have a number of presentations on the different options to help us decide – which will no doubt cause further confusion. For a number of us, fear has ensued. Others (perhaps the…