The UVTH (OVUD) offers annually a one-year rotating clinical Internship program in small animal medicine and surgery. The program closely follows the recommendations of the American Veterinary Medical Association’s Guidelines for Internships (https://www.avma.org/KB/Policies/Pages/Veterinary-Internships-Guidelines.aspx). The program is designed to prepare recent graduates for high-quality service in practice or advanced specialty training (residency programs). Thus, the program has international validity and will be honored by most Specialty Colleges as pre-requisite for admission to residency training.
Interns will be provided with the opportunity
Annually, 5 Intern positions are available. They will be advertised once a year, usually at the beginning of the spring semester.
Pre-requisites for admission:
Clinical Program
The program is divided in two parts:
Part one is an introductory phase of approximately 3 months of duration. Interns will be exposed to all clinical services on a rotational basis with specific emphasis on tutorship and familiarization with the organization of each service and the functionality of the entire teaching hospital. During this period, Interns will not assume primary case responsibility although rotations will provide hands-on experience in all services including emergency service and intensive care and clinical laboratories.
Part 2, which will take up the rest of the year and consists of formal and scheduled rotations through the different specialty services of the Hospital (see listing below). Interns will progressively be introduced to take on primary case responsibility (with faculty supervision always available); that is, Interns will be assigned first opinion cases on an individual basis within the service rotations and during rotations in the emergency, intensive care and hospitalization services. Supervised clinical activities will be commensurate with increasing clinical competency. Tutorship and faculty supervision will assure monitoring, evaluation and progressive grading of clinical skills and competencies.
Detailed program description:
Overall, there will be 46 weeks of rotations through the following services:
Within the Internal Medicine rotations, besides basic and specific Internal Medicine, specific attention will be paid to the following specialties:
Within the Surgery rotations, besides soft tissue and orthopedic surgery, specific attention will be paid to the following specialties:
Within the rotations through the Animal Reproduction service, besides the routine obstetric-gynecologic services, specific attention will be paid to:
Other regularly scheduled activities:
During the entire year, Interns will actively participate at the professional activities of the Teaching Hospital and its annexed structures. That is, they will assume duties within the 24 hrs Emergency Service, the Intensive Care Unit and the Hospitalization Services also during nighttime, weekends and holidays, by assignment und prior scheduling.
Also, Interns will be actively involved in daily clinical rounds, ward rounds and case discussions. On a biweekly basis, Interns will prepare and/or participate at Journal Clubs and on a monthly basis they will be expected to prepare formal presentations (power point) such as case presentations or bibliographic reviews of other reports as assigned. During all these activities, students and faculty members are expected to participate enhancing the academic and scientific nature of communication and activities.
Evaluation
Faculty and staff will evaluate interns progressively, with the Internship Coordinator being the person of reference for Interns as well as for teaching faculty. At the end of the training year, Interns are expected to prepare a final presentation (in general, a case presentation) which, together with the cumulative performance throughout the year will serve to obtain a final grade; the presentation, delivered in front of a students, staff and of the Intern Exam Committee will be evaluated as final exam for obtaining the Internship Graduation Certificate.