Pre-visit: 12/11/17 I am looking forward to getting to see first hand what it takes to be a vet and the daily life of a vet. I’m going to get to see first hand what they do daily and see if I have what it takes. I’m also looking forward to see all the animals and helping them feel better, which is the reasons I've always wanted to be a vet, so I can make them feel better and interact with them. Although i’m worried that I won’ like being a vet and i’m worried that I won’t be able to handle the job. I’m hoping to get to help out and assist with keeping the animals calm during shots and during appointments. I would also like to see them perform surgery, like a spaying or neutering, or something like that, just to get a feel for what that’s like. My goals for my site visit is to find out what I will be doing during my internship and what my responsibility are going to be during internship. And see if I can sit in during appointments and surgeries.
Welcome to Internship Blog: 1/3/18 I am really looking forward to my internship this semester. I've really been looking forward to getting some experience with Veterinarian medicine and i'm excited to see how its done and decided if this is the field that I really want to get into. I'm really looking forward as well to getting to hopefully assist in appointments and help make the animals more comfortable in a place that I think they get really scared and stressed. It would be a dream if they let me be the OR when doing a surgery but I don't think I'll be able to since i'm not 18, but you never know maybe they will let me observe. I'm excited to explore being a vet even further, since when I went on my site visit I saw that they do everything in that building including dentistry, x-rays, surgery, and appointment, etc. So hopefully I will get to explore many different aspects of the job. I'm not nervous for it but I really hope that I don't mess up and do anything wrong during my internship. I'm mostly just excited to explore something that has been my passion for as long as I can remember.
Prompt #1: 1/4/18 (Week 1) Describe your internship project. What will you be doing? What will the final product look like? Which skills (academic, creative, technical) will you utilize and/or develop as you do the project. How will the project benefit the organization? My project is a little different than everyone else's, I'm more going to be doing what ever they need me to do. Today I helped keep the animals still when they did shots and drew blood, I cleaned kennels, re-stocked everything that needed to be restocked. I will be using teamwork during my internship and I will be developing a lot of knowledge about how to be a vet and what it takes as well as the daily life of being a vet. I will benefit the vet hospital because I will be as helpful as possible doing whatever tasks need to be done and helping them keep the animals calm when they are working on them.
Prompt #2: 1/8/18 (Week 2) Describe the culture at your internship, including how people interact, communicate and work together. Everyone in my internship gets along, they're all friends and the communicate whenever they need help or have any questions. They all work together and everyone does everything. They all do vaccinations, draw blood, help with surgeries, and anything that needs to be done around the clinic.They all help each other even when it isn’t asked of them. If they see someone who needs help they don’t hesitate to jump in.
What goods and/or services does your company provide to the community and how do they consider their role in the community, responsibilities to society? They help the community by giving all their attention to each pet that comes in they. They help make the animal feel better and try to make them feel as comfortable and loved as they can. They also help the owner by trying to find the most cost effective package as they can. They have different sets of vaccines and groupings of tests that they do and each one of them has a different cost depending on what's in the package and the vets try to find the most cost effective package they can to help suit the owners needs in terms of payment. They also take any animal that comes to them they never turn anyone away, even walk-ins and emergencies they always take them and help the animal as best as they can.
Me cleaning a husky before she got spayed.
Prompt #3: 1/17/18 (Week 3) How has or do you see your internship changing the way you consider that paths your future will take? I chose the internship I did specifically for the purposes of figuring out if this was the thing I wanted to pursue. I found on the first day that this was the career for me and everyday i’m there it makes me more excited and anticipating my future career.
What limitations have you recognized in yourself that you want to overcome during internship, or use this internship experience to help you overcome? I’m learning how to hold the animals when they are getting blood drawn and how to hold them when the vet techs need to do something with them. I’m not a skilled as them yet because they are more experienced with this sort of thing, but I am hoping to get better at it over the next couple weeks.
How do you see your role developing at your internship? I’m hoping that by the end of internship I will be much more skilled at holding the animals and can react quicker when they move a lot. I also hope that I learn to anticipate their moving so I don’t react as much which makes the vet techs job that much harder.
Vet checking a patients heart (Dr. Braunstein, Right and Esteban, Left)
Vet techs (Dana, Left and Esteban, Right) taking the staples out of a dogs leg after knee surgery.
Prompt #4: 1/25/18 (Week 4) Do you have any regrets so far? What would you do differently if you could start internship over? I wish that in the beginning I had set myself up to ask more questions and I wasn’t so nervous to ask the bigger or more obvious questions. I wish I had also broken out of my shell a little bit more in the beginning which it's something I always struggled with and it would have been much better if I had broken that habit. I also think I should’ve been a little more diligent about asking what they needed. I’ve been doing that a little more recently as well as looking around to see what needs to be done. Laundry, cleaning kennels, re-stocking needles and syringes, etc. I think then I would’ve been a lot more useful them, but lately we’ve all been doing a lot of cleaning in our down time which keeps us busy.
Describe one challenge that arose this week at your internship site (related to the work the company does). How did your mentor and their colleagues solve this problem? Last week the only two techs who were in the building were clipping the nails of a dog that was not having it, when I noticed one of the in-house patients (patients that needed to be there a little longer for whatever reason, surgery, dental, fluids, etc.) had chewed on the IV line and had gotten her catheter out and was bleeding, the techs then rushed the dog they were working on into a kennel to help the dog that was bleeding. They had to replace the catheter and clean the dog up. I helped them clean up the blood in the kennel and the floor and replaced the towel that was left in the kennel. This week two of the techs took out the stitches in a dog who had foot surgery a couple weeks ago and that dog came in the next day because the incision hadn’t fully healed yet so Dr. Braunstein had to restitch up the incision, which required the help of Dana and Raul, two other vet techs to help keep the dog calm while she stitched it up. They ended up having to numb the foot so the dog wouldn't fuss so much.
What are social interactions like in your workplace? Do people spend a lot of time socializing? Are people isolated, doing their own things? Lots of collaboration on work projects? Not much collaboration? How does the social dynamic impact or reflect the organization's work? Everyone is super comfortable with each other and I’ve gotten a lot of that as well, the whole staff has been really nice and accommodating, some of the employees have been explaining things if they think of it. Especially the doctors, today Dr. Keiss was working on a bird that she brought in from home and was taking care of for a client and I hadn’t gotten to see anyone take care of a bird yet (It’s mostly cats and dogs) so she explained how your supposed to hold them when doing shots and I got too see it for the first time which I had been looking forward to doing. Some of the techs also explain the things that they’re doing, Dana explained how you clean the teeth when doing a dental, you start from the from to the back when cleaning and you want to pick a pattern and stick to it so you don’t miss any teeth and you never want to press to hard because that could cause later damage to the teeth. She also explained how you prepare for surgery, when cleaning the surface area which she let me do. I’ve learned the most from Dana I would say, she’s very good at explaining what she’s doing and knowing if it would be a good thing for me to know. Raul, another tech, taught me about marking down the teeth during a dental. He told me that there are different letters that symbolise different actions, theres one for tooth decay, and missing tooth, gingivitis, ETC. Everyone works with everyone, they all get along and they never turn down the chance to help their fellow co workers out. Even the main vets, Dr. Hoolihan (Owner), Dr. Keiss, and Dr. Braunstein, if one of them needs help on a case they help, even if it’s not their case. If theres a dog or cat that not cooperating they all pitch in. If they’re working on an animal but an emergency arises and it’s more urgent they stop what they’re doing, put the animal in a kennel and help out
One of the in house patients who needed fluids.
This is the dental room, where they do all the dental procedures, one of the rooms I make sure is stocked.
Prompt #5: 1/31/18 (Week 5- Final Week) In what ways has your internship inspired you to think about college? Have you discovered new colleges that you are interested in attending? Have you learned about new courses to study or majors to pursue? I had a plan for college or at least the last step, UC Davis for vet school, and throughout my internship I have gotten some good ideas on how I can get to my main goal. One path that I discovered was going to vet technician school to get experience with the vet tech part of it then get my undergrad in some kind of science, I'm probably going with animal science, then applying to vet school.
How do you see yourself making decisions about your own life beyond HTHMA? Do you see yourself following a life similar to anyone you met at internship? Why or why not? Definitely going with the path I was with during internship, I’ve wanted to be a vet for longer than I can remember and I chose the internship I did because I wanted to see if this was the correct career path for me, and it definitely is, I love the thought of helping animals, and I have always really wanted to do it in anyway but saving their lives making them feel better is what I’ve dreamt about doing.