ANIMAL CARE

Veterinary medicine externs get firsthand experience in animal hospitals

Thanks to University of Delaware alumna Stephanie DeMarco, DVM and a carefully designed externship course, UD pre-veterinary medicine majors were hands-on this winter at local animal hospitals.

Seeking to get UD students meaningful clinical experiences, the Department of Animal and Food Sciences in the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources turned to DeMarco, who boasts two decades of veterinary medicine expertise, to capitalize UD’s unique, five-week Winter Session. The course, Animal and Food Science Experience (ANFS 464), is becoming a January staple for UD juniors with their eye on the veterinary profession. Over the winter, Blue Hens worked at Windcrest Animal Hospital, Hockessin Animal Hospital and Talleyville Veterinary Hospital.

“The externship program essentially got started because I was a veterinarian that was working in a nearby hospital,” explained DeMarco, “I was consistently getting students who wanted to shadow, but shadowing doesn’t allow them to actually put their hands on animals.”

As externs, the pre-veterinary medicine majors applied the skills and knowledge they learned in their coursework. The winter externship, which takes an educational approach to hospital work, is sandwiched between fall and spring clinical courses – Clinical Pre-Vet Experience I and II. The classes allow undergraduates a deep dive into technical veterinary skills. The three-course sequence is intentionally designed to make veterinary school applicants as competitive as possible. UD’s esteemed pre-veterinary medicine program gives students a major advantage in veterinary school acceptance and success; approximately 80% of UD applicants are admitted to vet school — twice the national average (40%).

“[The students] were coming to me asking for jobs, but then they didn’t have experience,” explained DeMarco, “Being this close to the University, my alma mater, I thought ‘What can I do about this?’ and so we made this class sequence where we could start giving them some skills.”

Visit: https://veterinary-conferences.pencis.com/

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