Experience of Practicing Veterinarians with Supervising Final-Year Students and New Graduates in Performing Desexing Surgeries.

With increasing pressure on university teaching hospital caseloads, veterinary students are increasingly being taught basic desexing skills during their final-year extramural rotations or as new graduates in practice. A cross-sectional survey of New Zealand veterinarians was conducted to elicit information about their experiences supervising these cohorts. Of the 162 respondents who had supervised at least one final-year veterinary student, only 95 (58.

Cross-sectional survey of anaesthesia and analgesia protocols used to perform routine canine and feline ovariohysterectomies.

Objective: To collect baseline descriptive data on the anaesthesia and analgesia protocols used by New Zealand veterinarians in first-opinion practice when performing routine canine and feline ovariohysterectomies.

Study Design: Cross-sectional survey.

Animals: Not applicable.

Guidelines for Implementing a Low-Cost Volunteer Desexing Skills Training Program for Veterinary and Veterinary Technology Students.

Although desexing surgeries are considered a core clinical skill for small animal veterinary practice, it can be challenging for veterinary schools to provide students with adequate training opportunities in the traditional curriculum. At the Massey University School of Veterinary Science, we recently established an innovative extracurricular volunteer program designed to have students teaching other students how to perform different elements of desexing procedures as they progress through their degree. This program includes administrative and assistant roles for first-year students (responsible for client communication, patient restraint, and medical record keeping), physical exam and recovery roles for second-year students (responsible for assessing patient fitness for surgery, drawing up anesthetic drugs, and monitoring patients in recovery), anesthesia and neuter surgeon roles for third-year students (responsible for inducing, preparing, and monitoring spay patients and performing cat neuter surgeries), and spay surgeon roles for fourth- and fifth-year students (responsible for performing cat spay surgeries, discharging patients, and following up with clients to monitor recovery).