HOSPITAL | VETERINARY EDUCATION | SWITZERLAND | EUROPEAN UNION | PET REGULATIONS | FADs

As an American veterinary student, I had the unique opportunity to travel to the University of Zurich, Switzerland with support from the ASRT grant. I worked closely with the interns/residents of the small animal clinic. The hospital runs quite differently from our hospital at UGA, as students are not an integral part of the hospital. Instead, the clinician works closely with an assigned technician. Technicians are professionally trained in the field of veterinary medicine (a three year curriculum). The clinician receives the pet and personally takes the history and performs the clinical examination with the aid of the technician. Each day, the intern/resident writes a problem-oriented report (SOAP) on his/her case, much like a senior student at UGA. There is one senior clinician (board certified diplomate) per 5 interns/residents.

Daily from 7:30-8:30 am there is a scheduled event:

• Monday: sit down rounds
• Tuesday: journal article presentations
• Wednesday: resident presentation (which may be outside the internal medicine department)
• Thursday: sit down rounds
• Friday: resident problem-oriented case presentation

Appointments are received from 9 am to 11 am at 30 minute intervals.

The cases are worked-up in the afternoon (i.e., bloodwork, radiographs, ultrasound) and there are daily walk-through rounds at mid-day.

The internship program is different from our system as all interns are required to complete a residency program. Therefore, it is essentially a combined internship/residency program that usually lasts a total of 3-4 years.

The hospital is small, but extremely efficient, clean, and organized. The level of medicine is very sophisticated including use of endoscopy, echocardiograms, CT scans, angiograms, chemotherapy and digital viewing of radiographs prior to being printed.

There is no Intensive Care Unit, so for animals requiring overnight care, students come in to do the treatments.

Interns/residents within the small animal clinic (internal medicine, surgery, anesthesia) rotate for emergency duty. On average, each resident has night duty once a week and weekend duty once a month.

Sincere thanks to Dr. Tony Glaus, Dr. Claudia Reusch, and the Kleinertierklinik in Zurich for their wonderful hospitality and to Dr. Corrie Brown and Dr. Jeanne Barsanti for arranging the ARST grant, which enabled me to benefit from this invaluable international experience. I also thank Dr. Stephen Hill of the UGA Department of Political Science for his expert guidance in the exploration of European Union regulatory issues.

HOSPITAL | VETERINARY EDUCATION | SWITZERLAND | EUROPEAN UNION | PET REGULATIONS | FADs