Student Shelter Opportunities

Catalog description

This course is an introduction to High Quality High Volume Spay-Neuter (HQHVSN) surgery in the shelter environment and consists of 17 online lecture hours and 3 hours of in-person lecture hours of material that utilizes the Association of Shelter Veterinarians’ Veterinary Medical Care Guidelines for Spay-Neuter Programs. Lecture topics, assignments, and pre/post tests are delivered online and include an overview of HQHVSN, patient handling, anesthesia and pain management in the shelter environment, partner protocols, patient monitoring, patient presurgical preparation, basic surgical principles, sterilization of the male and female cat, and sterilization of the male and female dog. In-person lecture and discussion sessions will complement and expand upon online material. The lab component of this course consists of four hours of skills lab and 8 hours in a clinical setting with shelter medicine faculty participating in perioperative activities, which include physical exam, induction, patient preparation, surgery, and recovery. Emphasis in this course is a holistic approach to HQHVSN including pre-clinical skill acquisition that also introduces some concepts of shelter medicine and community programming. Grading is pass/fail. Purchase of an online webtext is required. Curriculum/course to cover high-quality, high-volume surgical and anesthetic principles to properly prepare students for not only these experiences, but give them a better foundation for learning life-long skills and enhancing their surgical experience at Penn via authentic learning experiences. Students will have to complete extensive online learning, assessments, and skills labs for this course. Students will complete webtext material asynchronously in the fall semester and attend three one-hour discussion sessions scheduled around the second year course schedule. In the spring, students will attend…