Fourth year, farms...
and farewell!
STUDENT DIARY
Alice McLeish
, Edinburgh
Fourth year veterinary student, Edinburgh University
This year however, it’s been all farm animals
so far which is suiting me nicely! One of our
courses is the ‘Farm Animal’ course which
covers cattle, sheep, pigs, poultry and fish
farming medicine and surgery, and the other
course is ‘Veterinary Public Health’ which has
been looking at the role of vets in food safety,
particularly in reference to slaughterhouses.
On top of this, we’ve been starting to have
tutorials about the business side of being a
vet, which has really brought home to me
how close we are to being set free on
the world!
These classes have been on subjects like
finances, client care and leadership, and
make a nice contrast to the other practical
classes we get. It’s still a very lecture-heavy
course at the moment, but we are starting
to be taken out on the farm hospital rounds in
small groups, which is very useful for getting
our clinical examination skills up to scratch,
and have had a set of meat inspection and
post-mortem practicals; getting to try out the
stunning guns on head specimens was one of
the more different ones!
Of course, every vet student is used to getting
comments from others about how we just stick
our arms up cows’ backsides, and this year
we have been able to do quite a lot of that!
With rectal examinations being such an
important skill, we have two sessions set aside
to learn about it; the first one on an amazingly
realistic ‘Breed’n Betsy’, an artificial simulator
which allowed us to work out what we should
be feeling in a real cow, and to show us calf
presentations, and the second on the real
About me
Twenty-one years ago, I met my first sheep
while on holiday on the Isle of Skye. My
delighted parents realised they'd finally
found something to keep me occupied, as
I spent the whole week pressed against
the window of our house, baa-ing at all
the sheep that went past. Jokingly, they
said I must be going to be a vet (I couldn't
say ‘Mummy’ or ‘Daddy’, my vocabulary
consisting entirely of animals and animal
noises). Several years on, here I am in
my fourth year studying to be a vet in
Edinburgh, the city I grew up in, with the
hope of becoming a mixed practice vet
once I graduate.
Writing this article, I can hardly believe how quickly the last year has
gone. My friends in the year above me are all getting ready to sit their
final exams, and it’s terrifying that in a year’s time that’s going to be
me - especially when I still get asked regularly on placements if I’m on
school work experience...
cows at the University’s dairy farm. I think it is
testament to how used to strange things we
get that when the Breed’n Betsy was sitting in
the entrance hall it barely got a second glance
from passing students!
This term has made me realise even more that
the large animal side of veterinary medicine is
where my interest lies, and I have enjoyed
indulging my James Herriot side in writing this
column. I have more mixed animal practice in
the Highlands booked for Easter, and hopefully
in 18 months or so I will be out on the farms
as a fully qualified vet.
One of the calving simulators
WORKING
TOGETHER
FOR A HEALTHIER FUTURE...
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