Surgical Internship Program at Veterinary Specialty Center
What Makes the Surgical Internship Program at VSC Unique?
VSC offers a distinctive surgical internship program that connects participants with our experienced surgical team while providing them unique educational access to our full specialty hospital and Certified Trauma Center.
Key aspects that set this experience apart from other programs include:
One-On-One Mentership
Working one-on-one with 5 board-certified surgeons, all of whom have worked at VSC for more than 10 years, with a combined experience of over 90 years, exposes interns to a wide variety of perspectives for surgical case management.
Caseload and Experience
Our caseload is complex and varied, and each intern can expect to assist in 4 to 6 surgeries per day. Each intern should expect an intra-operative experience in assisting complex surgeries, performing surgical closures, and, depending on experience, performing approaches to surgeries and portions of surgeries.
Rounds
Daily hospital-wide, grand rounds will expose interns to comprehensive management of critically ill patients.
Case Management
Postoperative case management exposes interns to client communication, problem-solving, and patient care requirements of surgical patients.
CE Opportunities
VSC offers a range of evening and weekend webinars and (when possible) in-person continuing education programs presented by our doctors, technicians, and other veterinary experts.
Multi-Specialty Collaboration
Engage in daily consultation and interaction with a variety of on-site specialists that include radiology, anesthesia, internal medicine, cardiology, critical care, dermatology, clinical pathology, medical oncology, and radiation oncology.
Salary and Bonuses
In addition to an exceptionally competitive salary, we offer an additional bonus for each surgical emergency case that our interns assist with. We recognize the hard work and long hours our interns put in and wish to provide appropriate compensation.
Benefits
Along with medical, dental, vision, life, and pet insurance, VSC offers the same benefits package to our interns as we do for our full-time team members.
Didactics
Intensive, multi-specialty didactics average 2 to 3 times per week and maintain the academics and foundational skills needed to be a successful surgeon. These alternating didactics include:
- Anesthesia rounds
- Cardiology rounds
- Clinical pathology rounds
- Emergency and critical care rounds
- Fracture rounds
- Journal club
- Morbidity and mortality rounds
- MRI / neurology rounds
- Radiology rounds
- Tobias / chapter rounds
- Wet labs to learn approaches and procedures
Residency Consideration
VSC does not use the VIRMP Match for our residencies. Our surgery residents are hand-selected from our current and previous surgical interns. Our surgery residency program has been approved by ACVS since its inception over 18 years ago and has always been in good standing due to our breadth of specialty support.
Primary Case Responsibility
During your surgical internship at VSC, you will be responsible for: