Southland veterinary students gained invaluable public experience by providing free health checks to more than 150 pets.
The Southern Institute of Technology held another successful two-day free pet health clinic on October 17 and 18, with nine diploma students carrying out health checks on 182 animals including dogs, cats and rabbits.
Veterinary nursing lecturer Mel Shuttleworth said the students were able to test their clinical skills on the animal clients.
She said the clinic played an important role in giving students the opportunity to engage with the community with real animal appointments.
“When the students are on placement, they’re not exposed to clinical experience, they’re usually in the back of the house monitoring animals and they don’t have direct contact with the public,” she said.
“Because they’ve had a taste of that, it gives them more confidence when they go into actual clinical practice.”
Ms. Shuttleworth said the clinic was a chance for the students to conduct veterinary consultations for the first time, and it was something they would be expected to do when they entered the workforce.
She said the students had set a goal of seeing at least 150 animals, which they exceeded, and microchipping 40 – which they came very close to with 36 animals microchipped.
“We set achievable goals, but we surpassed them significantly, and they were pretty impressive numbers.”
Another goal the students had was to raise $400 for the Southland SPCA by running raffles, and they were thrilled to have raised $625, Ms. Shuttleworth said.
Ms. Shuttleworth was also pleased to see an increase in the number of cat consultations compared to previous years.
“The consultations were just jam-packed for the two days,” she said.
“We do our best not to turn anyone away.”
All services at the clinic were free, with the exception of a discounted $15 microchipping fee, which covers the cost of loading the animal onto the national registry.
