Foreign-Trained Veterinarian Swine Medicine Residency Certification Program Facilitates Certification in Western Canada

The Western College of Veterinary Medicine's three year Foreign-Trained Veterinarian Swine Medicine Residency Certification program is allowing foreign trained veterinarians to quality for veterinary certification in western Canada.The Foreign-Trained Veterinarian Swine Medicine Residency Certification program, one of four pillars of the University of Saskatchewan's swine medicine advancement, recruitment and training or SMART program, targets internationally trained veterinarians who are working in non-veterinary roles in the Canadian swine industry.

Dr. John Harding, a professor of swine medicine with the Western College of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Saskatchewan, says this program is designed to retool internationally trained veterinarians as swine specialists initially in Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba.

Quote-Dr. John Harding-Western College of Veterinary Medicine:

The residency is a three-year program during which the resident is a full-time graduate student at the University of Saskatchewan but is working with a swine veterinarian in rural practice.So, it's back to school while working as a swine veterinarian.It's a distributed learning model which means that there's no need for the student to relocate to Saskatoon and all training is done in a rural community with that swine veterinary practice or production company.

Over the three years 70 percent of the time is spent in clinical practice and this is under the supervision of a swine veterinarian who is the clinical co-supervisor and this is done in the rural practice.During this period the resident will be involved in most of the activities of a swine veterinarian so they are conducting  themselves like any other swine veterinarian and they're involved with the regular gamut of things that swine vets do on a daily basis, so disease investigations and diagnostics, perhaps biosecurity reviews, CPE and CQA validations, reproduction and production trouble shooting, those basic things that swine veterinarians do.

The remaining 30 percent of their time is spent fulfilling the course work and research requirements to complete their Master of Science degree in swine medicine.

For information on the Foreign-Trained Veterinarian Swine Medicine Residency Certification program contact the Western College of Veterinary Medicine.