Pharmhouse Summer Student Swine Experience Program Exposes Swine Veterinary Students to Swine Veterinary Practitioners

A Steinbach, Manitoba based Swine Veterinarian says the hands-on exposure to pigs provided to veterinary students through the Pharmhouse Summer Student Swine Experience Program is invaluable.The Western College of Veterinary Medicine Pharmhouse Summer Student Swine Experience Program places first and second year veterinary students into swine veterinary practices for hands-on experience working with swine during the summer.

Dr. Blaine Tully, a practitioner and partner with Swine Health Professionals, says his practice has hosted students during the summer for many years informally and this summer it hosted two students through the Pharmhouse Program.

Quote-Dr. Blaine Tully-Swine Health Professionals:

Both students would have said, coming into the summer, "I don't know anything about swine practice.I don't know if it's going to lead to any career choices for me," which, by the end of the summer has turned into, "yea, I would consider swine in my future at some level."

It's beneficial having that hands-on experience because, in the swine sector, it's really hard to get experience.Unless you are raised on a pig farm, through biosecurity and other measures we do a really good job of keeping people out of farms, including people that are trying to learn.

I think, as a swine veterinarian and I've been doing this for many years, we kind of take for granted what we've learned over the years.Certainly, we didn't learn everything in the first summer we went into practice but having that hands-on experience kind of gives them a glimpse of not only what the veterinarian is faced with as a swine veterinarian but also, if they choose to take a career in swine practice, really understand their client base at a level that they wouldn't understand if they hadn't actually physically gone and washed farrowing crates or injected nursery piglets or loaded cull sows onto a semi-trailer.
That experience is just invaluable.

Dr. Tully says participation in the program was positive for the veterinarians who were exposed to the students and vice versa and he looks forward to continuing to foster that kind of exposure next summer and in summers beyond for the next generations of swine veterinarians.