S2 Week 10: Eye Week, SAVMA Symposium and the Knoxville Zoo!
This week started with the second neurology exam of the block! We then transitioned into the famous UC Davis “Eye Week”! This was a week exclusively focused on everything eye-related and all of the professors were super passionate about what they were teaching. They had even gone to the extent of making a poster detailing everything that was going to be covered during this week in our lectures and labs. After our introductory eye lectures on vision, eye movement, and an overview of eye anatomy, were over we were done for the day and I went home and spent some quality time with Churro!
Tuesday was a full day spent learning about ocular functional morphology followed by a lab broken into different stations. This station lab included an eye dissection and some quality time with our cadaver looking at eye muscles. I enjoyed the small-group layout of this lab and the stations were a great way to break down the eye anatomy and understand how everything we had previously learned in the lectures tied together. After the lab, I got to get a hot yoga session in and start getting ready to head out to Tennessee for the SAVMA conference.
Wednesday morning was free so I was able to start the day with a nice swim and then finish packing. That afternoon was filled with lectures on ocular functional morphology and embryology. These were super interesting and helped make the eye and all its components less daunting. After our lectures were over, I spent some time with Churro and then Morgan and I left for the airport. At the airport, we met up with the rest of the UC Davis people going to the SAVMA symposium then hopped on a red-eye to Tennessee!
Once a year SAVMA (Student American Veterinary Medical Association) hosts a symposium at a veterinary school and next year, in 2025, it will be hosted at UC Davis. I am one of the students on the core planning committee and therefore the school sent us to the 2024 Symposium so that we could experience it and learn how we want to run ours the following year! We were also able to have a booth in the exhibit hall so that we could promote the location of next year’s event.
The blend between Wednesday night and Thursday was a blur. We arrived in Knoxville at about 10 on Thursday morning and grabbed lunch in town. We then went to the convention center and set up our booth for the weekend. After the booth was set, we all went back to the Airbnb and crashed for the night.
Friday was spent managing the booth for the first half of the day and the rest of the afternoon was spent talking to all the vendors. It was awesome talking to all the exhibitors and learning about the different things they had to offer. There was a large variety of companies at the symposium so it was an awesome networking opportunity and I was able to hear about some cool opportunities for new grads as well as externship and internship opportunities! Friday night was spent at the Symposium’s opening gala and the night concluded with a nice dinner with our awesome advisor Dr. Karl Jandrey. He will be a fundamentally important aspect in this whole planning process and his sacrifice to be at the symposium demonstrated his commitment to student success.
Saturday followed a fairly similar schedule. The morning was spent at the booth advertising for next year along with talking to the remaining vendors. That afternoon I had the opportunity to go to a lab hosted by the University of Tennessee. This lab was run by Rachel Lees a registered veterinary technician who specialized in animal behavior. She focused on empathetic handling and behavior in companion animals and ran us through multiple activities including animal body language identification, clicker training, and low-stress handling techniques. It was interesting to hear her stories and learn from her experiences. While completely stress-free handling in a veterinary setting is not always achievable, it is nice to learn new techniques on how to make the experience better for our patients.
After the lab was over we all went home and got ready for the Knoxville Zoo. This was one of the symposium’s social events and was an awesome way to explore the area and get to meet other vet students. The zoo was closed to the public and there was a little scavenger hunt with different stations for food, a photo booth, and an animal enrichment craft.
Sunday morning started off with an interesting lecture on the top 5 anesthetic complications in small animal anesthesia. This evidence-based, spectrum of care presentation was delivered by Dr. Timothy Loonam and included an overview of the pathophysiology, clinical signs, prevention, and practical treatment of hypothermia, hypotension, arrhythmias, hypoventilation, and difficult recovery. One thing that really stuck out to me from this presentation was the fact that roughly 60% of anesthetic-related complications occur during the post-op recovery window. This means that once that patient is off of the surgery table, the game is not over, serial post-op checks are crucial to a proper recovery and can be an easy way to identify if the patient is not recovering properly.
It was also helpful to learn how preventable so many of these complications are, if the anesthetist is proactive and is paying close attention to the patient. Simple things such as keeping the patient’s body temperature, blood pressure, heart rate, and respiration rate at an appropriate level can dramatically decrease the risk of complications post-op. That being said, anesthetic complications are an unavoidable part of practicing veterinary medicine, so it is important to have a protocol in place for if things begin to go awry. Overall, this presentation was fabulous and highlighted the importance of doorknob to doorknob care.
Sunday started off with the Symposium closing ceremony and this was when we had the opportunity to officially show off our school’s promotional video for the 2025 symposium! This video can be accessed below:
It was super fun to see that students were already excited about next year and for many of them, this will be their first time in California! After the closing ceremony ended, the Davis planning team had the opportunity to meet with the 2024 planning team and hear about their experience. We also got to gather insider information about the planning process. This was super helpful and allowed me to better understand what my role will entail. The rest of the day was spent with the Davis crew brainstorming for the upcoming 2025 conference and the night ended with an awesome dinner on the water!
Overall, this year’s symposium was an amazing experience, and I am so grateful to be a part of the planning committee for next year! It was also super fun to be able to spend so much quality time with people from Davis and get to do things together outside of an academic setting!
Quote of the week: “If anything I said tonight was inflammatory or didn’t settle well, that’s ok” -KJ
Comentarios