Veterinary Challenges

As far as I’ve heard, veterinarians nowdays have many challenges to face, but most of them (technology supplies, social matters, education, etc) are derived from a main problem: People don’t respect veterinarians. Veterinary isn’t really taken seriously as a profession, nor animal welfare. For example, when I talk to my family about some animal diseases or treatment, often the answer is “ In that case, you should just buy another dog!” You should see the face I make, and theirs when I told them I was going go study Veterinary Medicine. Since I haven’t had a cat or dog myself, I really don’t know what people expect from a vet consult, but teachers and classmates say that people wants a healthy pet, and they want it for free. They think a pet health is a given, and if it’s not healthy, you should just get rid of it instead of wasting your money on a disease that may never recover. Maybe we still need to evolve a bit further to accept that animals need the same care as us.
That’s why, going back with the homework subject, there are several issues with vet practice: vets don’t get paid that much even if they treat the same diseases as humans, and because of that they can’t get proper equipment (or it hasn’t been developed for animals yet). A vet has lower status compared to other professions in the health area, even if getting the title its just as hard as any other(and it’s more than just one species to study!). Furthermore, many people enter veterinary for all the wrong reasons: they simply like animals, they think is an easy career and/or they couldn’t make it to human medicine or dentistry. Let’s be realistic: it’s quite common to see people dropping veterinary at first or second semester to change careers, not to mention people “freezing” the career because of stress. I’m saying that veterinary is doomed: people are caring more about animals each day, so maybe when people consider animals more important than now, us (future) vets we will be considered more important too.

(By the way miss, i forgot to tell you that Andrés and I had a Bovine practice last Tuesday morning, so we couldn’t make it to class. Sorry for not telling you sooner!)

Urban Foxes - aka homework

http://browse.guardian.co.uk/search?search=veterinary&No=10&sitesearch-radio=guardian&go-guardian=Search
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jun/07/urban-fox-attack-london
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/jun/07/fox-attack-twins

Well, the homework said just one new but they’re were quite related, so yeah…

In UK, citizens are having trouble with foxes that break into gardens and even indoors. People are getting from worried to scared, specially after the news that some baby twins were attacked but hopefully not seriously injured.

People want get rid of them, but they forgot they were the ones that brought them there: it’s a common practice to feed them and lure them to one’s garden, and if they don’t get any food directly from humans they eat garbage or (fortunately) hunt rats. Normally, they wouldn’t enter the houses, but young cubs are bolder than their parents, but even so they would only attack human if they feel panicked. And we should remember than dog attacks are far more common than occasional fox bites. Curiously, most people don’t report these incidents because they think authorities won’t believe them, so it’s hard to keep track of how many incidents they have been actually . Foxes aren’t really getting any comfort from this situation either: most of them die in roads at the age of two, when they leave the den to search for their own territory.

Even if you get rid of them, another pair will quickly fill the empty territory. Foxolutions recommend never feeding them in first place and keep the garbage firmly secure as simple, cheap and effective methods of keeping them away.

homewooork!

Well, this is a bit bit embarasing, but I know there’s a lot of stuff happening around the faculty but I haven’t got much info about it (yeah, shame on me). But I’m quite aware about the lack of teaching staff. I’ve seen that in many courses teachers are retiring or quitting, and there’s little staff left in some units. I don’t like to badmouth people, but I’ve heard from some older students that some teachers are far better than others in some courses, so I’m really getting worried about this. I guess most of them left because teaching isn’t well paid here (and the rest of this country), so I guess it would be necessary to give raises and some other bonuses to encourage teaching. But before that, we/they yo really study the situation in each department and consider which ones lacks more staff. Besides this, it would be really helpful that some of the new teachers had actually a real pedagogy course (ahem). No offense, but some teacher are really bad at expressing themselves, or they start ranting about anything but the course. I think teaching is an art and science, and being an expert in that theme isn’t really enough to make someone else understand it.
A new or bigger teaching staff could really improve the student’s academic results. I’ve heard from many faculties that people don’t get grades this low when they are at third or fourth year, so it’s troublesome when you have to compete for scholarships and even jobs. I’m not saying that they should lower the academic demands, but maybe organize the courses better ans ask stuff that really matters instead of just memorizing random (and most of time useless) tips.