More Than an ER - Building the Future of Veterinary Medicine at Virginia Tech

When five or six cases come in in the span of an hour, we don't get to space those out. They come when they come, and we need to be able to handle whatever comes our way. We didn't have an emergency service five years ago. We had a service that was open after hours. In order to be able to really provide the care that patients need 24-7, we've had to build a team. And that's the most important part, is having the people to do the job. We are building a team that can train students, interns, and residents to be even better than we are now. And I know they're going to be out there saving lives I'll never even get to see. So when I came here five years ago as the first ever critical care specialist, I knew that that was step one and that it was going to be really important for me to expand the team and to hire additional criticalists. We were already moving. The Waldron gift amplified it. It really let us look ahead and set ourselves up for success in the long run. Not all of our students want to do emergency, and that's okay. But all of them are going to have to deal with emergencies, whether they like it or not. We can provide them the experience and the support and the encouragement and guidance so that we know every single student that leaves this program is prepared for whatever comes out their way. so i'm sitting in this class and we're learning all about how people learn and it's just incredible that no one teaches us this so i think we're maybe mediocre at it and now with this program i can be a little bit better at it than i was so i hope by the end of the three years i just have a deeper understanding of emergency and critical care and i hope to provide that when they're at their most critical. Yeah, I'm really proud of all that we've accomplished. I certainly did not do any of it alone. I have been really passionate about driving this progress, and I have been supported every step of the way from the college, from our administration, and most importantly from the team. Expansion is really exciting because as we've been growing, the existence of our current space was never designed to be an emergency and so having a facility that was thoughtfully created for emergency services specifically will allow us to be more efficient, more effective, and really just help more animals and their families in the community. I'm really proud of all that we've accomplished. The growth this service has seen is an accomplishment that I will be proud of for my entire career and I'm excited to see where it continues to go. On the hard days I keep going because what we do matters and especially on the hard days what we do matters and working with people to get through what is sometimes one of the worst days of their lives and that really does matter