First job after vet school
Hi everyone. I’ve been practicing for about one month(!) in a small animal GP setting. In vet school we were told to pick jobs that had good mentorship, but no one told us the nuts and bolts of what good mentorship looks like. I chose this job because during the interview the clinic owner seemed very gung-ho about providing mentorship and support for a new grad. Initially I was told I would be starting slow, working with experienced doctors available to be my mentors, and getting surgery and dental time in order to develop those skills along with appointments.
My first day of work I shadowed appointments and dentals with another vet for about 1/2 a day and then jumped right into my own appointment schedule.
I’m currently operating on a “slow” schedule involving approx 20 minute wellness and 40 minute sick appointments. I am doing okay on this timetable right now but eventually I am supposed to be getting down to 20 minute sick appointments and 15 minute wellness. I’m pretty nervous about the 20 minute sick prospect as when we do diagnostics for sick patients I’m having to take the full 40 minutes! The other vets are nice but they are sometimes too busy with their own cases to be available for me if I have questions. It’s also become clear that they have limited ability to help supervise me when I want to try new procedures (thoracocentesis for example). I use a lot of VIN, course notes, and textbooks suffice it to say. My clinic does pay for a consultation service with a remote vet who is a wonderful remote mentor, but the clinic is charged per case consult so obviously I try not to abuse that service and save it only for cases where I am truly floundering.
But the main issue i have is that so far there has been not a peep about me having any surgery or dental time. I have been told I am to be doing mainly sick and well appointments for the time being. I want to continue to develop my surgical skills in particular, but I feel like it’s hard to justify asking my boss for surgery time when I would be doing 40 minute spays instead of 10 minute spays like the other vets and therefore losing the clinic money.
My boss/clinic owner is not a vet or vet tech and has not worked with a new grad before so I don’t think they completely understand what a new grad vet needs.
Is this a normal or typical experience? Normal growing pains? Or is this less support than I should have expected jumping right into practice out of vet school (ie not doing a structured internship program?). Is this just how it is for most people? I know how to “fake it till I make it” in front of clients and my clients seem to like me, but inside I’m terrified that I’m secretly making mistake after mistake with their pets and no-one is there to catch my errors. Should I ask for some surgery time? If you had a GOOD mentorship experience at a private clinic what exactly did that look like? I guess I’m just looking for some outside perspective here… TIA