Getting the word out: How practitioners can integrate

Honorable Mention, Experiences
Sally Moseley, St. Matthew's University

“Okay,” a fellow vet student sighed in relief after her kitten slipped off the stairs and landed with an unpleasant thud onto the hard floor.  “I think she’s okay; she doesn’t seem as though she’s bleeding internally or anything.”

“Does that happen to animals?”

Our glares told the outnumbered med student that, yes, animals can have internal bleeding just as humans can.

The medical community has many divisions; some physicians are divided by specialty, some by species, and some by geography.  It is easy for us to get wrapped up in our own experiences and forget to open our mind to other possibilities.  However, this is a modern age that is only growing more modern, and I believe that this will aid the medical community in combating any prejudices resulting from ignorance; the modern age has opportunities for communication that have never been accessed before.

I am sorry that I had to pick on the aforementioned med student.  I find it disconcerting that it is so easy to pick on people for saying similar things.  My schoolmates and I have often discussed instances of people’s ignorance of animals.  Med students are easy targets because, let’s face it, there is a small rivalry between human physicians and multi-species physicians.

Instead of rivalries, why not use the modern age of communication to foster…communication?

 At a South African seabird rehabilitation center, I had the opportunity to help give African Penguin #234 (AP 234) a bath.  This was no ordinary, fun-loving procedure; the rehabilitation center often treated victims of oil spills.  Oiled-birds were typically weak and, to put it simply, sad-looking.  Animal-lovers are no strangers to the look of an animal who just does not look “right”.  They are not strangers to the apprehensive feeling in their guts that tells them that, darn it, that animal is in pain. 

AP 234 stood in the pen with his fellow sad-looking oiled-birds.  I took my charge and prepared myself for the next delicate task.  If the oiled-birds come in sad-looking, the bathing process can be even worse; the task is stressful for birds who have no idea of the humans’ good intentions.

I could feel the weak struggle AP 234 gave as I held his beak away from any skin he might nip, either my skin or that of the staff member bathing the bird.  One thing the volunteers at the facility learned quickly was that birds are strong, and their wings could be dangerous weapons of defense.  That apprehensive feeling in my gut twinged again at the bird’s meek efforts to struggle out of my hands.

One of the often-told struggles of veterinary medicine over human medicine is that our patients never directly communicate with us.  Spoken and written languages are just not part of the every-day vocabulary of a veterinary patient.  What I think is most frustrating for animal-lovers and veterinarians is when people cannot see the pain in an animal.  It just seems so obvious!  Why can’t they see?

I, along with any vet student, have spent many, many hours with animals.  There is a certain amount of intuition that comes to understanding animals, but the understanding only grows with experience.  As frustrating as it is that human practitioners do not seem to see the things we see, we should understand that the things we see are not readily apparent.  Part of our jobs as future veterinarians should be education, and not necessarily in the classroom setting.  Instead of judging people for their ignorance, we should inform them of the world of animal medicine with which they never had experience.

How can this even be possible?  We have to go through all this training and schooling to know what we know!  Well, this is the age of modern communication.  We all know about professional organizations such as American Veterinary Association, American Association of Swine Veterinarians, American Veterinary Society of Animal Behavior, and many, many other such organizations.  But what if we let our voices heard in such organizations as American Public Health Association, where human practitioners may offer willing ears?  Or, what if we played a bigger role in therapy animal certification?  There are many avenues along which human and animal practitioners both walk.

The greatest part of wildlife rehabilitation is when the animals are well enough to be released into their natural habitat.  On the day of his release, AP234 was not the weak creature I bathed; his strong wings had become most potent weapons of defense.  And we knew, just by looking at him, that he had an attitude, that he had a spark in his life that just was not there when he had been ill.

What if I never told the story of AP 234?  No one would ever know his story.  What happens when people have never seen enough animals to know what they have to offer?  What if we took out our frustrations by educating?

What if?