Wellbeing Support Fund Accepting Applications

 As veterinary students return to classes in the world of COVID-19, maintaining mental and emotional wellbeing is more important than ever.  Have a creative and unique idea to provide your classmates with a virtual wellness boost? Look no further! The SAVMA Wellbeing Committee is currently reviewing applications for their Wellness Support Fund. Take a look below for details!

In light of the growing body of evidence indicating high levels of stress, anxiety, and depression in the veterinary profession, the SAVMA Wellbeing Committee recognizes that there is a considerable need to transform the culture of veterinary schools into one that is safe, promotes self-awareness, and encourages healthy living habits.  The committee will award up to $2,500.00 each cycle to student applicants demonstrating the need for assistance with a project, lecture, or event(s) that will foster physical or mental wellbeing in their respective college, on an as needed basis. This cycle ends December 31, 2020.

Click here for the application!

Please send any questions to savmawellbeing@gmail.com.

Updated Merck Vet Manual App Is Now Free

A link to The Merck Vet Manual App as well as many other veterinary apps that are useful for coursework, clinics, and studying for the NAVLE are available under the Vet Gazette's Resources tab.

The Merck Vet Manual App has been completely updated and is now free, digitally enhancing all of the information in The Merck Veterinary Manual and making it readily available anytime, anywhere.

The new app is the most comprehensive mobile resource for veterinarians, veterinary students, veterinary nurses and technicians, and other animal health professionals. Conveniently accessible on multiple handheld devices, the app provides authoritative guidelines for the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of disorders and diseases in companion, exotic, laboratory, and food animals.

The mobile app offers:

• Thousands of topics written by more than 400 veterinary experts from more than 20 countries 
• Thousands of photos, illustrations, and videos of disorders and diseases
• Clinical calculators
• Numerous reference guides and hundreds of useful tables

All of this material resides on the device so accessing it does not use data, and after installation an internet connection is not needed.

For Apple devices, download the app at the App Store. For Android devices, download the app at Google Play. 

App and Online Reference Digitally Enhance the Book

When connected to the internet, the app can access many features found on the online reference at www.merckvetmanual.com, including quizzes and case studies, news and commentary, and pet health content written in consumer-friendly language for sharing with clients. 

“Both the online reference and the app are based on the latest edition of the book, but the digital platforms are enhanced by multimedia content, interactive tools, and more,” said Scott Line, DVM, PhD, DACVB, editor-in-chief of The Merck Veterinary Manual. 

Provided as a public service, access to the online reference is free and there is no registration. The user experience on the website and on the app is not compromised by advertising or commercial messaging. Both digital platforms are regularly updated to reflect emerging topics in veterinary medicine.

The Merck Veterinary Manual

Nearly 400 veterinary experts from academia, government, research organizations, and specialty practices contributed to the 11^th edition, which was introduced in July 2016, updating the previous edition published in 2010.

The latest edition is the first to feature a section dedicated to public health, covering public health functions and agencies, epidemiologic principles, disease outbreak investigations, food safety, and an extensive table of zoonoses.   

The Merck Veterinary Manual has been trusted by animal health professionals since 1955, when Merck & Co., Inc. first published the book. 

About Merck

For more than a century, Merck, a leading global biopharmaceutical company known as MSD outside of the United States and Canada, has been inventing for life, bringing forward medicines and vaccines for many of the world’s most challenging diseases.

VETgirl Veterinary Wellness app

This wellness spotlight features something different. Instead of an event offered by a CVM program/group, this spotlight features an app created by VETgirl. From the personal experiences of a veterinarian, VETgirl was started, and now the VETgirl Veterinary Wellness app is here too.  Continue reading to see what this new app is all about, and how it can be helpful for veterinary students. 

“Wellness” is a ever rising topic of conversation in veterinary medicine. Veterinary medicine is a challenging career field that takes years of preparation to even begin training for. Once in veterinary school, students have 4 years of rigorous course work and clinical experience. New graduates are often met with long hours and little recognition of the dedication it took to reach that point. Without awareness of one’s wellness, veterinarians, as well as others in the veterinary medicine field, can face depression or thoughts of suicide.

Veterinarian Justine Lee, DACVECC, DABT, and CEO of VETgirl, a company which provides CE’s for veterinarians, is all too familiar with the struggles of wellness in veterinary medicine. To help prevent other’s from experience the same struggles which she experienced, Dr. Lee and VETgirl have recently released an app “VETgirl Veterinary Wellness app” to encourage wellness every day to those in the veterinary medicine.

Dr. Lee shared with the SAVMA Wellness committee what wellness means to her and the goals behind creating an app dedicated to wellness:

- What does wellness mean to you and why is it important in the veterinary profession?

 Many are often surprised to know that I struggled with insomnia, burnout, and suicide ideation during my 1st year as an ECC residency at University of Pennsylvania. I wrote about it in a Veterinary Team Brief article here. That's why wellness is so important to me - that we take care of ourselves and our colleagues. This is particularly important in our veterinary profession, as our workaholic, high achieving personalty types, along with our stress level, predispose our field to suicide.

- How does your app promote wellness to those in the profession?

We here at VETgirl are very passionate about wellness. We want to make sure veterinary professionals take care of themselves, due to the growing prevalence of burnout, compassion fatigue, and suicide ideation in our field. 

- What was your goal when designing the VETgirl Veterinary Wellness app?

The goal of our VETgirl Veterinary Wellness app is to provide a gentle reminder -  through a daily "check in" tip - on how to  take care of yourself. It's a small way for VETgirl to help give back to a field that we love:  veterinary medicine.

- How can veterinary students best use your app for wellness?

Make sure to check in every day and check out a new simple tip. It could be something as simple as taking 10 deep breaths. Or turning off your phone. Share your favorite tip with your veterinary colleagues, and encourage each other to take care of themselves.

The free app is available on iPhone and android devices (linked below). Students in Colleges of Veterinary Medicine can benefit from a gentle reminder to take care of themselves every day. This can help create healthy habits in students which they can use for the rest of their career.

For iOs devices: click here

For Android devices: click here

Helpful app (and it's free)

For all you Fossum lovers out there, now there's an app. Happy Studying!

New Anatomy Apps

Sick of pouring over tired anatomy textbooks? Or do you want a break from the formalin fumes? Real Bodywork recently developed two veterinary anatomy apps, and they might be that space-filler you wanted for waiting in line for coffee or right before going to bed. Studying anatomy usually made for good nighttime reading for me, although I'd have to say neuro was some tough competition.

These two apps, one for canine and one for equine, covers superficial landmarks, superficial and deep muscles, bones, and organs. They provide an especially nice review of musculature, origins and insertions, and bony landmarks. A quiz feature within the app is a fun way to study, and questions answered incorrectly can be saved to a "favorites" section for future quizzing. Each landmark can be opened for more detail, including muscle action, origin, insertion, additional graphics of the anatomy. This section even has a pronunciation guide which is great for beginners. A disadvantage includes not being able to rotate the dog to ventrodorsal position to better visualize organs. For a review of vasculature, you may want to look elsewhere. Overall, the graphics are great to work with and Real Bodywork is a nice adjunct to the monotony that textbooks can bring.