STUDENT EXPERIENCE: URUGUAY AND BRAZIL

Mary Clarke Worthington, North Carolina State University

"My international externship took place in Montevideo, Uruguay and Porto Alegre, Brazil with their public universities (Facultad Veterinaria and UFRGS respectively). This externship was a solo trip self-designed as part of my schools “Special Topics in Theriogenology” rotation, which proved to be an excellent way to push myself out of my comfort zone.

My first two days in Montevideo started with a conference with talks from vets from all over South

America on a wide range of topics including field C-sections, dystocia anesthesia, subfertility in stallions, and metabolic disease in pregnant mares. The rest of my stay was split between reproductive management (ultrasound, collection, AI, embryo transfer) at a local military breeding farm and the hospital managing post-partem complication mares and injured foals.

While at UFRGS I was able to assist with collection and semen analysis for the university stallions, as well

as do daily reproductive tract ultrasounds on their teaching mares. Additionally, I spent one day with a local reproduction specialist visiting several large breeding farms where we would complete ultrasounds, lavages, collections, embryo transfer, and AI. I also toured the school’s swine reproduction lab, and a local bovine genetics center.

I learned so much during this externship and saw a wide variety of cases with an equally wide range of

resources with which to manage them. Everyone at FVet and UFRGS was so welcoming and encouraging of me as a total outsider, that it gave me a lot of faith in the bonds that tie us all together as veterinarians. I was able to practice my Spanish language skills, form valuable new relationships, and see different approaches and perspectives to reproductive case management. I am incredibly grateful for the funding which made this amazing experience possible."