Talk:Veterinarian
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VMD

I know only one state in the United States offers the VMD (Veterinary Medical Doctor title instead of the standard DVM (Doctor of Veterinary Medicine)I know only one state in the United States offers the VMD (Veterinary Medical Doctor) title instead of the standard DVM (Doctor of Veterinary Mediciiǚne) for doctors. What state is that? And should you become a doctor, can you use either title or do you have to use the title they give you? --Admiral Roo 12:50, July 11, 2005 (UTC)

  • UPenn, not the State of Pennsylvania, offers the VMD. It is a degree, not a license, so the veterinarian would use the title "Dr" with the degree "VMD" after his or her name. AED 06:13, 8 August 2005 (UTC)

As per your question "Can you use either title?". There is no real advantage to using one title over another. DVM and VMD are the same degree. The only difference is that UPenn chose to call their graduates VMD's. The UPenn degree and diploma is written in latin, and this seems to be the logistical reason why those letters get switched around. Ultimately, there is no advantage to having a DVM instead of a VMD or vice versa.

Since I'm categorizing these tonight, I'll add a belated confirmation of the above. Dad (may he RIP) was always Dr. Frank A. Bartus, VMD—an alumni of University of Pennsylvania, stated correctly above. My sister's degree from Penn State University is DVM. I do believe there were several other schools, also Ivy league, IIRC, that awarded the VMD, but recently (well, to me—sometime in the last 30-35 years!) switched over to the DVM like lemmings over a cliff. FrankB 05:11, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

I don't believe there were other Ivy League schools that offer(ed) the VMD and it is exactly as stated above by FrankB, a latin spelling 'Veterinariae Medicinae Doctoris' and the equivalent of a DVM. The one reason i'd heard cited while in school there was that Penn(U of Penn[1])(also, Penn State does not award DVM's - they do not have a veterinary school)and the other veterinary schools is that Penn is the one school that derived from a school of medicine whereas the other were developed from the school's of agriculture at those universities.

Of course the animals(and farmers) don't care about your degree as long as you help them! Acornembryo 13:40, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

Veterinary Informatics

I have removed the above section which contained the following: "Veterinary Informatics is the application of information technology to healthcare. Most vet clinics now utilize software for Practice Management Systems to control scheduling and billing of clients, tracking of inventory and automation of lab results. Addiitonally, many clinics are working towards becoming computerized for electronic patient records." Veterinary Informatics is much more about practice management than it is about being a veterinarian, plus it has its own article. A link to veterinary informatics is also contained within the article. AED 06:13, 8 August 2005 (UTC)

NPOV

This page deals almost exclusively with veterinary practice as done in america. Please expand to deal with other countries.

If you have information about such, please add. Elf | Talk 18:29, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

Applicants: veterinary school vs. medical school

The article currently states: "Admission into veterinary medical school is competitive. According to the US Department of Labor, 1 in 3 applicants was accepted into a veterinary program in 2002. (Compare this with human medical school statistics of 1 in 2 applicants accepted, keep in mind however that human medical school acceptances have an average GPA of 3.7 and the acceptance rate per medical school is lower than that of vet schools)." The portion in bold was recently added without reference or citation.

  1. The DOL reference regarding veterinary applicants can be found here: [2].
  2. Regarding veterinary schools: The lastest report from the Association of American Veterinary Medical Colleges indicates 2,576 matriculants (mean GPA 3.53)[3][4] - no information on number of total applicants. Another website reported 6,695 applicants (mean GPA 3.42), 2,301 matriculants (mean GPA 3.62)[5] - these are probably 1999 figures. The same website indicated that each applicant files 3.65 applications and veterinary schools receive 10.62 applications per position.
  3. Regarding medical schools: The latest report from the Association of American Medical Colleges indicates 35,735 applicants (mean GPA 3.47), 17,662 accepted, 16,648 matriculants (mean GPA 3.62)[6][7].

I found no data to support the recently added assertions that "human medical school acceptances have an average GPA of 3.7" or that "the acceptance rate per medical school is lower than that of vet schools". It does appear that those applying to and entering medical school do have a slightly higher GPA, but that admissions into veterinary school are more competitive (as the article stated in its previous incarnation). AED 06:39, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

[The following is in response to an anonymous poster claiming to be a career counselor for UC Berkeley, who subsequently removed two of his/her posts, as well as one of mine. Full context for these comments may be found here. - AED 05:56, 30 December 2005 (UTC) ]
Similar to programs offered by other schools, the Veterinary Medical Opportunity Program is a six-week course in your own UC system that helps the “disadvantaged” get into veterinary school. (As a career counselor, perhaps you should check it out.) The point being, I imagine that the average GPA for veterinary schools would be much higher if we threw out their low-scoring matriculants, too.
Regardless, there seems to be a bit of double standard in this examination of statistics. You suggest that competitiveness is not defined merely by numbers (i.e. “it depends on what defines competitiveness”), but the quality of applicants is defined that way (i.e. the higher the GPA, the higher quality the applicant is). No one disputes that GPA is an extremely important indicator of an applicant’s quality, but obviously it is not the only one. I imagine that someone who ignores what the general public considers “prestigious” and pursues a profession in which they must be able to know, diagnose, and treat many species for a much lower salary than their human medicine counterpart is not merely what you have termed “average in quality”. Furthermore, it is a common misconception that people choose veterinary medicine because they “don’t want to deal with people”. Like human physicians, veterinarians must master the art of communication with other humans. Unlike human physicians, veterinarians must also master the care of patients who cannot complain about their ailments. I hope you counsel your students appropriately on these points in the future. - AED 06:53, 29 December 2005 (UTC) edited 05:56, 30 December 2005 (UTC)
This looks to be a Dead Horse, but let me put in two bits as the Son of, Brother of, In-Law of, and good friend of Veterinarians.
    1. The GPA may seem higher for MD's, but the Vet school entry requires fundamentally higher bars to hurdle in core courses, i.e. Sciences and Math.
    2. Moreover, it usually requires extensive pre-application certified experience in veterinary work.
    3. There are simply far more chairs in Med. Schools than for the many fewer Vet schools. It was a big deal when my alma mater Tufts University started it's vet school up, because it was and still is the only one in all of New England.

Add those up, and the entry bar is far higher — better to liken it to graduate work at MIT or entry into Harvard or Yale Law Schools. That tough. FrankB 05:03, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

Proposal to Merge Veterinary surgeon into Veterinary Medical Doctor

  • Strong Oppose — The former article is fine as is, and can be added to some, but more importantly, it is a different career track with different training, albeit, similar. Much like Clinical Psycologists and Psychiatrists, one can script perscriptions, and the other can't. US doctors do not have to graduate the Royal School. Moreover, it is a stated goal that wikipedia have an article for each article title in all other major encyclopedia's regardless of the media type, and this would kill one title that is needed. Overall, a bad idea.
FrankB 05:39, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

== Proposal to merge...

  • Strongly disagree. the USA position is significantly different to the UK position, and merging the articles would require significant re-writing. Better to emphasise the differences by editing within existing articles, and possible retitling?

CLEAN, COPYEDIT, GCHECK, UNDERCONSTRUCTION TEMPLATES

I'm really too tired this morning to deal with the overall work needed in this article at the moment (4 am) and so I yelled for attention. Awk grammer constructions. Sentences split by sentences that are off point. A poor article introduction... just read it. It needs a good dose of bandaids and a lot of TLC.

The content is ok, but could be expanded without a lot of effort. FrankB 08:17, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

Image Caption

"An open castration being performed on a horse by a veterinarian under ketamine anaesthesia."
Is an image caption, and I would like to suggest that it be changed to something more along the lines of:
"A veterinarian performing an open castration on a horse under ketamine anaesthesia."
The original sentence suggests the veterinarian is under ketamine anaesthesia, and I assume that was not the intended meaning. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 24.18.180.230 (talk) 22:10, 18 December 2006 (UTC).women get 75% of the money

Template:Veterinary medicine overhaul

I've overhauled Template:Veterinary medicine (formerly {{Veterinary Practitioners}}) to include all the related "See also" links, from various veterinary articles. Please feel free to correct/improve anything in it (ordering, subheaders, additions, etc), and add it to appropriate articles. Thanks. --Quiddity 18:59, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

Did Alf Wight (James Herriot) receive a doctorate as implied in the article? It's not mentioned in any other source that I know of.Zagubov 00:31, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

High Cost

Vets charge a lot because there is no health funding for animals. They also have to financially justify having so many assistant staff as employees. So a $200 charge for a seemingly minor medical procedure is commonplace. Jivesucka 17:28, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

Can you provide a citation for "vets charge a lot?" For example, can you provide an example of a routine/minor medical procedure for which veterinarians charge more than a similar procedure in humans? Maybe you could factor out malpractice costs, since those are much lower for veterinarians, but in my experience veterinary procedures are comparable to human medical procedures. (The value of an animal may be lower than the value of a human, but that doesn't change the cost of medical equipment and treatment.) I'd also be interested in a citation for "they have so many assistant staff"-- do veterinarians tend to have more staff than is necessary or normal for their field of work? --Dr.queso (talk) 16:44, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
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