Clinical Skills

April 27,2010

Vocab:

Bloodless Castrator- Tool that can be used to castrate bulls, applies a small latex band around the scrotum to stop blood circulation on scrotum.
Butterfly needle- A short needle with a small diameter attached to a thin, flexible tube. Usually used for hands, wrists or on people with smaller veins.
Catheter- A hollow flexible tube for insertion into a body cavity, duct, or vessel to allow the passage of fluids or distend a passageway.
IV machine- pump intravenous fluid to patients with catheters

In the clinical skills lab I was able to obtain a lot of hands on experience that I have never before tried. The clinical skills lab is designed for veterinary students to be able to improve their technique in various different procedures with various different simulators. I was able to suture a cow's cut using real suturing materials on a board with thick cloth. To my surprise cow's skins are hard to get through, it took me about three strong pushes on the needle to get it through the skin. Then I learned how to use two different castration tools used on bulls (bloodless castrator, castration clamps). The coolest one was the bloodless castrator because I had to tighten the band that was put around the scrotume, so tight that the band was a little bigger than an M&M. After this procedure the bulls scrotum would fall on its own in 20-40 days. After this I worked on drawing blood with different types of needles. There were three different pads that each contained veins that had different difficulties. I started out with the standard needle and syringe on the easiest vein pad and because I was able to hit the vein on my first try I was allowed to try different needles and the other vein pads. I am unsure of the names and sizes of all the needles I do know one was the butterfly needle, and I was able to learn how to properly put a catheter and then bandage the leg to prevent the catheter from moving. My last task was learning how to use the two different IV machines. I learned how to connect the catheter to the fluid line and how to control how much fluid is pumped at a time (D). I was very surprised and excited that I was able to do all of these things and will be able to continue to practice them or even learn new things in this rotation (F). Experienced veterinarians really make everything seem a lot easier than it is which is why it is very important for the new students to have a way of practicing procedures before having to do them in live patients (A).