VTMED 6623

Clinical Rotation in Shelter Medicine: Principles and Practice

Course Description

Course information provided by the 2025-2026 Catalog.

This clinical rotation embedded in SPCA of Tompkins County with travel to other area shelters. It exposes students to the principles and practice of veterinary medicine in a real animal shelter setting. Students will provide direct veterinary medical care to individual shelter animals and spend time learning and applying population health principles. These principles include infectious disease diagnosis, treatment, and management; shelter wellness and protocol-based medicine; shelter anesthesia, high-quality, high-volume spay-neuter and dentistry; shelter animal behavioral assessment, pharmaceuticals and modification, low-stress animal handling, and population and capacity planning. Cases vary with season and shelter intake. The daily schedule includes topic-based online modules, clinical work, and topic rounds. Students will also be expected to complete on-line webinars and assignments to round out their learning, and to prepare and give a live CE presentation for area shelter personnel. Although spay/neuter is certainly part of shelter medicine and will be part of this rotation, this is NOT a spay/neuter intensive rotation; caseload depends on the needs of the shelter(s). Weekend duty is optional and as-needed.This clinical rotation embedded in SPCA of Tompkins County exposes students to the principles and practice of veterinary medicine in a real animal shelter setting. While students will provide direct veterinary medical care to individual shelter animals, students will also spend time learning and applying population health principles. These principles include infectious disease diagnosis, treatment, and management; shelter wellness and protocol-based medicine; shelter anesthesia, high-quality, high-volume spay-neuter and dentistry; shelter animal behavioral assessment, pharmaceuticals and modification, low-stress animal handling, and population and capacity planning. Cases vary with season and shelter intake. The daily schedule includes topic-based online modules, clinical work, and topic rounds. Students will also be expected to complete several on-line webinars and assignments to round out their learning. Although spay/neuter is certainly part of shelter medicine and will be part of this rotation, this is NOT a spay/neuter intensive rotation; caseload will depend on the needs of the shelter(s). Week-end duty is optional and as-needed.

Prerequisites REF-FA25/Corequisites REF-FA25 VTMED 5520. Highly recommended prerequisite: VTMED 6425. Corequisites: None.

Enrollment Priority REF-FA25 Enrollment limited to: fourth-year veterinary students.

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