Dear Friends,
Our fundraising campaign this Giving Tuesday is focused on addressing two important needs at the same time. We aim to build a small primary care clinic to deliver outpatient veterinary care to animals from shelters and rescue groups, and to provide hands-on learning opportunities for our veterinary students and veterinary technician students. This small primary care clinic will support animal shelters and rescue groups in the state and will be run by veterinary students under the supervision of faculty clinicians.
There are many ways to support our outstanding Humane Ethics and Animal Welfare program through giving, and if you already give to this program, please continue providing support in whatever way feels right to you. This new initiative is being presented to build on our existing strengths, and it has been selected as our 2024 campaign for Giving Tuesday. Our goal is to raise $200,000 to refurbish a modular building and construct a small clinic, and two generous supporters of hands-on training for veterinary students have started us off by providing a gift of $25,000.
My wife and I will be supporting this campaign ourselves because we understand the important work that shelters do every day. Shelters and rescue groups provide care to stray animals, reunite pets with their owners, and perform spay/neuter surgeries to support communities. Pets that people acquire from shelters and rescue groups provide joy and companionship, and this is how our own dog came into our family. Since both of us are veterinarians with experience in general practice, we also know how important it is for veterinary students to gain hands-on experience and learn about practice management. This clinic will give students valuable medical and surgical experience while helping them to learn about the business and management aspects of veterinary medicine.
I invite you to join us in supporting this Giving Tuesday campaign. Please also share this information with others so that together, we can raise the funds needed to build this clinic.
Dr. Nick Frank
Dean, MSU CVM
Project Overview
Mississippi State University's College of Veterinary Medicine is renowned for graduating students with extensive spay/neuter surgical experience. We seek to build upon this foundation by establishing a student-run/faculty-supervised clinic that models the type of practice that a veterinarian would establish in a rural area to provide primary care services to dogs and cats. Care will be provided to dogs and cats from animal shelters that require surgery or outpatient medical care. The goal of this clinic and student rotation is to enhance the surgical skills of students by allowing them to perform surgeries other than spay/neuter procedures and to improve their medical skills by having them operate an outpatient primary care clinic.
Student Learning
Students in the final two years of the curriculum will take on all the responsibilities of a general practitioner while remaining under the supervision of a faculty clinician. Veterinary technician students will work in the clinic alongside veterinary students.
- The surgical caseload is expected to include fracture repairs, amputations, foreign body removals, enucleations, laceration repairs, and mass removals.
- The outpatient caseload will include dentistry and management of medical problems that do not require hospitalization.
- Operating an outpatient clinic will provide students with opportunities to assess patients, make clinical decisions, and consider the spectrum of care as they treat patients. They will gain experience with the financial aspects of general practice.
Access to Care
Importantly, providing veterinary care to animals from shelters and rescue groups will require students to consider finances and practice on the spectrum of care in every case, as they will have to do when they practice veterinary medicine after graduation.
Impacts
- Veterinary students will perform surgeries, diagnose and treat diseases, and care for shelter animals.
- Services provided will benefit local communities while giving students valuable medical and surgical experience.
- Veterinary technician students will gain hands-on experience working in the clinic.
- Students will learn to navigate financial constraints, mirroring the realities of limited budgets. This immersive experience will help students develop the confidence and skills necessary to thrive in any setting.
- Students will experience the constraints of working in a relatively small clinic.
Budget
- Campaign target: $200,000
- Funds are required to renovate an existing modular building and equip it as a primary care veterinary clinic.
