Gabby Maier

My international experience this summer was a 4-week externship at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitaet in Munich, Germany. Being from Germany, I was trying to find a way to spend some time in my home country, see friends and family, and learn something about cows at the same time. Back in November of last year, it started with an email Dr. Hansen was kind enough to send to his contacts in Munich asking them for possible leads in the bovine sector. A little while later, I was corresponding with Dr. Klee, the head of the Clinic for Ruminants, which is part of the Munich vet school, and Nicole Gollnick, one of the residents there in charge of externs.

My classmate Justine Walker, who decided to join me, and I were able to live in clinic housing in Schloss Oberschleissheim, a castle in the little town just outside of Munich where the clinic is located and thus just minutes from the clinic. The fact that a beergarden is part of the castle added to the attractiveness of this accommodation. Everything within Oberschleissheim was reachable with used bikes we bought and downtown Munich was a 20 minute ride with the streetcar.

Most of the patients in the clinic for ruminants are cows and calves with the occasional sheep or goat. Bulls seem to be the exception. The students at Munich can choose between Calf, Cow, Orthopedics, or Gynecology rotations at the clinic. We were assigned to the calf group when we started and spent the last week in Gynecology.

The clinical rotations are a fairly new concept in German vet schools and are apparently based on our system. Up until a couple of years ago, cases were presented in a classroom setting where animals were brought in and presented to an entire class. Students at Munich said they were pretty happy about this change in the curriculum, except that it was hard to get all the requested rotations and they were being tested on their clinical skills in an oral exam on a randomly assigned species.

We spent the mornings with physical exams, writing up records, going to rounds and then doing treatments. The afternoons were used for surgeries, mostly due to problems with the umbilicus or digestive tract, and ultrasound exams. New incoming patients were examined first by students and us interns and then again by one of the doctors. Apart from the umbilical problems, there were a lot of calves that came in with diarrhea, we saw some salt toxicity, congenital heart anomalies, a calf with liver abscess, and some with orthopedic problems. A lot of the gynecology cases were teat injuries. C-section and distocia patients were less numerous and somewhat frustrating to the clinicians since they represent the most complicated cases that referring vets are unable to handle and often had to be put down. We were also able to participate in the “udder class”, where we learned how to perform endoscopy on udders and how to suture a teat injury, and a rectal palpation course that was quite helpful.

Everyone at the clinic was extremely helpful and friendly and I recommend this externship to anyone who is halfway fluent in German and has an interest in cows. Munich is a great place to be in the summer and the externship was well structured and well suited to our level of knowledge and skills.