victoria huang

To contact Victoria, e-mail vichuang@ucdavis.edu.

title: veterinary teaching hospital, taiwan university

I worked at the Veterinary Teaching Hospital of Taiwan University. Their education system is similar to European schools, where students enroll in the 5-year veterinary program after high school, as part of undergraduate degree.

They don’t have organized summer clinics as we do, and there were no seniors working this summer, so I am unsure as to how senior students fit-in in the hospital. During appointments, graduate students took history and performed physical exams, some diagnostic tests, and medical procedures. The clinicians provided guidance to the graduate students, and discussed the case with the owners. There were very few vet techs. During my stay there, I was able to work with these graduate students, and I did many things that they did. The case load was quite heavy, with average of 24 cases per day per service (with 2-4 graduate students per service, and 1 or 2 clinicians).

I was able to work in different services, including outpatient, internal medicine, surgery, and clinical pathology. They gave me the schedule of different clinicians and their departments, and I was able to choose the services I wanted to work with on a daily basis. I was happy with this arrangement, because it gave me a lot of freedom. But, in a way, it felt very disorganized, and I wasn’t sure where to go to the first few days.

I thought the experience would have been better if they had given me more information, or a formal orientation, as I did not know to bring my lab coats or scrubs (apparently those had to be special ordered in Taiwan, so I had to borrow some during my stay there), did not know where to find lunch, and when rounds were held.

Many clinicians there have had some training in vet schools in the U.S., so they can speak English, and were willing to communicate with me in English. The students were intimidated, and did not speak to me until they realized that I could speak conversational Chinese.

I saw some interesting cases while there. In Taiwan, distemper is a big problem. They have been seeing unusual distemper cases where young puppies die suddenly with seizures, with no respiratory or GI involvement. I also saw a few cases or pyometra, a metastatic sartoli cell, and some mammary tumors. The government had only starting pushing forspaying and neutering about 2 years ago, and most pets in Taiwan are still not spayed or neutered. Hit by car cases were also common. I saw many everyday.

Overall, I thought I learned a lot, especially about the type of diseases/illnesses found in Taiwanese dogs and cats. The first few days were stressful, since I didn’t know what to expect, but I was able to establish a routine after a few days. My advice to other students is to ask many questions. I found that the Taiwan University’s Department of Veterinary Medicine very accommodating, once you ask them for specific things.