Madeline McDougal - Columbia
This past summer I spent 3 weeks at the National University of Colombia, Bogota, Veterinary School. During the first part of the trip I spent time as an extern in the Large Animal Hospital. I loved getting to learn how the students' experiences overall had so many parallels with our own, as well as getting to see their daily activities such as doing treatments, preparing for and attending rounds, and handling emergencies.
I appreciated their creativity in approaches to problems where I am used to different types of medical supplies and medications being available, I learned so much even despite the language barrier. Next, I worked with many of them to collect blood samples and perform physical and neurologic exams on about 100 horses to gather data for a prevalence study of Equine Protozoal Myeloencephalitis that our two universities are currently working on together.
Historically, EPM has been thought to be a big contributor to equid neurological disease in this region of Colombia but before now there has not been published data to determine if this is accurate or if it is being overdiagnosed. In collecting this data it was so valuable to get the repetition of practicing my physical exams as well as learning how to perform a neurologic exam on horses.
During the last part of the trip Dr. Aleman came from Davis to join us to put on a continuing education workshop for the students and many veterinarians from different parts of the country to learn more about diagnosing and treating different equine neurologic diseases. We were able to attend the lectures and then saw demonstrations of neurologic exams and CSF collection. It was a very helpful comparison to be able to see some of the abnormal clinical signs that come with different types of neurologic diseases after having performed so many predominantly normal exams in the weeks prior.
One of my favorite parts of the trip was getting to see the beautiful countryside when traveling to all of the barns and properties where the horses we looked at for the EPM study lived. On the weekends we were able to explore Bogota and surrounding areas trying new food (and tons of unique fruits), learning about their customs and traditions, experiencing the unique weather that makes Colombia one of the most biodiverse countries, and getting a feel for what life is like in Colombia. I will cherish these memories and utilize the skills I learned for many years to come.
