Veterinarian

Anne is a veterinarian for both a local animal hospital in Annapolis as well as an emergency clinic. With long hours and difficult situations, Anne tells us how her job is also one of the most rewarding.

Transcript

>> My job, on a daily basis, is to show up for a shift type work and so I come in and then I need to be able to see whatever walks in the door. As things walk in the door, they're either triage, which means that they are critical and they need to come to the back area of the hospital where we can immediately assess them and treat them or they go into an exam room. Any examination typically starts with a temperature and a weight and those are really important. We will get if they're running a fever, we'll look at if they have lost weight or gained weight, but then I usually start nose and go to the tail and that's most veterinarians do their exam and so the animal you look at the nose, you look at the eyes, you look at the back of the eyes, you look in the ears, you look at the teeth, in the mouth, under the tongue, at the very back of the mouth, then you go ahead and you feel the throat and then you keep going from there and then typically from there I kind of check under the arms and the front arms and then go toward the heart and the lungs and that's where you listen with your stethoscope and then go from there to the belly and feel the belly, feel along the back, make sure that there's no areas of discomfort. Check all the areas of the skin because animals have thick fur and you kind of have to look closely to see what's going on at the level of the skin and then go on back towards the tail and the hind legs and check the knees, check hips, check toes, check pads, check nails, and then that's typically how I go a do an exam all the way through. It's a challenging profession. So you're never bored. I've never met anyone who's bored with this job. You don't just show up and do the same thing over and over every day and then also I think it has a lot to over as far as different types of things we do within the profession.

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