Not a lot of vet schools can claim to have their own subway station and the one at “Tierspital” in Zurich, is making for a pretty cool entrance. Walking up the ramp to the exit, surounded in neon-blue light, gives me the impression of walking on the bottom of a swimming pool or of entering a fancy night club.
For a change (due to my working commitments during the day), I am visiting this veterinary faculty not during daytime, but at night and my guide this time is not the dean, but an equally unique vet student.
Luregn and I had met in Lima at a conference and it had taken me a while, before taking him up on his offer to show me their small animal clinic and – even more interesting for me – the university’s skills lab, where artificial models of animals and their organs offer an alternative to painful procedures on living patients.
First a visit of the small animal clinic though….
At night veterinary clinics all go into their very own stand by mode. With the waiting rooms and the halls mostly devoid of pet owners, the work of the remaining staff is focused on the care of the inpatients and due to the lower risk of being interrupted, on the writing of scientific papers on brightly lite computer screens.
For us too, it is a good time to take a closer look
at the green and red illuminated, state of the art, temperature and air controlled, noise reduced recovery cages ,
at the sophisticated air lock systems, which help to keep pollutants as low as possible,
at the batteries of simulantiously running infusion pumps, which are always a good indicator for the complexity of the treatment the patients at an intensive care unit receive,
at a room which is exclusively dedicated to dialysis, where the lives of patients with renal failure can both be saved and maintained without functional kidneys for a while,
and basically at a good example of how the clinical training of veterinary under graduates in the 21st century can look like.
Luregn is making an effort to make the tour of the clinic as comprehensive as possible, so that it is already late, before we are entering the skills lab in one of the historic buildings of the faculty.
You might be forgiven for forgetting that fact, when entering the futuristic looking central area of the lab.
Here models rule and no living creature is coming to any harm…..
The dark horse on the right side of the room, fitted with all the important internal organs for students (and vets) to touch during a rectal examination looks familiar :
It costs about the same as a small car and I have seen one just like it over a year ago in Dubai. Most modern vet schools seem to have one these days and in the case of Zurich, the head of a second, equally expensive one (made to 100% from silicone) is resting wrapped up in moist towels in a huge refrigerator near by, to maintain it in pristine condition.
The large pig on the left side of the room is new to me and the injection side on the neck , fitted with an electronic sensor to confirm the correct needle placement, is looking well used.
Luregn opens a draw and out come the at first sight bizzare looking heads of a dog and a cat. Certainly not something to hang on the wall, but instead very useful probs to practice the intubation of these species for anaesthesia or resuscitation. However – made in blue or in green, they would have looked friendlier….
There are a fair number of fluffy dog and cat models, which very much remind me to the ones I had built some years ago at my clinic to be used at the First Aid courses we where running for clients for a while.
The models here are also fitted with artificial hearts and lungs and the model of a frontlimb of a larger breed dog is inviting even the most unskilled vet student to take a blood sample, without being afraid to fail the dog or – even worse ? – infront of an expectant owner.
Turning off the light and putting these patient and never complaining creatures back to bed, I appreciate how much veterinary education has progressed, even just during my lifetime.
The Blue Vet Diary 