Day 67- Skill Building

   One of the most nerve racking things about nearing graduation is the annoying voice in the back of your mind constantly telling you that you can't do it, or you don't know how. Knowing that in less than a year we will be doing these things on our own, possibly with no assistance from a well trained tech, or a seasoned clinician looking over your shoulder. Knowing that in just a short period of time no one will be checking our work, or backing up our diagnosis is nerve racking to say the least. We will be out in the world alone and have to know how to do things we possibly have never done. We graduate reading about how to do surgeries and procedures and hope that we will get to practice these things in our final year. But the reality is that we may get a chance to do these things once, but maybe not at all. We will be out in the world very soon will no instructions and no help, and be expected to know how to do things we have never done and only read about! Talk about pressure people!!!
     A good thing about our lack of appointments yesterday was we got some time to practice some of these skills. Yesterday I put in an IV catheter in a horse as well as performed an abdominal centesis. This is where you carefully insert a needle into the abdomen to get some of the fluid surrounding the intestines. This procedure is a fine art as there are many organs to avoid hitting with the needle as well as the miles of intestines to fill the abdominal cavity. Adding to the difficulty level of this procedure is the the positioning, your basically crawled up under the horse stabbing it in the gut with a needle, and if he did decides to kick, well as the old saying goes..."off with your head."