G'day Hans here now if you like animals of all shapes and sizes
we're talking talking dogs, cats, fish, lizards, whatever
maybe you thought about being a vet!
Today thanks to Student Edge we're gonna get inside a real vet clinic
and find out just what it's all about! C'mon!
For people who love animals
working with them might seem like the most logical career in the world
But there are heaps of other reasons that someone might make a great vet.
Today Dr Kathy Stark is going to help explain what being a vet is all about.
Hi I'm Hans Hi, Dr Kathy, how are you?
Great doc, hey I've got a couple questions about being a vet
can you help me out? Yeah sure, come out the back we'll have a chat.
Right Hans, what do you want to talk to me about? I want to talk about everything, doc
but I guess we should probably start with
why you wanted to become a vet. Well I guess I was lucky because I always wanted
to be a vet from a very young age, I grew up with lots of animals.
Because it's not just about animals obviously you are helping people
as well. Talk to me about that. Yeah that's actually part of the job
most people don't realize is that and I think even vetinary graduates don't
realize that is that it's not just about helping animals there's a lot of
work we doing in helping people, allaying their fears when they've got a sick
pet, helping them to feel like the responsibilities not all on their
shoulders.
So I guess the job is incredibly broad give me the truth
about it what sort of things are you gonna have to do as a vet? I guess there's two main areas to
what we do
one of them is consulting which means that's when people bring their
animal into us and say
fluffy's got a sore tail and we have to examine the animal and
formulate a plan of what might be wrong with it, maybe take an X-ray or take
blood test or there's lots of things we do. But that's the easy bit?
That's the easy bit and usually at lunch time we start to do surgery which means
operating on animals, sometimes we do de-sexing where we sterilize animals
we do dentistry we pull teeth out of animals. So I guess the main thing is
if you're going to want to be a vet you you are going to see some blood.
Yes, you are going to ses some blood and a lot of what we do is not very pretty
pulling teeth out is not a very nice job sometimes we have to operate on
not very nice parts of the animal's body yes putting themometers in...
Alright doc it's down at that time
are you ready for the three questions 'cos I need you to give us the edge.
Okay, First question is, how do I become a vet?
If you want to become a vet if you're at school you need to
decide
probably when you change the subject for year 11 and 12 you need to do English
that's a prerequisite
you're recommended to doing maths and chemistry
and biology that's helpful. You need to do pretty well at school to be a vet
the entrance ATAR score if you're doing in Western Australia is quite high I think for this year it's
about 97.5 so it is quite tough and they don't take a lot of students
about 30 school students they take. So once you finish school and you studied the right
subjects then what? If you've got enough makrs to get in you can apply it to
Murdoch University which is the only place you can do it in Perth. if you want to do it
and you in another part of Australia there are schools in Melbourne, Sydney
Brisbane and Adelaide. So that's a possibility.
Where you study vetinary science. And the last question is if you could have done one thing
differently but still end up exactly where you are today what would you have
done better?
I didn't work experience as a student and I think that's really essential for
anybody that wants to consider being a vet.
The way to ago about that probably is just to go to your local practice and ask them
if they could
if you could help out on a Saturday or during the week
to get some experience so you know what you're up for. Well thank you so much for
talking to us and giving us
the details. Before I go I have to ask is that normal?
I'd be worried about that.
Yeah I think you need to go see a doctor. Can you help me out?
well I've got one of these. Doctor says I gotta stop licking myself.
Anyway, look if you want more information you got to get onto studentedge.com.au
and if you're really serious about being a vet get down to your local
clinic and start getting some experience.
I am not... I'll get that.