Overview:

United Veterinary Care is delighted to host veterinary students for externships!  This valuable clinical experience will let you take what you’ve learned in the classroom and put it to the test in an animal hospital of your choice.  Our hands-on externships are designed exclusively for veterinary students at AVMA-accredited veterinary schools in their clinical years, typically meaning their 3^rd or 4^th year of vet school.  Since every student has different interests, we are excited to offer these programs at a wide variety of our amazing partner hospitals.  We know that travel and lodging expenses for externships can often be cost-prohibitive on a student’s budget.  To make our externships as accessible as possible, we offer stipends to externs to help offset these costs (unless prohibited by the veterinary school you are attending). 

Eligibility requirements:

• Must be a current veterinary student at an AVMA-accredited veterinary school
• Priority scheduling is given to students in their clinical years on official externship blocks for school credit
• Must provide proof of professional liability insurance. SAVMA members qualify for no cost insurance by applying at the following link: SAVMA Member Benefit and Resources | AVMA PLIT

Hospital information:

Helping Hands is proud to offer high-quality soft tissue surgery, orthopedic surgery, and dental procedures at affordable prices.  Our hospital is located in historic and thriving Richmond, Virginia.  Our doctors have a passion for providing mentorship for veterinary students and for new graduates that join the team, and we are delighted to host externs.  Helping Hands has a very unique practice model and succeeds in increasing access to quality veterinary care when pets need it most.  We tackle many varieties of surgeries here, including, but not limited to: enucleation, gastropexy (both prophylactic gastropexy and in the case of GDV), spay (routine, pyometra), neuter, abdominal exploratory, limb amputation, extracapsular repair for CCL rupture, amputations, as well as routine and advanced dental procedures.  If you are looking to spend your externship increasing your comfort level and confidence with surgery and dentistry, with a team that embraces mentorship, Helping Hands would be the ideal selection!

Species treated:

Dogs; Cats; Pocket pets/small mammals

Services offered:

Soft tissue surgery; Orthopedic surgery; Dentistry

Full-time doctors:

1

Part-time doctors:

0

What to expect from your externship:

We want to hear from you about your professional goals for your externship experience!  Please indicate your top priorities in your application, so we can tailor the experience to meet your needs.

During your externship, you can expect to actively participate in cases and further your development towards becoming a veterinarian.  Throughout your time with us, you will always be supervised by an experienced veterinarian and skilled support staff.  This team will serve as your mentors for your externship experience.  If there are certain technical skills you are looking to improve on, let us know so we can place emphasis on these areas!  We encourage active participation from externs, introduce them to our clients, and truly make them part of our team.   We encourage externs to select one case per week to further research and engage the veterinarians in further case discussion with this additional information.  These case discussions help our teams learn and grow together; further emphasizing that mentorship is a two-way street. 

We truly enjoy hosting externs and having new graduates join our teams since with new team members always comes new shared knowledge!