Alison Seward | Remaining at the forefront of veterinary education

I've had the privilege of working in the behavior service at Ryan Veterinary Hospital for 13 years. This year's celebration of the 125th anniversary of the School of Veterinary Medicine is a muted one as our school is in jeopardy of its excellence - perhaps its existence. In light of the administration's budget cuts, we face the devolution of our school, our teaching hospitals and the excellence won through the dedication of our community, past and present.

Wharton's Dr. Peter Cappelli has pointed out that simply cutting employees and services is not an effective strategy for surviving a fiscal crisis; nonetheless, that remedy is being imposed upon our school, raising troubling questions:

We are currently predominantly a women's professional school; is there a suggestion of gender bias in the approach to our fiscal difficulties?

Our gender distribution resembles that of the nursing school, whose clinical education mission relies in large part on third party reimbursement - a critical determinant of fiscal soundness for human medical schools, but negligible in veterinary medicine. Still, our hospitals' revenue shortfalls are attributed to unsound policies. Human teaching hospitals would be in similar straits without third party reimbursement. The opportunity here is for collaboration with Wharton to identify ways for excellent veterinary medicine to support itself.

The school's recently implemented "Core Process," whose goal was distinguishing "core" services from the nonessential, will have an insidious effect on our excellence and on the perception of our school by prospective students and faculty.

Our school has historically driven innovation and specialization in veterinary medicine. Is it appropriate to contract within circumscribed areas, abandoning our premier position in veterinary research and education? Veterinary medicine is evolving toward specialization and collaboration among specialties. It is unique in having obligations both to patients and to their human families; our management of both can be informative for human medicine.

The opportunity here is to identify ways to assure a continuum of clinical care among specialties, and to acknowledge and foster our hospitals' research function.

Teaching hospitals offer investigational treatments to populations broader than those in clinical trials and document and evaluate the results - completing the circle of medical research from basic science from clinical investigation to clinical treatment and back. No part of that circle takes precedence over another. Progress in medicine ceases without teaching hospitals.

It is a false dichotomy to set basic science and clinical investigation apart from clinical education. Failure to understand clinical education as the third essential unit of medical science misapprehends the role of teaching hospitals in the advancement of medicine. The consequent limiting of our services cannot but hinder our educational mission, and our prominence in scientific discovery.

A vision that proposes limiting the services our hospitals offer will result in students having to seek clinical education elsewhere.The oldest veterinary school in the country hardly seems a fitting venue for the disreputable practice of outsourcing.

Will we lose the public relations and financial benefits our hospitals bring to the veterinary school and the university because we fail to understand the critical science done by our clinical educators? Our hospitals have powerful connections to regional, even national, communities of people who are devoted to their animals and to the institutions that support their health and well-being. That connection inspires donations.

Our hospitals, advancing standards of veterinary care, attract positive publicity, create community loyalty and generate contributions. The opportunity here is to appreciate the role of the our school and its hospitals as public ambassadors, and to assure that their emotional and practical connections with the vast communities who care for animals benefit the school and the university. The teaching hospitals are the sine qua non for creating positive perceptions of the school and the university.

I hope that the course contemplated for our school and hospitals is reconsidered; that the voices of our faculty and staff are heard; and that an accurate view of the crucial role our teaching hospitals play in the advancement of science, the education of professional students, the preeminence of our university, and the engagement of our community, is embraced. If we fail to turn this crisis to advantage, excellence will be a memory and eminence a faded aspiration.

Alison Seward is a Veterinary Assistant at the Behavioral Clinic in the Ryan Veterinary Hospital.

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