By: Emily Resau, Emily Sheng, Madeline Johnson, and Lindsay Hanks

For animal science this week, we have been visiting the Virginia-Maryland College of
Veterinary Medicine on campus. At the vet school, we met with veterinarians, current students, and technicians. They gave us tours of the facility and an opportunity to learn more about veterinary medicine.

Clinical Practice
On Tuesday, we practiced in the clinical skills room. The clinical skills room is a
classroom that contains different stations that have various aspects of veterinary surgery, such as IV catheter placement and injections. The vet students demonstrated small animal CPR, large animal palpation, and clinical instrument handling.
Our favorite station was placing the catheters and practicing intramuscular injections. At
the catheter station, the vet student first gave us a demonstration of placing a catheter. It is first placed by inserting the needle in the vein, and when a flash of blood (for practice, blood is substituted by red food coloring) is visible, then you pull out the needle. Quickly following that, you insert a plug into the catheter to block the flow of blood. At the intramuscular injection station, we practiced inserting needles into the muscular areas the imitation dog they provided.
In order to insert an intramuscular needle, the vet first locates the muscle that is going to be injected. Next, the protective cover is removed from the syringe. Then, with the bevel in sight of the one who is injecting the needle, the shaft is inserted into the muscle at a ninety degree angle until all that is seen is the hub. The vet then pulls back the syringe to check for blood. If there is no signs that the needle has hit a blood vessel, then the vet pushes the syringe quickly to insert the vaccine/ medicine and pulls out of the muscle. If blood does appear, then the needle is removed and a new site is found.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0VQK7tqystg this is a short video about placing a catheter into a dog.