This training prepares you to continue supervised surgical training with client-owned animals in the Veterinary Teaching Hospital during your fourth year of study. Surgeons must have an excellent working knowledge of anatomy, physiology, pharmacology and pathophysiology. Instructive training in these areas establishes the groundwork for the development of both medical and surgical skills. Training for surgery requires the mastery of manipulative skills including aseptic technique, suturing, knot tying and instrument handling. You will learn many of these skills using inanimate models and animal cadavers.
Faculty members make use of both techniques to teach surgery.
In 1992, the College adopted a policy to develop alternatives to animal use, wherever possible, in the teaching of veterinary medicine. Veterinarians, in contrast to physicians, must possess basic surgical skills at the time of graduation from the four-year program. Given this reality, surgical training at Colorado State includes performing surgery in non-survival animal laboratories. During these faculty-supervised laboratories, the animal first is placed under deep surgical anesthesia. The student then performs the surgery.