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Feature Story

Veteran Veterinarians Lend Guiding Hand

When Oregon State University student Roberta Porter made her first incision during the spaying of a shepherd mix dog, the Oregon Humane Society’s veterinary medicine director Kris Otteman was looking over her shoulder, ready to offer advice.

When fellow student Ben Osborne began neuter surgery on a young male cat and discovered an irregularity, long-time veterinarian Kirk Miller was on hand to guide him through the process.

What makes the new partnership between the Oregon Humane Society and the OSU College of Veterinary Medicine unique isn’t just the opportunity for students to hone their surgical and diagnostic skills, while at the same time help the shelter make its animals more adoptable. It is the presence of OSU faculty on-site at the facility.

Miller just joined the OSU faculty and will be stationed full-time at the Oregon Humane Society facility in Portland, where he will oversee the instruction of the 50 fourth-year OSU vet students who will go through the two-week rotation over the next year. Otteman is not only a graduate of the OSU College of Veterinary Medicine, she serves as a courtesy faculty member.

“The ongoing academic presence at the Oregon Humane Society is rather unusual,” said Cyril Clarke, dean of the OSU College of Veterinary Medicine. “It underscores the depth of the partnership and the importance we put on this clinical rotation.”

What makes the rotation so valuable, students say, is the high volume of work and exposure to the kinds of cases they will encounter in a private practice. OSU’s small animal clinic in Corvallis is a referral service, treating difficult or unusual cases that practicing veterinarians choose not to handle. At the Oregon Humane Society, however, the bulk of the work involves spay and neuter operations, with the occasional tumor removal or wound treatment thrown in.

“It was a great experience,” said Fern Fitzgerald, who completed her rotation in September. “In two weeks, I did 59 different spay and neuter surgeries and conducted a number of other procedures as well – from treating an ulcer in one cat to working with another that had an upper respiratory infection. We also got to meet with the foster parents and work on diagnosing what was wrong with their pets.

“The staff and doctors there are great,” Fitzgerald added. “They were always available to answer questions.”

Otteman says working with the OSU students is “extraordinarily rewarding” because she can help shape the skills and attitudes of the next generation of working veterinarians. And she knows something about the OSU student experience, having graduated with a degree in animal science in 1982, then enrolling in the young veterinary medicine program and earning her doctorate degree in 1986.

She worked in private practice in Klamath Falls, co-founded the Banfield Animal Hospital in Portland and was executive director of the Cat Adoption Team before joining the Oregon Humane Society a year ago.

“When students arrive here for the rotation, we have a ‘see one, teach one, do one’ approach to surgery,” Otteman said. “Repetition is huge and having someone in the room with them is a helpful and calming influence. During their first 48 hours, the students generally are hesitant and a bit nervous. By the middle of their second week, they are competent and confident.”

Porter and Osborne were in the first cohort of students who went through the two-week rotation in early September. Though most of their work involved spays and neuters, they also worked on removing a tumor from a dog, repairing the fractured leg of a cat, closing open wounds in several animals, and doing an exploratory abdominal surgery on an ill cat.

“In the first week, I quadrupled the number of surgeries I had done at OSU,” Osborne said.

The newest OSU faculty member, Miller also brings a calm demeanor into the operating suite. He graduated from Colorado State University with a DVM degree in 1995 and went on an internship in small animal medicine and surgery at Angell Memorial Animal Hospital in Boston, Mass. After working as a veterinarian in West Virginia for several years, he joined the team at Woodstock Veterinary Hospital in Portland, where he was medical director for the past five years.

“This program is a win-win situation for all involved,” Miller said. “The students have the opportunity to hone the skills they have learned in Corvallis, and the shelter animals receive truly state-of-the-art medical care. We are raising the bar in terms of medical care for shelter animals and I hope this program can be a model for similar programs around the country.”

OSU students say the presence of Otteman and Miller is a security blanket that helped them get over their initial hesitancy.

“There is always someone here to turn to for help,” Porter said. “If I would get frustrated, or was unsure what to do next, they were right there. And what impresses me most about them is that they’re always ready to deal with an emergency. They just stay calm and persevere.

“I learned a lot from that.”